Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: AFFS

[John¹]

address@hidden, wrote, and up to a point I agree with his 
sentiment:

> To be honest the biggest turn off for me about the whole AFFS is all
> the nit-picking pedantry about procedure and constitutions. It's worse
> than working for the government :-)
>
However "nit-picking pedantry about procedure and constitutions", is 
necessary to protect assets and monies held by unincorporated 
associations, and is unfortunately a fact of life in that milieu.

It now Monday morning, and every one has had a chance to let of steam. I 
wished to know what went wrong, in order that, as I appear to be the 
remaining member, I could take whatever actions were possible to restart 
the AFFS, and prevent the same mistakes re-occurring.

I, having read the replies to my initial enquires have come to the 
conclusion that from its foundation until some point between early 2005 and 
mid 2006 the AFFS ran as a functioning association, it then ceased to 
operate, no one seems prepared to admit to being the one of group that let 
it collapse but at some point those holding office seem to have neglected 
to hold meetings or elections, and just walked away and left the AFFS to 
its fate. I felt when I suspected that this had been the case, and still 
do, that they had a duty to at least admit to that fact, and explain their 
reasons for the actions that they took, or neglected to take, in order 
that if it should be possible to restart the AFFS, that the same failures 
would not be repeated. I am too old to bother about others bruised egos. So 
I will point out to those who are of the opinion that I have been 
abrasive, or "strident" that there has been an enormous amount of over 
defensive posturing by some of those involved, and I will repeat, at some 
point some of those involved just ignored, and abandoned, the 
responsibilities, that by standing for election they had sought.
 

However, as Adam Bower wrote,
> I would suggest you do something more productive with your time...
albeit some three days after I had already started the process,
here is what I propose to do, I will in consultation, (if they are 
willing to re-involve themselves with the AFFS as it now stands), with some 
of the former members the AFFS, see if there is a simpler more flexible 
set of rules that might be adopted, investigate the possibility of 
reinstating into membership the previous members at no initial cost to 
them until such time as it appears that the AFFS might once again be a 
viable body, and at the same time investigate, hopefully with the help of 
Mark Ray, (in view of his remarks made on Friday,
 > I often meet a regional manager (or something like that) of the bank.
> If you want, I'll ask him to manage whatever change to the account is
> wanted, but I really don't understand why this account is such trouble
> when I've done similar signatory and address changes on other accounts
> at the same bank without problem.
the possibility of getting the bank account made available to 
the restarted AFFS, I would have thought that having read the comments of 
some, that the AFFS tried to do too much, on too wide a front, and that 
perhaps those that could afford it might also wish to look at Fellowship 
of the FSFE as well as membership of a restarted AFFS. 

I will be coming down into England during the middle of May, and also 
hopefully traveling back home via Wales, where I have others I wish to 
see. Hopefully I will be far enough forward at that point to meet those I 
need to, to get this process under way.

Please put any suggestions and comments you may have to this list, I will 
take note of them, although I may not reply to all or any of them.

-- 
John Seago
GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 http://counter.li.org/