PS apologies in advance for the long post, just typed it and thought "****, should put a disclaimer at the start!". Feel free to ignore it, it's not very good anyway!!
While I'm on and struggling to sleep, I just thought I'd give a reply to this one!
When questions are asked it's certainly ideal if the asker has a potential solution. Not always easy though. For example one of the main things people contact me about (and one of the reasons why it's good to have a group like rawa who can contact the club) is when they try to get in touch with Chris Waters and don't hear back because he's got too many other queries. Where there's urgent things (like the lads who contacted me 2 days before the derby because they had bought their seats but the club had covered them up with the segregation, which affected around 300 fans) I can reach out to the club and try to help them get an answer (in this case they moved the segregation and all was well).
The solution is pretty obvious, have more than one person to take supporter concerns, given the number of fans we have. But of course that ultimately comes down to budget and resource so we could suggest it, but it's not any use unless the club are happy to implement.
In terms of solutions one thing I'd like to propose at the meeting is the idea of getting a working group(s) set up for some of the off field stuff. There isn't time in the meeting to bring up everything, discuss it in detail and get a resolution, and then you wait months for the next one.
Take BCB and hospitality. A few people have said they were unhappy in the BCB even prior to the mags match. Simple things like the food being taken away, the replacement "funky street food" that you could purchase now just being pies from the concourse, not being able to go to Quinns bar after the match like they could before.
Not necessarily major stuff, but some might stop going if they don't think it's good value. So I'd like to see the club get people together. Not just the same old faces that attend the meetings, but invite some fans in those areas to discuss the issues, say what works, what doesn't, what they'd like to see by way of improvement. One rep from the club (doesn't have to be someone senior), a few affected supporters. The ideas could be costed up either there and then or the club could do it after. Then elements could be approved (presumably by a COO with budget from the owners) and genuine improvements could be announced. Some of which wouldn't cost a penny, others would pay for themselves. Cost of living is a huge thing at the minute, rightly so, but equally some would be prepared to pay a bit more if the service was good enough, so it could help slightly boost revenue. The owner doesn't need to know or address the nitty gritty, just commit to people finding time to discuss issues with fans to hopefully improve things.
In terms of asking questions, rawa don't actually claim to be the voice of all sunderland fans (no one could be). All they claim to do is try to represent their members. So aye, raising questions at open meetings or via email etc is the best way to submit one. Equally rawa wouldn't do anything major (like plan protests or owt) without polling the membership, to ensure they're behind it. This is where they differ from fanzine and the likes, if a few lads running WMS, RR or whatever wanted to kick off and start a KLD out protest they could just do it tomorrow. RAWA wouldn't.
In practice though, anyone can raise a question for consideration without being a member. I'll try and pop on here before meetings to take any questions from people on here, members or not, and I do the same on the smb. Even if people think rawa are a bag of ****e I'll still happily raise a query for them
I appreciate the response. I certainly didnt mean it to sound as if I was having a go so hopefully it did not come across that way.
I think I am probably more frustrated at some of the fans proposals and suggestions which are to be honset infantile.
Communication is a massive tool in the workplace and hopefully KLD can placate quite a few with his answer although some of our "fans" only live to moan.
