TLIO: re-foundation, money, and ethics-Dave Bang's post.

[david bangs]

I expected an outburst such as this from Gill.

I will make some of the necessary corrections, at this stage.

I did not "bludgeon my way into the chair". I proposed myself as chair, and, 
after discussion (and early dissent from Gill - and perhaps Simon ?) was 
finally elected to the chair by consensus.

I did, of course, explain that I would intervene in the debate...in the 
manner in which a chair does...by asking that someone (Mark B) take over the 
chair from me whilst I spoke.

I made a long and passionate intervention at the end of the first half of 
the meeting (and talked about TLIO's money and ethics in that intervention), 
and, as a result, Gill and Simon proposed, after the break, that I be asked 
to stand down, as I was too emotionally close to the issues (paraphrase). I 
asked for a vote, and only two (I think) voted for me to continue as chair. 
I therefore stood down for the meeting's second half and Joyce took over as 
chair.

I remember no cheer for the core group's disposal of funds. There was no 
Finance or Treasurer's Report on the agenda Mark presented to us for the 
meeting, and there was no ordered discussion of the issue. There was no vote 
on the issue, or proposal for one. I have never seen a balance sheet or 
formal finance report vis a vis TLIO's finances and therefore have only a 
cobbled-together sense of what has gone on.

The successor leadership of TLIO have got to do better than that.

I used the non-payment of the Defend Council Housing £50 affiliation fee by 
the core group (after it had been agreed by acclaim at the first of the two 
Gathering plenaries in October 2011) only as a fine illustration of the lack 
of wider accountability of the core group. I did not "wait 14 months to ask 
for it"...Indeed, I  have asked for it to be paid repeatedly over the past 
13 months, both privately to Mark, as Treasurer, and on the TLIO and 
Diggers350 lists. It is a measure of Gill's politics that she did not 
remember that request.

...And I made a special point of thanking Simon for his donation of the DCH 
affiliation fee at the meeting when it re-convened after its break. It was a 
very kind gesture by him.

Dave Bangs

P.S.  FASHION ITEM - my  trousers were an unwashed  pair of cotton slacks 
that rode way above my ankles...I am glad they still passed muster...



----- Original Message ----- 
From: ""Gill Barron"" <gill at ipaint.org.uk>
To: <dave.bangs at virgin.net>
Cc: <TheLandIsOurs at yahoogroups.com>; <diggers350 at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 1:47 AM
Subject: Re: TLIO: re-foundation, money, and ethics-Dave Bang's post.


Pay no attention to this nonsense. Dave Bangs is talking through his hat
(I'm being polite)

After he had  bludgeoned his way into the chair, [At the TLIO open meeting
on Sat Dec 1st, Cock Tavern London] and then repeatedly
intervened in the debate in a highly emotive way, and banged on
irrelevantly about his hobby-horses, the meeting agreed to make him stand
down as chair, and he was replaced after the break by the able Joyce
Hambling.

He also categorically stated that he wasn't interested in, and had no time
for, any further committee-type involvement in TLIO. So what's he up to now?

MONEY:
As for the stuff about TLIO's dispersal of funds, it is clear to all - and
raised a cheer at the meeting - that
the money was given to TLIO to be USED, not to malinger in a bank account.
All the projects supported have been effective in furthering TLIO's aims, As
an (unpaid) editor of The Land magazine, and co-worker on the cadastral
mapping
project, as well as the designer/organiser/maker of the TLIO yurt, I can
speak on this with some authority.

Dave's axe to grind, articulated at the meeting by an (almost) unstoppable
whinge, was that his pet project, Defend Council Housing, was allocated an
affiliation fee of fifty quid at the October 2011 TLIO gathering, but as
this wasn't minuted, it somehow failed to be paid. Well - why did it take
him 14 months to ask for it? Why wait to make a big dramatic issue of it at
a
public meeting? Simon (Fairlie) just bunged him £50 cash to
shut him up. Simple.

In my considered opinion, a great deal of Dave Bangs's  post is misinformed,
and wilfully misleading.  He has a history on the TLIO threads of deliberate
and non-productive wind-ups. His agenda is unclear. He is in no position to
try to impugn other people's ethics.

I vote (if voting is still possible) as a member of the "core group" ie the
TLIO de facto working group / executive, and as someone who has put in a
frankly immense amount of unpaid work on TLIO-connected projects, that we
henceforth sack Dave Bangs. He is nothing but a big mouth, in rather
expensive-looking trousers.

Gill Barron.

on 4/12/12 10:34 PM, david bangs <dave.bangs at virgin.net> wrote:

> The Land Is Ours
>
> Re-foundation, money and ethics
>
>
>
> Dave Bangs, 3rd December 2012
>
>
>
> The re-foundation meeting of The Land Is Ours on 1st December was a
success.
> Twenty people attended from across the country (from Plymouth, Hereford,
> Dorset, Bristol, as well as a strong London contingent) with a wide range
of
> land-based concerns.
>
>
>
> The election of an eight strong steering committee to consolidate this
> re-foundation marked a clean democratic departure from the old closed core
> group 'leadership'.
>
>
>
> It was a last-gasp move. The old core group had been stifling TLIO's
> re-emergence and contained people who had no faith in, or commitment to,
its
> revival.
>
>
>
> It is over a year now, since TLIO's exhilarating Gathering in October
2011.
> That Gathering was the first the organisation had had for 10 years, and
was
> marked by an exciting inter-generational revival, and the presence of folk
> from many campaigning sectors.
>
>
>
> That Gathering had been fatally flawed, however, by its failure to address
> the organisational questions that needed to be answered...and, in the
> aftermath of the Gathering, this flaw turned into a full-scale disaster.
>
>
>
> The price that TLIO has paid for its failure to take democratic
functioning
> seriously has been the loss of the great majority of the remaining
> uncommitted funds of the organisation via a last-ditch gifting away of its
> monies by the core group - a disaster which made crystal clear how
political
> decline can go hand in hand with ethical decline.
>
>
>
> For a whole further year the do-nothing core group, which had not met for
> nearly two years, resisted meeting for month after month. When it finally
> met, a few weeks ago, all of its members present, except Mark Brown,
stated
> that they wished to resign.
>
>
>
> This did not prevent them, however, from off-loading almost all of the
> uncommitted funds (based largely on a £38,000 bequest made circa 2007) of
> the organisation to their pet projects. At the end of that carve-up they
> graciously left a mere £2000 cash (so it was reported) for the on-going
> needs of a re-founded TLIO. About £8,750 had been gifted away, if my
> information is correct (including a sum of £500 to the Runnymede 'diggers'
> which did not even have the consent of the core group at the time, but
which
> they left unchallenged).
>
>
>
> These last ditch disposals consisted of gifts to the Advisory Service for
> Squatters (ASS), the British version of Via Campesina (not yet properly in
> existence, I understand), 'The Land' magazine, the Runnymede 'diggers'
> encampment, and Chapter7 for a 'cadastral' land ownership mapping project.
> (A further £10,000 remains on the books from a loan to a tiny eco-housing
> initiative. The full repayment of that loan is not guaranteed, for it
> depends upon this project's land retaining its value. If the project do
not
> get planning permission they will be unable to repay all the loan because
of
> the reduced value of their land asset, I was told).
>
>
>
> -         It did not seem to occur to the members of the core group that
> their role was to steward the funds intact until a proper, democratic
> re-founded TLIO could take fiscal responsibility for them.
>
>
>
> -         It did not seem to occur to the core group that they lacked any
> democratic legitimacy for these disposals, or that the fact that two
members
> of the core group had projects which were beneficiaries of the funding
(The
> Land magazine and the mapping project) was doubly ethically dubious.
>
>
>
> -         It did not seem to occur to the core group that a re-founded
TLIO
> would need all the funds it could get to be effective in work which has a
> widely dispersed geographical reach across the country - and
internationally
> - and in which many of its supporters will lack the means even to travel
> across the country to meetings and events, leave alone buy campaigning
> equipment, pay legal costs and so on.
>
>
>
> Four points were made at the December 1st re-foundation meeting (in
> conversation, or in the full meeting) in justification of these
disposals...
>
>
>
> ONE (paraphrase) was that these "were all good causes that we support and
> that need the money".
>
>
>
> ...But the judgement on whether these were good causes was a matter for a
> democratised TLIO to decide, not a by-invite-only rump of do-nothings
who'd
> long wanted out.
>
>
>
> TWO was that "this money needed to be spent".
>
>
>
> ..A nonsensical argument. There was absolutely no imperative to dispose of
> the funds before a new - democratic - leadership was in place.
>
>
>
> THREE was that "nobody was asking for the funds" (in the last few years).
>
>
>
> ...If they really believed this argument they would have issued a formal
> call to the TLIO network for applicants for grant aid...and explained to
> them that they wished to off-load their funds.  In any case, this argument
> was no excuse for taking the money for their own projects.
>
>
>
> FOUR was that "it wasn't very much money anyway".
>
>
>
> ...But if it wasn't very much money then it was doubly important that it
be
> preserved as the dowry for the newly re-formed TLIO...and if it wasn't
very
> much money then what was the urgency in disposing of it ??
>
>
>
> There is only one ethical way to deal with this maladministration.
>
>
>
> The new TLIO steering committee should explain to all the gift recipients
> that there has been a failure of procedure, and ask them, in friendship,
to
> return the financial gifts...and apologise to them for the mistake made by
> their predecessors.
>
>
>
> If any of these gifts are still not complete then they should be cancelled
> and the money considered as part of the TLIO's property.
>
>
>
> It may be embarrassing to ask for the return of these monies, but
> embarrassment is better than undeserved penury as the only dowry TLIO is
to
> receive from the old core group...
>
>
>
> Dave Bangs
>
>
>
>
>