Nic wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 11:27 pm
Gavin J Frankland wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 9:32 pm
Good question, to be honest I haven't really thought of an answer. But the reason why it was brought back to life was to have a change in the Scootering calendar. As I knew the history and what some original members told me I thought it would be a good idea to use the club again. It wasn't being used and hasn't been since 65 as a club. It's nice to see the badge being used again, some think not. I can't help that. There was never going to be a battle over names as we all knew it was gone. The bigger picture is to use the club as it was originally going to the same rally sites and doing what they did then, again not to everyone's choice. There will also be a Scooterist museum paid by the club, this will house everything from the 1950's to present with all makes of scooters. There is a lot to offer. More than any other club. It just needs people to take a step back and look at facts and what's on the table. If they like it great, if not so be it. Yes change the name would solve the issue, but I didn't have an issue to start with. If the name went so would the spark and would be just another club. A bit boring really. That's the best I can do. I've also just had someone say call it new bloa, which thinking about might work. It worked for the LCGB jetset. It's an idea.
Gavin: stop it, just stop it.
Unlike you, I have actually done the cashflow projections of what it costs to run a scooter museum.
I know the likely cost of heating based on given square metres of property, of lighting costs, business rates, of security cameras and monitoring, of fire alarms and other protection, of vehicle insurance (particularly if you are expecting people to loan you their scooters), of property rental (assuming you don't have a generous landlord prepared to subsidise or even pay most if not all those charges), of signage, of website development and other print and marketing costs.
I worked out the income you need, either from visitors paying to come in or, if free, from buying merchandise. I worked out the likely out the likely cost of merchandise and the profits per item sold, calculated the footfall needed in the museum to sell people the items you want to make money from, the tax and other offsets from income and expenses, even other potential income sources from loaning out scooters for photoshoots. These are a fraction of the issues that need to be considered when setting up a museum.
The bottom line is that to keep a decent mid-sized museum going, one that up to 2,500 people a year - which is a significant number (talk to Nigel Cox, who spent six days a week on the premises and ran a scooter parts business out of it) - are going to travel to visit - as opposed to a lock-up with 20 scooters in it - requires a minimum sum in he mid-five figures. It also requires an equal if not greater initial capital outlay and a small army of volunteers to keep it going.
For you to declare, Walter Mitty style, that "
there will also be a scooter museum paid for by the club" is a cruel deception on readers of this thread and your small band of members.
Things get worse. For a museum to be created requires someone with the utmost financial probity, with no weird stories lurking in he background, someone who can be trusted with dozens of other people's scooters and to pay bills on time.
You are manifestly not that person. As Timbo helpfully told people a few months ago, I was financial journalist for 25 years before returning 10 years ago to nursing. I can read a balance sheet and a profit and loss account.
I ran major investigations into financial scandals, from union secretaries making off with their members' money, to insurance company collapses, to pensions mi-selling and much, much more. Even now, because of my past, I am asked to regularly run major multi-agency investigations in the NHS. My 35 years experience in finance has taught me to smell a bad-un from a mile away.
And you smell like a bad-un. In the last few weeks, since I stuck my head above the parapet to oppose your attempt to steal my club's BLOA heritage, I've been contacted by up to 20 people who have had dealings with you over the years.
The specifics are always slightly different, of course, but the MO is the same. It's all petty sums to be sure, a tenner here, 20 quid there; a payment made for a historic legshield banner where you later reverse the PayPal purchase, leaving the seller high and dry despite promising to "sot it out"; snide items sold through multiple accounts; pictures of other people's incredibly rare memorabilia which somehow end up being copied and sold on eBay. I can get signed affidavits for all of these stories if I need to, btw.
As a journalist I've always operated on the principle that 99 per cent of what I'm told is likely to be rubbish but 1 per cent is almost certainly true. In your case there's enough of a 1 per cent to make me worried about your elastic concept of financial probity.
Even your explanation of how your scooters were stolen and then magically re-appeared is a concern: you now tell us that you hadn't paid six months' rent on your lock-ups and your scooters weren't insured. How is that meant to make people trust you with their money - or their scooters, if you want to create a "loan museum"?
As for your little tease that some people around you are talking about "new BLOA", to differentiate it from the "original BLOA" which is part of the LCGB's history, that just won't fly. The entire current financial survival of BLOA is, at the end of the day, linked to the historic connection with merchandise and designs which were the copyright of Mike Karslake and assigned by him to the LCGB.
The determination of our members is rock-sold on this, as you are slowly starting to discover. If you lose that, and we are not going to rest until we get back what is ours, you have problems.
In effect, you are sitting on a one-legged bar stool. If that's kicked away - and you had better believe that we won' go away on this one - you're left with a handful of venues for "1950s-style rallies" attended by a few hundred people, at best.
But there is never a guarantee of decent attendance. Your plan to have a BLOA rally in Southend-on-Sea for example, a kick in the teeth to 15-20 members of Essex Lambretta Club, some of the finest riders in the country who have always organised their own annual event with LCGB support, attended by scores of their friends and local scooterists.
By holding an event in someone's backyard without even consulting them you show utter contempt for local Lambretta riders and their mates: how many of them do you think will turn up?
There are other alternatives you could follow. I've been speaking to people who have set out other scenarios. But none of them look that good for you.
I think it's time for you to give back what isn't yours and walk away.
