Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS

[John¹]

On Monday 02 March 2009 21:56:48 Adam Bower wrote:
> Please elaborate on this, I am very interested to hear who you think
> would have any power to compel me to answer to them and for what
> reasons.
>
Go to a library, find a book on the law of meetings, when AFFS was set up, 
and its rules were being adapted from a set of model rules, I think the 
title of the book that I and others borrowed had the title, "The Law of 
Meetings", due to Sedition, Riot, public order and the American War of 
Independence, a huge body of law, civil and criminal has evolved around 
meetings, their conduct, and the bodies that hold them. Look up the 
section that covers the conduct of the business of an association, the 
members access to minutes, membership, expulsion, and most importantly who 
it is that carries the responsibility when things go wrong. It is the 
members of the Committee, or whatever title the decision making body has! 
That is why bigger associations indemnify the members of their committee, 
against loss if they make the wrong decision, as the members can recover 
any losses from them, separately and severally, i.e. if the members need 
£1,000,000.00 repaid to them because the committee didn't spend it in a 
proper way, then if one member has more money than the others, the money 
can be recovered unevenly, taking everything from the poorer members, and 
the balance from the one who was a multi millionaire, or of course the 
other way round, taking all the money from the multi millionaire, as the 
others have no assets.

As I remember it the most common cases arise around the misuse of the 
associations funds, and expulsion, (Young v The Imperial Ladies Club?), a 
matter concerning what the Committee had the right to do, which seems to 
be applicable here, and it revolved around a lack of notice being given to 
someone who had had their membership revoked. The precedent should be easy 
enough to find.

In the case of the AFFS, we are looking at a matter which seems to 
escalated quite quickly over a weekend with those who were involved, 
getting quite heated because they are being asked to explain their past 
actions or neglect, when I set out to find out what had happened in order 
to make sure that any new rules made the workings of any revived body 
easier.    

For most of the small associations that exist there are no problems, and 
the committee members do not realise that they have such onerous 
responsibilities, However when things do go wrong, as in this case, in 
particular with your making remarks such as " you have only acted in a 
manner that would suggest you wish to carry out a witch hunt", "you can 
ask these questions until the heat death of the universe", "It's because 
you have no interest in doing anything with what is left of AFFS right 
now", " anything else will be ignored if coming from John Seago", it does 
tend make a bad situation worse. But as I have pointed matters escalate 
quite quickly, even when no conflict existed in the first place. However 
you should be aware that failing to adhere to the Constitution, or even 
simply making mistakes, leaves all the Committee, (and as I understand 
even those who were not present when the mistake was made, responsible, 
and liable).

Now I am not saying that matters will come to that point, but others have 
been making statements to this list concerning the 'legal' position of the 
AFFS, its members, their membership, the loss of their membership, etc., 
etc., and from what I remember of the case that I was involved in it 
included all the members of the Committee at the time of the action, even 
those who had not been at the meeting that took the action, (see the 
exchange of messages between myself an Jason Clifford).

If you are concerned, I will give you the same advice I gave him, see a 
solicitor, because the committee in question included you, and as it is 
not clear what it did when and why, you are included. But again as I said 
don't take my advice on this matter, I was only ever involved in one case, 
on the winning side, go and see a solicitor, as I am not one, and even if 
I was my opinion would not be free.

I think that I have been quite 'elaborate' enough above 

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