To be fair Razz, you are fighting apathy as well amongst 99% of our supporter base. The problem is that for the last 20 years its always the same old familiar faces on "supporters bodies". Thats why you end up with Fans Directors who only polled 460 votes. The best thing to do surely would be to amalgamate every single committee known to Charlton man- at last count there were about 300 of them, and put your name in a hat along with that of Jean Huelin and Ben Hayes. Give the hat a good shake and see what you come out with. Then rotate the "Presidency" between the three of you for the next 20 years, or until one of you falls off the perch. Did you know that Vladamir Putin modelled his own political career on the "Charlton Fan Presidency Model" ? Every few years he stands for President, when his term is up he stands for Prime Minister, and then repeats the process ad infinitum. Its brilliant. He gets about 460 genuine votes as well.
Why is the modern way a Supporters Trust? What was wrong with the old Supporters Club? It seems to me a Supporters Trust is a far more political animal than a Supporters Club and that may be (with their middle class nature) one of the problems Raz. We have splinter organisations NW Kent Supporters Club, Bromley SC, Eltham SC but we do not seem to have an overarching supporters organisation which to me seems a issue and disadvantage.
two very interesting comments it is my understanding that CASC is primarily about transport and socials by and large CAS Trust doesn't do that stuff. Nor are the branches in conflict with one another, they all sit on the fans forum as do we, but that doesn't necessarily mean conflict, in fact it works quite well Also as I understand it, and I am not someone who has been doing this stuff for years as you or someone else put it, i helped run City Addicks having revived it once, but it was never formal, CASC never was that political when main branch existed, but my knowledge is fairly grey on this. I think what is important is to observe that all these groups can be complimentary, regionalised, and not in conflict. Its not my making merely what is. What CAS Trust focusses on primarily is what some people call political, what we call ensuring long term survival of CAFC if we can help that, rather than purely a speculators toy. Whatever you think of that, that is the motivation. We channel volunteer resources from expertise in certain fields to simple leafleting etc, to the benefit of the club. That includes a wide variety of things, one of which is helping the regional branches get new members, helping Valley gold get a website for free, and other technical resources and advice, another branch to ask what they think of us is East Kent; and in other areas run a trust which looks at things like ACV. I don't personally see it as a class thing but inevitably there if you have to draw a distinction then for want of a better word call it a 'political' for the trust, social and travel for the confederal supporters groups. It's easy to draw a negative about it and perhaps if you were starting again you might do it differently, but I think it works well as it allows a number of talents to all contribute. We are all on the same side in reality, we all love our club, and some want to help in whatever capacity
I must say I have enjoyed hearing what Razz has had to say. Will I be banished my fellow Not606er's ?
I kinda like what Bernie is trying to achieve but the real danger is that any voting and all the power base over moving seems be a Trust/CL exclusive. The temptation to abuse that power, given the egos involved, must be examined closely, a football club is far too valuable to hand over to a load of cardigans with a complete set of valley programmes from 1977. If you look at the way some of the bovril revolutionaries attack each other for a share of the limelight, on threads over on CL, you would not want these people in charge of flushing a bog, let alone running a football club.
I think Raz was winning but then Ben threw in one good post and the mods stepped in and gave the thread to Ben............ you could hear the booooooooing from the BBC website
