Woodstock Jag

My point exactly. You were there for one of the playoff games. We had a conversation! Name names or stop talking rubbish. If you’re not in the playoffs you can’t win promotion. They concluded there was a better chance of promotion with Doolan than McCall. Whilst unfalsifiable because counterfactuals literally are unprovable this was a perfectly respectable position to arrive at, bearing in mind he had in recent weeks lost to the two teams who eventually got relegated and he had presided over the Club dropping to 5th place. This makes no sense Jim. Just because the old board were wrong about some things doesn’t suddenly mean that the footballing expectations for a football budget that was fully honoured should suddenly be cast aside. TJF was very clear that it found the timing of the announcement to be far from satisfactory. On that side of things you will hear no dispute. But the decision about whether to relieve McCall of his duties was, rightly, one for the Club Board and not for any fan group. On this point I speak purely as a fan of the football club when I say I believe there were valid footballing reasons for him being moved on. You can’t see that because you’re blinded by the fact he’s your mate.

Can I just put on the record that, to the best of my awareness, of the Club's leadership group as it stood in February 2023, probably zero of them had attended Munns as frequently as Jim himself did in season 2022-23? As a reminder, the Club's leadership group at that time consisted of: Duncan Smillie, Richard Beastall, Fergus MacLennan, Caroline Mackie and CEO Gerry Britton. Not, I'd suggest, a group of people overall with especially strong emotional attachment to or against the management team. Jim would have you believe that "a wee clique from Munns and Twitter" were responsible for McCall's dismissal. The reality is much more prosaic: he was on a bad run, had fallen out of the play-offs and the Club Board at the time concluded there was a better prospect of reaching the play-offs with someone else in charge, and said so publicly. You can agree or disagree about that, but it's laughable to suggest there was a conspiracy around this considering the news caught absolutely everyone, including those supposedly "close to the Club" by surprise in the hours following the Rangers game.

Ian McCall isn't anything like as good a manager now as he was in the distant past. He's not even as good a manager as he was 2 or 3 years ago. In his prime, clearly he was a very good manager (especially with Falkirk, somewhat so with Ayr United, less so with Dundee United where he had a large budget). But he isn't anymore. Which is why he's plying his trade with the team sitting in 42nd position in the Scottish football pyramid.

That's impossible to do when McCall didn't manage for the full season. I agree this is a shortcoming of the current squad he's assembled. But it's notable that we've conceded fewer goals at the same stage in the season as last year. Not many fewer. But fewer. And scored more. And won more points. No. I'm pointing out that he's doing better than McCall was doing at the same point last season. With a smaller budget and while being a less experienced manager. The reasons for McCall's dismissal have to be judged in the context we then found ourselves. My point is that if he had kept Thistle in the play-off positions, and not lost to a bunch of jobber part-timers and a Hamilton in freefall, the reasons given by the Club Board at the time for dismissing him would have not made sense. As it was, he took us out of the playoffs, something Doolan improved-upon, with a points-per-game performance drastically better than that of McCall's and better than that of any of the other teams in the division. He has not done as well with his own squad as he did with McCall's (that I readily grant) but he's still, objectively, doing better with his own squad than McCall was doing with his. So far.

Which, two thirds of the season in, Doolan is in and McCall was out. It’s quite simple really. Kris Doolan is a better football manager than Ian McCall.

League table the day Ian McCall was sacked. 23 games played, 33 points, 5th place. 1.43 points per game. 42 goals scored. 38 goals against. League table after same number of games under Doolan: 23 games played, 38 points, 3rd place. 46 goals scored. 37 goals against. You cannot credibly argue that this season has gone less well in the League so far than last season. And if you try to you're not a serious person. Absolutely recent form is a bit naff and it is concerning that Morton are closing in a bit. But let's just remember that Ian McCall had us losing to part-time Cove Rangers and in-freefall Hamilton Academical. If Ian McCall had had us five points better off than he did at that point in the season he wouldn't have been sacked.

There will be an announcement about this very shortly. But I can say that the commitment made has been met!

You don’t concede three goals at home that soft and win football matches. Can’t blame tonight’s defeat on the (admittedly poor) officiating. A dreadful keeper and two inexcusable failures from the centre backs cost us.

It is important to stress that no dessert has yet been suggested and that any dilution of your welcome drink can only happen after a fan vote in favour.

We are not going to 51% fan ownership. (a) even if the second tranche of investment happens on the same terms as the share issue for the first tranche, the PTFC Trust's shareholding would still be above 60% (b) the so-called 51% provision is a new protection, not a target end-point for dilution - before October 2023 there were zero legal protections in the Articles of Association for the majority shareholding (c) the legal protection secured in the Investment Agreement and Articles of Association provide that the PTFC Trust's shareholding cannot drop below 51% without consent. When you add in The Jags Trust's shareholding that means (even if PTFC Trust is diluted to 51%) the overall fan shareholding will be above 55% - so still not the German model; actually stronger than it! (c) any dilution from current fan-owned levels requires a beneficiary vote, putting the decision in the hands of literally thousands of Partick Thistle fans It doesn't "require" it. It "required" a £500k cash injection. This was the figure TJF told the fans was needed, at a minimum, in June 2023. This was no secret. This was needed because the Club's cash reserves were obliterated by a series of erroneous and profligate budgets set in the years up to summer 2022, committing the Club to high overheads, undermining key commercial revenue streams, and running substantial six-figure structural deficits: a financial position that cannot be fully fixed in the space of one full season. The Club doesn't "have cash reserves of £500k". The £500k was needed to prevent a negative cash trough. There will not be £500k sitting in the bank at all times throughout this season. It will probably be at the end of a season, when all the prize-money gets paid out, and in the early part of the season, when a lot of the season ticket-income is banked, but the trough in mid-season will be substantially lower than that. Indeed, if the Club permanently had £500k of cash in the bank, there would be no need for investment at all. The net current assets would be positive and all short-term liabilities would be able to be met at all times without difficulty. Look back at the annual accounts, Jim. The net current assets as at May 2023 were negative to the tune of £250k. This meant, in effect, that if you stripped out the directors loans the Club's liquid assets were essentially equal to its short-term liabilities. So once everyone gets paid-up there's barely anything left in the bank. Almost exactly zero, in fact. Even if the Club had run a break-even budget this season, it would have needed substantial six-figure investment just to remain solvent, because of cashflow peaks and troughs. The £500k boosts cashflow and net current assets, so that they never drop below zero at any point in 2023-24. But they will often be below £500k.

We refused to agree to the original investment proposal documents. We explained this in our Investment Process document of 18th October 2023. Several substantive changes were made to the contents of the Investment Agreement and the proposed changes to the Articles of Association in direct response to TJF pushing back. If you actually bothered to read that document you'd see the four core commitments that we secured: a strengthened protection of the majority shareholding compared to the original proposal an explicit commitment to future fan consultation (now enshrined in the CTA) an accelerated process to draft and implement a legally binding CTA (to give those commitments teeth, now to be signed later this week) stronger carve-outs than the original deal provided to allow TJF to communicate the terms of the deal to our members and the wider fanbase That process wasn't flawless, but you are just talking rubbish about TJF's role in it and I won't just sit here and let you misrepresent what happened. We weren't, and still aren't, the majority shareholder Jim. At the time of the investment we were one of only four trustees. TJF had, indeed still has, no power unilaterally to remove anyone as a director of the Football Club. The difference between you and us is that we are willing to work with people to improve things when the Club is mere weeks away from running out of cash. You want to throw your toys out the pram. We don't want to replace that Board, Jim. We want to work with them to provide a period of stability at the Football Club, and to unify the Club. We want to build things. You want a tantrum.

Bollocks. You are not privy to almost any of the direct correspondence between the Club Board and TJF so you have absolutely no idea what has and hasn't been asked of us or whether and when we have pushed back. No it isn't. Stop talking bollocks. You're literally just making shit up now.

Okay, let me be even more categorical. No informal proposal has been presented to TJF or the Trustees either! There was one meeting with Donald McClymont and other Club Board members shortly after the AGM at which aspects of the process were clarified and broad intentions as to the structure of any investment were clarified. But as of yet there has been no discussion on the substance of how the funds would be used. We've made clear we think it shouldn't be used to fund operating losses, and that we'd want to see detailed financial forecasting and budgeting in connection with any proposal, if progressed. That expectation has been set and we won't recommend to the fans any proposal that doesn't provide that information.

I don't think that is "clear" at all. You're jumping the gun. As always. I think they had some ideas for how £500k could potentially be used if invested. Which isn't the same thing. No outline plan has been presented to us about how any invested monies would be spent that hasn't also been presented to shareholders at the AGM. They haven't said that "there was additional funding required to achieve this". This is complete supposition on your part. Stop making baseless assumptions and you might actually get somehwere. Again, you fail to understand the meaning of the word "requirement". Yes, "keeping the stadium in a healthy state of repair" is a requirement. But not all repairs are therefore "requirements". If you have low cash reserves, you might opt for more limited remedial options, and cover the cost of that from season-to-season, rather than commit to a large capital outlay. So you might (for the purposes of illustrative example) "patch up" a roof whenever leaks arise instead of "replace the roof" outright. In the longer-term, "patch ups" might cost you more money overall, and require more money to be set aside in regular maintenance budgets, but it would involve less money up-front. Let's look at my workplace. MPs won't commit to a "full decant" which involves Parliament spending significantly more money up-front and taking MPs outwith the Palace of Westminster for several years. This is actually the cheapest option, will leave the Palace in better condition in the long-run, and lead to much lower ongoing maintenance costs once the project is complete. Instead MPs prefer to spend less money per year, but to drag the project out over literally decades longer, meaning that more public money will be spent. There is no "necessity" or "requirement" to follow a particular course of action there, but current budgeting assumptions assume no decant. If they were to find a mechanism to raise and approve the money for full decant, we could save money and have a very clearly better outcome. Similar considerations apply to stadium maintenance at Firhill. But we would want to see a detailed analysis of what £500k of investment would actually do in terms of allowing the Club to bring forward more ambitious stadium works (or whatever else they decide they want this money to be spent on). That is why tranche 2 cannot happen without the CTA approval process, and why TJF is happy to wait until this information is presented as part of any formal proposal. There is nothing useful to ask questions about on this yet. The presentation set out the full extent of the Club's thinking on the matter, and we know that we're going to be given more information as and when that vague statement of intent develops into a concrete proposal. There is no "agreement not to ask questions" you're just talking rubbish now. You're showing otherwise on this thread. But the budget forecasting did not assume they were going to happen! You've literally just made that up, having previously argued that it wasn't even mentioned at the AGM! Make your mind up! And we do. Routinely. Via our Club Board rep, through the Trustees and in day-to-day correspondence with the Club.

Graham Nisbet and Billy (I forget his surname) who are part of the Club's historian team and heritage project have been leading an archive scrawl at the Club for the last few months. TJF recruited some volunteers to help them with it (I think back in August?). Essentially, lots of old memorabilia was found in various nooks and crannies at Firhill over the summer (often stuff that had been long since forgotten about in old cupboards). The intention was to preserve and catalogue what they could find (especially programmes and other literature and trinkets) and to explore different options for things that could be put on display at the Club in some more organised way, what was surplus to requirements (and could be given a new home eg through fundraising) and what was simply surplus to requirements. The main focus has been on matchday programmes, with only a small number believed now to be missing for several decades.

Jim, I literally posted a slide from the presentation which drew to shareholders' attention the desire to progress further investment into the football club, and the "potential uses" identified for that investment. Here it is again. You are therefore lying when you say that it "did not form part of the presentations and budgets" and that they were "simply not mentioned at all at the AGM to ALL the Shareholders". Indeed, I've looked again at the presentation and the final two slides showed the headline impact of £500k of extra investment on the forecast net current assets and the cash in the bank. Once again, for emphasis: (1) No further details on the substance of any proposal have been disclosed to TJF and the Trustees (2) No formal proposal has been presented to TJF or the Trustees (3) As and when that is published, the majority shareholder will scrutinise its contents and work with the Club to facilitate a comprehensive information sharing exercise with the fans, explaining the investment proposal (4) Not one single new share will be issued unless and until the beneficiaries vote in favour (5) There will not be a beneficiary vote until opportunities have been provided for fans to understand the terms of any deal, any trade-offs involved (6) The Trustees will almost certainly set out an official position on any deal, having had the opportunity to consider its terms. (7) Fans less familiar with the financial, shareholder and strategic position of the Football Club will therefore go into the process with sufficient information to make an informed decision.

The situation is completely different from last year because the legally binding Club-Trust Agreement (which will imminently be signed and come formally into force) gives the majority shareholder a specific route to information about the 2024-25 budget, and the power to veto it if we are not satisfied with its contents and supporting explanatory materials. The presence of a TJF club board representative also enables the elected TJF board's views on the budgeting principles to be fed into the thinking of the Club Board's budget process pre-emptively and at source, rather than after the fact, as an AGM can only ever do. Last year TJF had no formal relationship with any shareholder (and indeed had to rely on proxies just to be allowed in the room). The PTFC Trust had no formal arrangements in place for pre-emptive financial scrutiny. And it had no Club Board representation at all. Expecting the same sort of dynamics in the current environment is fundamentally belligerent and a little bit weird on your part. No it doesn't. It's a bailout that ensures the Club will be able to meet payroll without any difficulties this season, unlike last season. Say what you mean Jim. Don't hide behind this euphemism. You don't like the fact that Richard Beastall is on the Club Board. Just say that. You've fundamentally misunderstood this. The option for a second tranche of investment was contained in the original investment agreement. It was prominently drawn attention to in the Club's original investment announcement in October. It was prominently drawn attention to in TJF's commentary on the investment process in October. There was actually a time limit on the further subscription of shares in that agreement, which has since lapsed, so any proposal for further investment, even if to be done on similar terms, will technically need to be done "afresh" anyway. Both the investors and the Club Board want to explore further investment in the near-term because they want the Club to have more working capital. They think this will enable them to do things they can't do at the moment. They are emphatically not saying that this money is essential or a requirement. I have to say I'm a little bit confused here. You're criticising "beer and sandwiches" and things supposedly being carved up by the Club Board and the majority shareholder. But you're then also complaining when the Club announces its intentions about things to the full shareholder group. Which is it to be, Jim? They weren't announcing anything new. They were reminding people of what was said at the outset in October that a second tranche was envisaged as an option, and that they wanted to progress it. The reason no decision was taken at the AGM is because there is no decision yet to be taken. There is no formal proposal for decision by the majority shareholder. There is no detailed financial information about how the investment monies might be used. Unless and until that happens, there is nothing for the shareholders to consider at all. We have nothing more than a general statement of intent. Again with the word "requirements". No one is saying that they are "requirements". They are saying that they are desirable improvements for which there is currently insufficient working capital. Jim, we have made clear to Donald McClymont and the Club Board that, if they want to progress with any further investment proposal, they will have to provide a detailed impact assessment demonstrating the intended use of the funds and what impact they think it will have on existing financial forecasts. We said this in our AGM review: This reflects the representations we have made at Club Board level (via Stuart Callison) and in direct face-to-face meetings with Donald McClymont and other Club Board members. That no formal proposal has been presented to the Trustees is, to us, indicative that these proposals are not yet fully formed and have not yet been subject to a fuller financial analysis by the Club Board. Accordingly there is nothing for us to scrutinise and nothing for us to decide. If and when that changes we will let all the beneficiaries know, publicly. Again, you are conflating essential requirements with highly desirable activities. I'm honestly starting to think that you don't understand how capitalism works if you won't distinguish between day-to-day recurring expenditure and capital intensive one-off projects. What bidding? Be specific. The former. And, you aside, I don't see a sea of fans clamouring for the removal of the Trustees or individual members of the TJF Board. Do you? No, you'd rather carp from the sidelines instead of work with people like adults.

The great irony of course is that if the Trust and TJF had asked more than the three questions asked by me, Morag McHaffie and Neil Drain (questions chosen based on beneficiary feedback), it would have significantly eaten into time available to other shareholders to ask questions. So I think what James Alexander is really saying is that my colleagues should have each turned up with 20 questions and asked every single one of them, trying the patience of everyone in the room and online, even if it would have effectively denied him personally the opportunity to ask questions, and in the full knowledge that many of the more technical points could be scrutinised by our new Club Board rep at his first and subsequent Club Board meetings, and then fed back to our members through our member comms as desired/appropriate. It’s not “beer and sandwiches” to have a functioning working relationship with the Club Board, and to have open lines of communication with them. The essence of the epithet “beer and sandwiches” was that there was somehow a stitch-up between those involved to deny (as was then) the normal Union members a proper say over their pay and conditions. The reality here is that there will be an open fan consultation process and a beneficiary vote if and when an investment proposal is presented to the Trustees. Literally the opposite situation.

Several points here. 1. Maggie Forsyth isn't Morag McHaffie. 2. You still don't seem to grasp the difference between things which are "absolutely essential requirements" and things which are "highly desirable, but not essential". The word "requirement" implies that these things are absolutely essential. They aren't absolutely essential, because a safety certificate can be secured without them. 3. There was literally a discussion at the AGM about several of the more capital intensive maintenance or facilities activity that the Club is not currently doing. No, it simply indicates that, absent capital investment, the Club does not plan to spend significant amounts of money on larger projects to improve or better maintain the stadium than they do currently. There are plenty of reasons why we'd want to scrutinise the budgeting, not least the highly ambitious commercial and and fan-based revenue growth targets. You could even make the argument that the Club should be setting aside more money for regular year-to-year stadium maintenance than it is currently. That remains to be seen. But this is why TJF has indicated that it will robustly scrutinise the detail of the 2024-25 budget when it is presented to the trustees. A commitment secured by the CTA. But - yet again Jim - you are allowing a credible and serious point to get lost in waffle. Your inability to distinguish between (a) things that are necessary to get a safety certificate to allow fans to enter the ground and watch a game of football and (b) things which it would be good to improve to make the matchday experience better and to attract new fans, but which we don't currently have the money for Is completely undermining your point. It doesn't assist. My point is not about whether or not the toilets should be upgraded. My point is that you - James Alexander - were calling for the Club to spend significant sums of money in facilities improvements, which would have required significant amounts of UP-FRONT (rather than ongoing) spending, and which were not absolutely essential to securing a safety certificate. The absence of investment, combined with the Club's (still quite) weak cash reserves, means that no sensible Club Board would - at this time - commit to any major capital projects. Investment could - potentially - change that calculation. Which is why instead of rejecting it out of hand we should - and I'm a broken record here - wait to see what the actual proposal is, instead of wetting our knickers over a general statement of intent from the Club Board, which cannot turn into anything concrete without fan approval. As far as I can see, there has never been an EGM held for the purposes of allotting new shares in the Football Club in the ordinary course of business. The decisions to allow, for example, David Beattie to subscribe for shares in 2007 and Colin and Christine Weir and the PTFC Trust in 2015, were done by resolution of the company and simply announced on the Club website, with relevant filings done by the Club Board and with the support of a sufficient proportion of the shareholders. The Articles of Association of the company do not require an EGM to approve investment. It requires only the approval of shareholders representing the requisite amount of the voting share capital in the company. Indeed, for a period the rules were even more relaxed. Following the Weir deal in 2015, the package included a resolution of the company to allow further allotment of shares by decision of the Club Board, bypassing the requirement for shareholder approval completely. This resolution (thankfully) lapsed a few years later. This isn't a "cosy wee arrangement" it's how the vast majority of companies work. And, to labour the point, under the Club-Trust Agreement it will be illegal for the Trustees to consent to any investment without a beneficiary vote in favour of it. So it is the will of the shareholders that this should be the mechanism by which decisions about future investment are taken. If you don't want that to be the case, exercise what influence you have on the majority shareholder. The only influence we are interested in is that of our beneficiaries. So become one if you aren't already. Or carp from the sidelines. Your choice. Your analysis is positively gyroscopic you u-turn so often Jim. In the hours following the AGM you literally told a mutual acquaintance of ours that I had asked a good question at the AGM about the financial forecasts. Once again, and with feeling. There are lots of things that are not "requirements" that the Club would like to do. Some of those involve spending money. If you don't have any spare capital, you don't budget for things that are "non-essential" even if they are "highly desirable". I'm reserving judgment on this. Until we've seen what their proposals are. Not correct. (1) TJF's contributions are normal revenues. You just don't like the fact that they are willing donations. The Club had failed to mobilise this source of income at all prior to this season. (2) If we assume that the projections for the rest of this season are correct, and then we strip out TJF contributions, the Club is still closer to break-even in 2023-24 than it was in 2022-23 (even after including the Rangers cup income). We aren't. There has been no proposal presented. We will only spend time discussing it if and when a proposal is put. You are the one wasting everyone's time by jumping the gun, raising it here when there's nothing to talk about! You're entirely within your rights to question whatever you want Jim. But it would be a lot more sensible if you questioned the content of an actual proposal rather than a vague statement of intent made at the Club's Annual General Meeting, about something that was prominently advertised and spoken about a full four months before that. Then make sure you're a beneficiary and vote against it!

This is, again, an oversimplification. Whilst the budget includes contingency for stadium maintenance, it won't include every hypothetical major bit of stadium maintenance the Club might conceivably want to do in (say) a 3-5 year timeframe. There are several known aspects of stadium upkeep that have not been progressed in recent seasons because of a lack of cash reserves to invest in doing them up. But because they don't pose a short-term risk to the safety certificate, they haven't been prioritised. This was explained by Chris Ross at the AGM. I wasn't talking about planning permission. I was talking about the safety certificate! Jim the Club Board literally showed you a slide in their AGM presentation setting out that they wanted to progress with the second tranche, how much it would be for, when they wanted to close that deal and (in extremely high level terms) what they thought the money might be able to be used for. They're not "holding things back" on the investment. It has been well trailed both at the point of the original investment and subsequently. It was known at the AGM. They told you about it! The possibility of a second tranche was explicitly contemplated in the original investment agreement and was prominently advertised as a possibility, to fans, back in October. Okay fine, vote against the investment if you aren't happy with the numbers they present the fans as part of the consultation process. Jim you're being deliberately obtuse here. It is trivially true to say that the forecasts presented at the AGM included anticipated expenditure on stadium maintenance and growth of commercial and hospitality revenues. Those assumptions exist with or without further investment. But there are some things the Club can't do without an injection of capital. Those might not be bare minimum business critical things but they will plausibly still be desirable things to be able to do. Some of those things will involve more comprehensive work on the stadium and its facilities which simply would not be done under the current budget because they are too capital intensive and not essential to renewing the safety certificate. To go back to the toilets example, previous Club Boards have ruled out the installation of hot water in the concourse toilets on grounds of cost. On this forum, you literally said the Club should be investing in upgrading those facilities, with a view to growing the fanbase. But if we drop tens of thousands of pounds on new toilets that won't lead to 400 new fans overnight. It won't pay for itself in the short-term. So under the current budgetary pressures, those things simply don't happen. A major capital investment could make initiatives like that viable. We'd need to see the numbers. Which has been the TJF position from the outset. No. They told you at the AGM they were looking to progress the £500k. I'm beginning to think you weren't paying attention! It was raised at the AGM! All beneficiaries will have the opportunity to ask questions about the proposal, and to vote for or against approving it, before a single new share is issued. If you want to have a say on this, join TJF, join The Jags Trust, buy a Season Ticket or become a 71 Club member. This isn't hard. Thousands of your fellow fans have already done so. Jim, the second tranche was mentioned IN THE CLUB'S PRESS RELEASE in October. It was also mentioned in the TJF reaction piece in October, and was the subject of detailed commentary from TJF later that month. The second tranche was mentioned AT THE CLUB AGM with a literal slide in the presentation pack on the Club Board's intentions (see earlier in this thread). The second tranche was mentioned in the Club's post-AGM report to fans. The second tranche was mentioned in TJF's post-AGM report. You would literally have to have been living under a rock not to have noticed it was a potential option being explored. On the basis of absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Sounds like we should give the Club Board and investors the opportunity to set out those reasons before any decision is taken then? Rather than dismiss the whole thing out of hand before there's even a concrete proposal to consider. No?

I have a Scottish Schools U15 Rugby Cup runners-up medal and a low centre of gravity. I anticipate only one outcome.

I’m game if Jim is.

That you’ve jumped the gun. Again. No. Simply that we won’t be rejecting a proposal that doesn’t yet exist when we haven’t even seen it! It isn’t. Any second tranche is subject to a beneficiary vote. So unless you think the Club Board exhibits mind control over more than half of the beneficiaries, nothing is a “foregone conclusion”. That’s not for me to say. That’s for the Club Board and any investors to present a costed financial proposal on. But again, I find it baffling that you’re saying there were “no stadium issues” at the AGM. This is nonsense. Morag McHaffie, on behalf of the Jags Trust (one of the trustees) asked about stadium maintenance and Chris Ross gave a detailed answer about the approach to stadium maintenance and resourcing. The Club acknowledged that there are lots of issues with the stadium, and that some of its existing budget is being used to remedy things like seat replacement, blown windows in the Colin Weir, and to do some roof repairs to the Jackie Husband Stand. Some of it had also been used to upgrade catering facilities in the Aitken Suite and the hospitality lounges, which are now in drastically better condition than they were 12 months ago. What they also said was that existing resources were prioritised towards ensuring the safety certificate would be renewed every year. They readily acknowledged that Firhill is a stadium with a long list of maintenance and aged facilities issues. There are plenty of things to do with stadium maintenance and facilities that we could do if we had £500k extra in the bank that we can’t do now. The question is whether those things are sufficiently high priority and value for money. We await the Club’s and investors’ detailed proposals on this before coming to a view. Which is the correct approach. Not dismissing things out of hand based on incomplete information. Yes, that’s what Richard Beastall’s forecasts said. That’s for the Club to set out and argue for. Not me. It’s not my proposal. A decisive majority of TJF members said it was important or very important that Thistle remains majority fan owned. That much is true. That is precisely why we insisted on a properly embedded legal guarantee of majority fan ownership as a condition of tranche 1. That is why we insisted on a beneficiary vote to be a precondition of any future investment that would alter the share capital of the club. Our survey highlighted a lot of different things about TJF members’ priorities. For example, financial sustainability was considered as important by more members than majority fan ownership. As a proportion of overall open text responses, far more fans raised issues to do with stadium maintenance and facilities than they did about corporate governance or shareholdings. A lot of the things we can do to improve the fan and matchday experience won’t cost much money: they’re simply about better understanding and engaging with fans. But some things will cost money, and that money will often have to come up front, rather than be spread over multiple seasons (unless the Club wants to take out debt, which it appears very reluctant to do, understandably). So there is a trade off there. Are the fans content to make trade offs for those bigger ticket initiatives, or not? That’s not for me to say. That’s for them to say. If and when they are asked. Which they have to be!

It isn’t. It’s stated that the Club Board wants to progress further investment. If this comes to anything then the PTFC Trust will be approached with the details of the proposal, of which TJF is one trustee. And no investment deal will be allowed to progress (per the terms of the Club-Trust Agreement) without the approval of the beneficiaries in a fan vote. If you want to know why the Club Board is keen to progress this in Q1, ask them directly. Speaking as one of TJF’s representatives at Trustee meetings, I see absolutely no hurry for any further investment, and given the influence TJF Board members will have in communicating what they think of any proposals with the wider fan base, I am unconcerned. If it’s a bad deal we’ll say so and the fans can make up their own mind. So what? Are you suggesting that the Club should decline all investment proposals, regardless of how favourable or unfavourable, until Glasgow City Council revokes a safety certificate? This is really weird Jim. Tranche 1 was a bailout to deal with the immediate cashflow problems. It wasn’t a catch-all solution to all the Club’s longer-term sustainability needs. No one ever said it was. We don’t. But the Club Board wants it, to enable it to do things it can’t currently do, because we don’t have large capital reserves. Whether those things warrant investment and if so on what terms remains to be seen. That’s a completely hypothetical question until the Trustees are presented with something. They’ve been losing large six figure sums in consecutive seasons and they’ve had two large Old Firm away day cup ties, run a smaller squad than we do. I think you’re making the argument here that we should rig the balls in the domestic cup draws in future and appoint Dougie Imrie as our manager? Okay, then make sure you’re a beneficiary of the PTFC Trust and vote no on any proposal that’s presented to you. As a representative of one of the Trustees, I will not be prejudging a proposal that hasn’t even been put to us. Jim if I offered you £500k now, £500k in June, or £500k in 2047, which would you pick? It’s not nonsensical. There are some types of revenue growth that require any business to invest up-front capital in facilities improvements, or to hire more effective staff (for example) to deliver better commercial returns. You yourself, on this very forum, were calling for the Club to spend (what would be) tens of thousands of pounds improving the toilets, on the grounds that it would attract more fans to the ground in the longer term and that this would increase income and make the Club more sustainable. As we explained in our post-AGM update we met with Donald McClymont (and other Club Board members) and asked them several questions about the investment process and what lay behind the desire to progress the investment this season. That is an ongoing discussion, but one about which there is nothing new of substance to say unless and until the Trustees are presented with a formal proposal document. Which hasn’t happened.