RST re-invented again

[Tannochsidebear 2,405]

It's a shame that this improved communication doesn't include the availability to members of minutes of the 2008 AGM. That makes it a little difficult to know what commitments they should be fulfilling.

 

I agree that minutes should be available to members, as should copies of accounts etc be available to download on a members only section of the website.

 

It maybe something that comes up at this year's AGM.

[maineflyer 0]

I watched the thread MF is talking about on RM with interest, and it is as he says. He continually asked a RST board member (the treasurer I think) about membership numbers, and ended up getting his life membership refunded without the question being answered.

 

It does seem strange because I met a RST board member recently and asked about membership and got an approximate number told to me straight away without hesitation, even split between life members and renewing members, although it was hoped that the renewal numbers would increase as the season kicked in (this was around the opening day of the season) and as the AGM came round.

 

The number seemed reasonably accurate to me and in line with what I was expecting.

 

My own take on the 5000 was that that number was around the total membership cards issued at that time. Obviously there have been many that have not renewed over the years, and that needs to be taken into account.

 

Whatever the number, it still remains the largest active membership of a Rangers group around. The Assembly might have 30,000 members, but they dont pay to join and as we all know, most dont even know they are members, and many (like myself and my son) are counted twice as being members of 2 clubs.

 

I am not here to defend the RST by any means, but I am a member and have been since the day it was formed on 5 April 2003. I will be attending the next AGM on 26 September and will see what they have to say about how they see the way forward, and how they have dealt with the issues that were raised last year.

 

I was very disappointed with the internal fighting in 2008, and there are many areas of it I feel should be improved, but those changes do not come by slagging them off on a message board, but by trying to influence policy and hold the board to account on promises made.

 

No doubt it will be making a few announcements as its own AGM nears to fulfil it's 2008 AGM commitments, like the new website recently launched that was promised last year, and I have noticed better communications with the membership in recent weeks after months of nothing, and this being a major priority assured to members at both the EGM and AGM of 2008. I am sure the upcoming AGM is purely coincidental in this regard!

 

Thanks TB, sometimes I think I must have imagined half of the daft reactions I've had over the years from the RST.

 

For the record, when the RST first started, I thought it was the ideal answer for increasingly disenfranchised fans and I supported it wholeheartedly as a way for ordinary fans to gain a voice the club would have to listen to - a la Liverpool, Manchester United and others. I first began to worry about the direction the Trust was taking when the quest for a seat on the Rangers board started to dominate the agenda and dialogue with the club focussed on this one objective rather than wider supporter issues. When the RST, via unofficial 'meetings', started consulting the club on what was or was not acceptable, I knew the game was a bogey and said so, along with many others. The fact that the Trust could never attract a meaningful membership amongst one of the biggest supports on the planet was testament to how it was seen and when numbers plummeted after the 2007/2008 pogroms I felt the Trust had become irrevocably corrupted. I still feel that way.

 

If it has achieved so little after six years, just think how little it could achieve after six more.

[Bluedell 5,607]

I agree that minutes should be available to members,

 

Minutes are available for every AGM apart from last year on the RST website. I'm unsure why they haven't published them as they are informative to members and prospective members alike.

[Tannochsidebear 2,405]

Thanks TB, sometimes I think I must have imagined half of the daft reactions I've had over the years from the RST.

 

For the record, when the RST first started, I thought it was the ideal answer for increasingly disenfranchised fans and I supported it wholeheartedly as a way for ordinary fans to gain a voice the club would have to listen to - a la Liverpool, Manchester United and others. I first began to worry about the direction the Trust was taking when the quest for a seat on the Rangers board started to dominate the agenda and dialogue with the club focussed on this one objective rather than wider supporter issues. When the RST, via unofficial 'meetings', started consulting the club on what was or was not acceptable, I knew the game was a bogey and said so, along with many others. The fact that the Trust could never attract a meaningful membership amongst one of the biggest supports on the planet was testament to how it was seen and when numbers plummeted after the 2007/2008 pogroms I felt the Trust had become irrevocably corrupted. I still feel that way.

 

If it has achieved so little after six years, just think how little it could achieve after six more.

 

 

I understand how you feel, and if you felt strongly enough about the issue of a seat on the board overtaking all other issues that you felt were more important to the fans, then fair enough.

 

Personally, I have not always agreed with every decision the RST took, but I do believe in democratic decision making, and I am glad that the trust gives me, and you whilst you were still a member, the chance to debate this at the AGM and to vote accordingly in line with your feelings on that subject.

 

Was it your good self that proposed the motion at an AGM a couple of years ago to break all contact with the club? If not, it only proves you were not alone, as the speaker on that day passionately explained that in his opinion the club could not be trusted to deliver the board seat and we should not be dealing with the untrustable Murray/Bain.

 

That motion was overwhelmingly defeated however as the majority of fans felt that we had to maintain contact, however untrustworthy, with the club to try to ensure policy changes over a wide number of issues.

 

I do disagree with you however on the membership point. I would think that for an independant organisation, run without payment by a group of 20 volunteers, to have a fee-paying membership number that allows it to live while giving every member a share in the club, is doing ok. You must be aware that the Rangers support is a very apathetic bunch in general. Our traditional upbringing is not to moan and air your dirty linen in public. The majority of the support in attendance at Ibrox most weeks probably still buy the Daily Record and vote Labour, despite many years of showing the anti-Rangers agendas operated by these organisations. To then suggest that it should be easy to get say 10,000 Rangers supporters all to pay a fee every year to join up into an organisation not run by the club itself, and mainly critical of the running of the club is rather over-ambitious in my opinion.

 

You watch the forums, MF, so you know that if you put up any subject in a thread, from TBB to Murray to Kenny Miller, you get such a range of opinion in the discussion, all from Rangers supporters who only want the best for the club, that to expect a very large number to sign up to an organisation with such a wide-ranging topic list is well-nigh impossible.

 

There are many ways to try to get things done to change our club for the better. The RST is one very viable route. The Assembly is another. The Association is yet another. You can get to the club via your RSC meetings. Then we have the Sponsors meetings with the club. We have the debenture holders meetings. We have the Rangers AGM. I would like to think projects like STS have its place also.

 

What doesn't work, is just having a rant on a fans messageboard, or with your pals in the pub or at work. Whilst I admit to doing all of these on a regular basis, I know that I can try to make things happen better by choosing from the first list.

 

All of us who have Rangers best interests at heart, and really want things to change, must choose to get involved with one of the options on the first list. Otherwise we may feel better for a while by sticking with the second list, but nothing will change, or at least you can have no say in what does change.

[Tannochsidebear 2,405]

Minutes are available for every AGM apart from last year on the RST website. I'm unsure why they haven't published them as they are informative to members and prospective members alike.

 

I wasn't aware of that Bluedell, and I agree that there are certainly useful to members who cannot attend the AGM, indeed I have discussed this with someone from the RST board very recently about the 2009 intentions.

[maineflyer 0]

All of us who have Rangers best interests at heart, and really want things to change, must choose to get involved with one of the options on the first list. Otherwise we may feel better for a while by sticking with the second list, but nothing will change, or at least you can have no say in what does change.

 

That all sounds fine but where do you go when you finally have to admit that groups like the RST are not even trying to achieve change for the better. Are you making one of those "change it from within" suggestions? As someone who has been to RST AGM's, do you honestly think those are people who would allow just anyone to join the board, let alone listen to them if they did? Do you suppose all those board members who left a couple of years ago did so because they really wanted to spend more time on other projects? The RST is neither democratic nor open to new opinion. It's a very exclusive club, for which the price of admission is complete compliance. Many of the options on your first list are simply dead ends and will achieve as much change for the better this year as they did last year.

 

And I'm not sure it's valid to knock fans websites as a medium for getting a message across. Not everyone is comfortable being presented with an alternative viewpoint and many just want to debate what was the best goal scored with the left foot from outside the penalty area on a rainy Tuesday with the wind out of the northwest. But if you're discriminating and patient there is more to learn on fans' websites than almost anywhere else I can think of.

[Tannochsidebear 2,405]

Thats a very negative attitude to take. The sort of attitude I hear in accusatory posts about the RST in fact. There is no point in the RST presenting new proposals to the club as they never do anything about them.

 

As far as I am aware there are 20 board positions within the RST. Every year there are at least one or two changes, 2008 being the big exception of course when about half the board changed.

 

I know your opinion about it being a non-democratic clique ran by one man (not the chairman either) is shared by many many bears, both from within and outwith the trust itself, but to admit defeat and turn your back on it is surely no way to get them to change their ways, if indeed those accusations are well-founded in the first place.

 

 

As for saying the list was all dead-ends, I have to say that sounds a little unresearched and out of date. Whilst not over-confident that many of these organisations will achieve their goals, I would say that they are better run and organised now than they have ever been, and a bit more savvy to fans desires than they used to be. My opinion of this has come from actual discussions with both the Association and the Assembly over the last year, and my opinion of both has changed for the better during this time. Also to be taken into consideration is the fact that we have a new chairman who hopefully will want input from these organisations.

 

Dont get me wrong, I am not knocking the message boards as a valuable discussion forum and for great ideas to be banded about within them, but the drawback is that there is nowhere for that debate to go unless it is via one of the organisations I mentioned. Discussing the actual matches is great and is what most of us like doing best, but when the debate changes to the running of the club, that is when bears with some great ideas and who feel passionately about such matters need to get involved and not just shout from the sidelines.

 

I would respectfully suggest that if you are seriously wanting to make things happen, you ditch the "it'll never change" attitude and get stuck into whatever organisation you choose.

 

As you say, you know how the RST AGM works, and you will therefore know that you are very able to put your hand up and raise an issue that you want discussed, and see what the membership in attendance feel about it. If they are in agreement with you, you easily get a policy either adopted or changed. If not, you have to accept the democratic process and understand your view might be a minority one.

 

I have never been a board member of the RST, nor have I known any of them outside of meeting them at RST functions, but I have attended the meetings, and have put my hand up and got things discussed, sometimes resulting in policy, sometimes not.

 

I have been to meetings of the Assembly and the Association over the years as well, and a similar democratic process appears to be in place. I attend my RSC meetings every month and hear items from the floor get passed or outvoted depending on the democratic vote.

 

With the greatest respect, you and I are never going to get anything changed at our club by just sitting in front of the computer having a wee chat about a particular topic, are we?

[Union City Blue 0]

The RST, that representer of almost no one at all, has been busy re-inventing itself. Like that other mythological fella the phoenix, a new website has risen from the ashes of theold and a reshuffled board of deflectors has been 'created'.

 

The new website still doesn't have a forum for its members, although there may be too few of those now to start a conversation let alone a forum.

 

As for the board of deflectors, out goes David Edgar, Fraser Martin, Graeme Hanna, who join the recently departed John Gilligan on the growing list of ex-deflectors. In come four more unelected souls to do the master's bidding and ensure the upcoming AGM in another suitably quiet affair.

 

You have to wonder why they bother any more. No one else does.

 

Alright guys.

 

I'm one of the two (not four btw) unsuspecting souls who will be formally joining the RST board at the AGM so I thought I'd stand up and say hello.

 

I intend to do my own bidding and hopefully make a positive contribution to the Trust and ultimately to Rangers FC via our loyal supporters.

 

Cheers!

 

:spl:

[bmck 117]

welcome union_city_blue. i'm not quite as cynical as maineflyer, but for me the RST entirely lost its integrity in the way it dealt with the resignations last year. nothing subsequently has convinced me that anything has changed. that said, i believe in democratic supporter representation, and the more positive contributions on all fronts the better. best of luck!

[Union City Blue 0]

welcome union_city_blue. i'm not quite as cynical as maineflyer, but for me the RST entirely lost its integrity in the way it dealt with the resignations last year. nothing subsequently has convinced me that anything has changed. that said, i believe in democratic supporter representation, and the more positive contributions on all fronts the better. best of luck!

 

Thanks mate.

 

I'd like to think that with the passage of time and the various comings & goings now, that everyone can begin to put things behind them and see if we can move into a new phase. Either way, I wasn't involved previously so I'm not gonna be carrying all that around with me.

 

There's lots going on, there's lots to talk about and there's lots to be done!

 

Here's to the Rangers!