Post by nurseratched on Aug 27, 2014 16:46:11 GMT
This fantastic post was put up by sw18gas on the IF. Great idea.
"I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the future of the club is on a knife edge. Completing the sale of the Mem to Sainsbury’s is crucial to us having a club to support in the years to come. But we can do something positive to help – so please I urge you to read on.
I read the paper yesterday with dismay like everyone else. But I then went further and read the writ – and a few things became more clear (have a read of it – it’s written in plain English and is very easy to follow and tells quite a story). The first is that by no means is everything lost. We have a binding contract being held up by one planning condition, which has a decent chance of being overturned. If this happens then it is hard to see how anyone – even one of the biggest corporates in the land – wouldn’t be forced to pay up at the pre-agreed price.
The second thing is that the club have done everything they can and seem to have done things pretty well confronted with a very difficult situation. They have even got Sainsbury’s to blink first, forcing them to submit an appeal on the planning condition that they didn’t want to. I will leave aside what Higgs has said publicly – and I know many feel “betrayed” that he has not been open about the behind the scenes battles. But just maybe he has had advice that any public comment can only harm our cause.
But most of all, and what I really want to say is, the bad guys in this are Sainsbury’s. Their tactics appear to have been to delay, muddy the waters, attempt to breach contractual obligations and so on – all presumably on the basis that they have way more muscle than a small cash strapped community business (which is what Rovers is). They made a commitment a few years ago, and on the basis of that commitment a huge amount of time, effort and expense has been put in to the UWE project by the football club and – think about this – many readers of this forum like you and me and hundreds, even thousands of people. Now they want to renege on that commitment on the basis of technicalities. And they are happy to force the small community business to run up yet more massive costs.
This should make you very angry. It makes me very angry. So, what can we do?
Well, there are a lot of us. Tens of thousands of people have Rovers close to their hearts. We can make a lot of noise about it. Big corporations don’t like reputational damage. They don’t like lost revenue. Imagine for a moment what a coordinated, sustained protest from every Rovers fan could look like? Boycott their stores, mount a very loud social media campaign, picket their stores, get our MPs to speak out again, and so on. You think it would make no difference? I don’t know…. I think just maybe it might. Sainsbury’s have to constantly weigh up whether to continue this battle too, as they incur their own costs, the risk of having to meet our costs too (as per the writ) and a storm of bad publicity is one more thing that could help tip the balance.
So now is the time to unite like never before. BRISA is an ideal vehicle to mobilise us, as is the supporters club. We can all do our bit. This is so important. Don’t let angst at our board distract us from who we should really be angry with and don’t let it divide us to the point where we stand by and do nothing to help at the most critical time in our history.
Up the Gas."
www.gasheads.org/thread/1143/football-club
"I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the future of the club is on a knife edge. Completing the sale of the Mem to Sainsbury’s is crucial to us having a club to support in the years to come. But we can do something positive to help – so please I urge you to read on.
I read the paper yesterday with dismay like everyone else. But I then went further and read the writ – and a few things became more clear (have a read of it – it’s written in plain English and is very easy to follow and tells quite a story). The first is that by no means is everything lost. We have a binding contract being held up by one planning condition, which has a decent chance of being overturned. If this happens then it is hard to see how anyone – even one of the biggest corporates in the land – wouldn’t be forced to pay up at the pre-agreed price.
The second thing is that the club have done everything they can and seem to have done things pretty well confronted with a very difficult situation. They have even got Sainsbury’s to blink first, forcing them to submit an appeal on the planning condition that they didn’t want to. I will leave aside what Higgs has said publicly – and I know many feel “betrayed” that he has not been open about the behind the scenes battles. But just maybe he has had advice that any public comment can only harm our cause.
But most of all, and what I really want to say is, the bad guys in this are Sainsbury’s. Their tactics appear to have been to delay, muddy the waters, attempt to breach contractual obligations and so on – all presumably on the basis that they have way more muscle than a small cash strapped community business (which is what Rovers is). They made a commitment a few years ago, and on the basis of that commitment a huge amount of time, effort and expense has been put in to the UWE project by the football club and – think about this – many readers of this forum like you and me and hundreds, even thousands of people. Now they want to renege on that commitment on the basis of technicalities. And they are happy to force the small community business to run up yet more massive costs.
This should make you very angry. It makes me very angry. So, what can we do?
Well, there are a lot of us. Tens of thousands of people have Rovers close to their hearts. We can make a lot of noise about it. Big corporations don’t like reputational damage. They don’t like lost revenue. Imagine for a moment what a coordinated, sustained protest from every Rovers fan could look like? Boycott their stores, mount a very loud social media campaign, picket their stores, get our MPs to speak out again, and so on. You think it would make no difference? I don’t know…. I think just maybe it might. Sainsbury’s have to constantly weigh up whether to continue this battle too, as they incur their own costs, the risk of having to meet our costs too (as per the writ) and a storm of bad publicity is one more thing that could help tip the balance.
So now is the time to unite like never before. BRISA is an ideal vehicle to mobilise us, as is the supporters club. We can all do our bit. This is so important. Don’t let angst at our board distract us from who we should really be angry with and don’t let it divide us to the point where we stand by and do nothing to help at the most critical time in our history.
Up the Gas."
www.gasheads.org/thread/1143/football-club
