Fans take important step towards creation of a Supporters' Trust at Bolton

Fans take important step towards creation of a Supporters' Trust at Bolton Wanderers

Wanderers supporters will take an important first step towards creating a Supporters’ Trust this weekend.

A private meeting will be held on Saturday morning with Supporters Direct to establish what needs to be done to create an independent organisation to strengthen the voice for fans in the Whites’ future.

It is hoped that a Wanderers Supporters’ Trust can quickly work within the structure of the club regardless of whether the ownership issue is solved in the short or longer term.

Source

What will they do, and what will it entail I wonder ? 
Either way, if I can join, I will. The latest goings-on have been a fiasco from the supporters point of view, and having no input, or being given any information, has been very frustrating.

There is only strength in numbers, my suggestion would be that if you buy a season ticket you are automatically enrolled unless you specifically opt out, non season ticket holders of course would pay a separate membership fee.

NickFazer wrote:There is only strength in numbers, my suggestion would be that if you buy a season ticket you are automatically enrolled unless you specifically opt out, non season ticket holders of course would pay a separate membership fee.

I don't think you could legally do that with an independent group not attached to the club but it's a nice idea Nick. Sadly I suspect even if it were possible the club would fail to pay the subs from ST sales to the trust, especially if Disley is involved. He's very good at taking other people's money and scarpering before his cheque bounces.

If you're going to have an independent Supporter's Group then it would have to be completely independent and self funding or it would be worthless anyway. If they genuinely do form one I will certainly join but right now I'm not sure we have enough fans who would to make such an entity viable.

A bit of background to this supporters Trust -

This was posted today on TW -

Hey fellow Wanderers.
Hopefully you've heard us mentioned, if not this post will explain things. Most important of all we are not trying to compete with this forum or any other Bolton sites.

http://www.bwfcst.co.uk/


Goals
1) We aim to be independent of the club, but may require help initially to get started (eg meeting space)
2) We want to become the glue that joins all fans together
3) We want to have close ties to all web forums & fans on social media [Thanks for not bothering to contact us then - or most other of the BWFC forums either! - Sluffy]

Timeline
Today: We are working as fast as possible to create a Supporters Trust for Wanderers fans. We currently have a working group of 8 volunteers
Weekend: Most of the founders will be having a private meeting with Supporters Direct
Next Week: Everything will become public & we'll start to arrange a public meeting

Founders
1) We want to be anonymous for the moment to prevent any issues related to previous spats etc
2) Most of us didn't already know each other. Only a love for BWFC binds us together
3) We contain a qualified insolvency practitioner & looking for legal expert with experience of Supporters Trusts
4) There will be elections so if you don't like the founders that shouldn't be a reason to dismiss us

If you feel you can help then get in touch via the website




Later on in reply to a post from the lead mod (Carlos) on ww - saying if Chris Manning / Batman / Lion of Vienna (franchise) owner was part of it... -

Carlos, on 18 Dec 2015 - 11:02 AM, said:


Any ideas who's behind the anonymous BWFC Supporters Trust? I suspect it's the LoV crew, in which case I'm out, obvs.




In your position I'd be just as cynical as you.

I am 1 of 8 co founders. Another founder is a qualified insolvency practitioner & we have political representation too.

Yes one of the co founders is from LoV but this isn't about him and he knows it.  

We need all forums to work together on this if you want the best for the club. We're building support with over 100 fans submitting their details just this morning.

Hopefully we can roll out our secret weapon tomorrow.




Carlos replied -


Founders != leaders


Thanks. I had hoped that someone would come forward, and I wish you all the best. But you've already addressed my issue with the LoV crew, like I said, I'm out. In fact, I'd go further and say with their involvement I'd oppose you.

You can't have someone who is all about self-promotion and expect something different from them. This is my own opinion, not that of WW, of course.

I suspect my friend Mr Peacock is involved. He gets my backing. But not with the LoV bloke.






My view - Peacock is almost certainly Chris Peacock who is closely linked with the people behind the Mavis forum who have tried in the past to takeover the Bolton Wanderers Supporters Trust.

They were kicked out!

Having had experience with 'Batman' (banned and blocked from a number of forums and twitter accounts) and those behind the Mavies forum, I certainly would steer way clear of them - but that is my personal opinion and not those of this site.




Later posts on ww include these -

I'm assuming that the point of the supporters trust is to be offered to purchase the club if it enters administration.

And as the administrators are bound to speak to the (one and only?) supporters trust within the mandatory 21 day marketing period, I assume the first objective of the self appointed trust will be to appoint trustees, with none of the founders/organisers guarenteed to be appointed.

If not, then I see it as nothing more than self promotion, and for that reason I am out.


and

If Chris Manning is involved then the others must include Chris Amos, Natasha Whittam and Keyser Soze?


(The last one made me chuckle!)

It's all too secretive from the start. They're Kangaroo court set up to do what exactly? There are 15000 fans go to each home game. How many of these know about this "Group"? We need a lot more info to make a decision.

Bollotom2014 wrote:It's all too secretive from the start. They're Kangaroo court set up to do what exactly? There are 15000 fans go to each home game. How many of these know about this "Group"? We need a lot more info to make a decision.

Let hear what they have to say- and if they're a bunch of charlatans the we can give them a wide berth. But if they have something to say that's worth listening to, then lets hear it and then make a judgement. It won't cost us a penny if they're not to our liking

never really bothered with the Lion of Vienna site, is this fella they mention as bad as he seems?

Not exactly a glorious start is it ?

"We want to be anonymous for the moment to prevent any issues related to previous spats etc."

Doesn't inspire confidence, if were going to start in-fighting from day 1

Norpig wrote:never really bothered with the Lion of Vienna site, is this fella they mention as bad as he seems?

Just depends if he is your cup of tea or not really.

He is an estate agent - that may or may not be of any relevance.

He spends his life on social media - I don't know how he fits in his job and his family life with that but I guess he must get the results they want out of him.

He is very funny at times and I would have loved to get him involved in the forums I've been on - he would have been high maintenance but probably worth the effort - but he chose to believe other people's opinion of me and basically is extremely abusive of me on the forums.

He is vastly abusive to others also and has been banned by other forums and many twitter accounts - he is proud of the fact too and boasts about it.

He's certainly passionate about the club - he is usually the first to lead protests to get a number of our past managers sacked.

For a grown man with family responsibility's, if he is not on his social media he is playing football manager and is the local contributor to the game site with all the rankings and values of our clubs players.

In my opinion he's not grown up - he acts and behaves immaturely to his stage in life - but no doubt he has much harsher criticisms of me.

He seems popular enough in a laddish/loutish sort of way and probably has many redeeming qualities that I am not aware of.

He certainly isn't my cup of tea though.

Good god. I wouldn't know where to find the time to do all that!

Batman? Kane57?

Chris peacock the mp? I went to school with him. Was in my year. That would be enough for me to be out.

Now the club can lie straight to your face instead of bogus stories in the BEN.

I propose Nat as first president .....can I get a second ?

They asked us directly (via Twitter) @BoltonNuts would you like us to add your details to the website? Will you be able to promote our news as we get it?

I said to add our site and I would promote any relevant news

I heard a couple of these clowns on the phone-in on GMR last week and quite frankly, it was embarrassing.

They sounded like a desperate, naive children.

This entire enterprise smacks of self-promotion to me - "I'm a bigger Bolton fan than you" sort of thing.

The whole thing's a waste of time and it'll just be used by certain individuals to try and achieve their 15 minutes of fame.

Load of bollocks.

I think to be fair to all though, even though I (and one or two other since) have expressed our personal opinions of some of those 'founders' of the Supporters Trust, we will let people know whatever information they pass on to us (via the same media they sent it to us), nor have any problems with anyone posting on the forum any news that they have of the ST.

The idea of the clubs supporters being more involved in the future of the club is a fantastic idea in principle despite whatever some of us feel about the individuals involved in trying to establish the ST.






Johnny in answer to your question above - yes, same person.

Yeah, but does anybody think they'll be privy to any serious discussions about the club's running and direction?

Will they bollocks.

It'll be like one of those Employee Forum Action Groups you get in companies with no union representation.

The people in charge will let them in for a meeting once a month, listen to their naive and unrealistic demands, smile, nod, take notes and then all have a good laugh once they've gone home as they rip up the minutes and throw them in the bin.

I know - I've done it myself.

It plays to their ego, makes 'em feel important and keeps 'em in check.

Pointless shit.

Maybe so and some of the people clearly behind this have been relentlessly, personally abusive to me on the various forums for several years now; ridiculed our site and the Nuts members; possibly even have hand in trying to sabotage our site in its very early days and still to this day pretend that the Nuts forum does not exist by censoring mention of our name on their respective forums - all true stories - BUT to react to them as they have to Nuts and myself, simply brings us down to their low level.

I've never been a great one for censorship and I believe that people should make their own minds up about things, even if they end up being on the opposite side of the fence to how I view things, so I think it is the right thing to do to pass on their message of starting up a ST and letting people decide themselves how much if anything they want to get involved with it.

A woman named Evelyn Beatrice Hall once wrote "I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it".  Now I'm certainly not going to offer to die for the ST and I may be very cautious of some of their founder members and their possible own agendas but I will do the right thing by them until they give us cause for anything other than that.

Seem fair to everybody?

why anyone would want these utter tugboats being involved in the running of the club is beyond me.