Friday 9 March 2012

Dave has been fuming and growling all week about today's PNFS officers meeting. He wanted to demand all sorts of things - that the trustees keep to the accord of 10 February and let him resume work in the office and on the computer; that the trustees confine themselves to trusteeship and let the officers get on with running the Society; that Rogerson should face a challenge for chairmanship, etc. I told him to keep cool; to respond to but not initiate argument; and not to push himself forward for election or re-election (ie breaking his side of the pact) just or mainly as a way of getting back at Rogerson. He didn't promise.

He was home by 1.30pm.
'So what happened?'
'Nothing much.' Rogerson, smooth, suave and Teflon-coated, explained that as Dave would be leaving soon, there was no point in his resuming secretarial duties. Realising that arguing would get him nowhere, Dave did not persist. Rogerson and the chairmanship, ditto. It turned out that the officers had no appetite for running the Society and no wish for more frequent meetings. And absolutely no interest in seeing the dispute between DCB and CR resume.
'I told them that in my opinion the trustees had broken the terms of the accord, therefore I felt in no way bound by them, but for the sake of the Society I was resigning office anyway.' At which point David Bratt came and shook his hand.
'But it leaves me still annoyed. Because after all the effort Rik and I put into making their computer system work, they're letting it go to ruin. Rogerson has told people they don't need a complicated back-up system as long as they put their work on memory sticks. He told me he'd got a friend who was a computer engineer to look at it for free. I missed the chance to say "you get the advice you pay for." They simply don't realise that if the hard drive breaks down, they lose everything. Do I cause a fault and see what they do about it, or do I walk away and let them destroy my system?'
I said you walk away and let them stew. I also reminded him that having had to perform a massive climbdown over exonerating you, CR was likely to cling to whatever status he thought he had and to yield nothing more.
'Then he's won - he's succeeded in booting me out.'
'He hasn't won - he had to admit you were innocent and a fit and proper person after all. The officers know that, and next you can tell the members who come to the AGM.'
'They won't be interested.'
'The ones who matter will be. And the ones who came to the EGM and are aware of the dispute - they need to know the outcome. You can tell them you were completely exonerated but that you are resigning because the chairman has made it impossible for you to work with him.'
Dave grunted, but a bit less despondently this time.