Stuart Dickson

No it's not. Community benefit societies (BenComs) are incorporated industrial and providentsocieties (IPS) that conduct business for the benefit of their community. Profits are not distributed among members, or external shareholders, but returned to thecommunity. Community benefit societies | nibusinessinfo.co.uk https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/community-benefit-societies

There hasn't been an AGM in over 6 months so I presume the minutes would have already been accepted and signed off. Why the great secret though? I'm not a member as of the next payment due date, but minutes should be readily available to members who ask to see them.

The job description - which I notice has suddenly disappeared - said that the winning candidate would be expected to serve both as a director and on the board at SMiSA. That makes 13 Kenny. Can you provide a copy of the minutes of the last AGM? I'm not disputing your claims ofcourse but it would back up whether those members were elected or co-opted wouldn't it?

Yeah I probably was Oaksoft. After all I'd seen close up how other ISA's had handled their buyouts. I'd seen great practice at Swansea where a superb leader was made Chairman, who published his business plan, and who appointed an excellent rookie football manager to devise a long term footballing blueprint to get them from the fourth tier of the English game to the Premiership. I'd watched on as Ann Budge took over at Hears, created a business plan, published it, and appointed a director of football who created a blueprint to get Hearts back to the top end of the top flight in Scottish Football from having just been relegated to a strong second tier that included Hibs and Rangers as well as many of the teams still sitting ahead of St Mirren. I'd even watched on as Clyde resolved their long term debts, published their business plan, and..... well nah they f**ked up with the manager and the blueprint, but I'm sure they'll get that sorted one day. I expected much of the same at St Mirren. Working with the community for mutual benefit. Putting in place a sensible long term business plan. Openness and honesty from those leading the fan buyout, and a great deal of excitement as those members not only saw progress on a footballing front, but also off the park where customers and the local community finally became more important than how good the spread is at half time in the football boardroom. I'd forgotten that this is St Mirren, where fans and employees fight against each other just so they can claim their own wee fiefdom. I was always going to be left disappointed and frustrated wasn't I Oaksoft?

So 13 committee members then - I read the job description. In breach of their own constitution. Can you tell me how many members of the commitee were co-opted on and how many are there having been elected?

I don't think I would want my football club to be owned and run by the kind of people who are heading up SMiSA right now. Good luck to you and all that but you're going to be ridden hard and fast for a good number of years.

I would have done if the vision that had been promised at the start was being delivered. I said all along the community element was absolutely vital to me remaining a member, and I warned that if the club targeted SMiSA funds for the repair of the under soil heating or for this ridiculous proposal of paying for players I would be out. Before the first vote I made a suggestion to SMiSA of one method of how the funds could be spent. The proposal would have seen a small outlay - not anywhere near the full £8k, a large engagement within the local community, and ultimately a return of the initial investment along with some profit that could be distributed to local good causes as SMiSA saw fit. The proposal didn't make it on to the ballot paper - and there was no explanation why not. Don't get me wrong I was and am delighted that the wheelchair users got their platform. I personally believe that should have been funded by the football club and not SMiSA members, but at least the money was going to a decent cause. But this months events are the last straw for me. It's a return to the last time I cancelled my SMiSA membership and the ridiculous and farcical wasting of membership money that was the t-shirts and towels saga.

Long term benefit? Really? Fixing the undersoil heating appears to only be a priority because the board want to ensure a match against Morton goes ahead on Hogmany. Two weeks time is hardly long term. And any player signed by St Mirren in January is unlikely to get a contract that will last beyond the end of the season - quite simply because there is no guarantee that St Mirren will still be a First Division club next season. Five months is not long term. In comparison setting up community links with other sports clubs has a range of benefits from short term financial ones, to much longer term practical benefits too. But that kind of stuff isn't even being considered. SMiSA is not the organisation it promised to be. It's not open, it's not honest, it's not democratic, it's not committed to putting the club at the heart of the community and it's not focused on purchasing shares and getting fans a bigger voice on the football club board. Instead it's a con trick designed to extract more money in return for f**k all exploiting the naivety, stupidity and loyalty of some really gullible people.

Committees are often split as it should be be along the lines of the members they represent. I wouldnt ever expect a committee to be totally united when presenting items such as this for members to vote on. The big problem with SMISA is they don't produce the minutes of the meetings and they won't tell you who was elected and who was co-opted and the membership can't see if their elected representative is being voted down by people placed on the committee with the intention of forcing the organisation to go one particular way. How can any member trust an organisation if its working in that way? Its even worse when the committee takes unauthorised actions without asking the membership. And let's not forget that this is also an organisation which just last month co-opted two new members onto the committee taking the committee to an apparent 13 rather than the constituted no more than 12

I've cancelled mine too. The people hurting the club are the people who decided the members of SMiSA were their cash cow, there to be used to cover their inabilities to manage.

Well they must be happy to make an exception for me.

How many of the committee members were voted into their posts and how many were co-opted onto the committee? I asked that question yesterday - still no response.

What? SMiSA is a fan club? FFS SMiSA, incase you missed it, is an organisation set up within the Independent Supporters Association to buy shares in their football club to give members an influence in their own clubs boardroom and within football in general. SMiSA launched a fan ownership to buy outright control of the club. It's supposed to be using the money to buy shares in the club. Yet we learn last night that without any consent from any of the membership at all the committee has taken it on itself to give the club an interest free loan of £15,000 to put the undersoil heating back on - plant which we are told cost £4k to run every time the club wants to use it. This £15,000 soft loan comes directly from the funds banked to be used to purchase the said shares in the club. And then on top of that, and just to prove that Gordon Scott see's SMISA members as a cash cow to be milked as often as possible, there's a further request for SMiSA funds to be used to pay wages. Yep....too stupid to run a football club.

Absolutely Drew. There is a Fan Ownership bid just down the road from me here in Lanarkshire which already looks like it's been run by people more capable than the car crash SMiSA is turning out to be. I would have walked away from my SMiSA membership months ago but I held out hoping to see some proper astute leadership. Even 36 hours ago I was busy telling someone who was giving me an insight into the shambolic factions within the club that despite what he said I was going to persist with my membership in the hope that we'd see some change in the coming months. Today I've got three choices as I see it. 1. Persist with my £25 per month membership in the hope that one day common sense will prevail. 2. Reduce my membership down to the standard £12 per month as an act of protest against the actions of the SMiSA committee and to continue to argue from within for change. 3. To give up and simply walk away. Cancel my SMiSA membership, admit Fan Ownership at St Mirren is a massive disaster, write off the money I've paid in already, and face up to the fact that as shite a Chairman as Stewart Gilmour was, and how much I always disagreed with him, the truth is there are many worse people that could be running the club - and that sadly most of them are holding positions of influence within the club. Sadly the dream of fresh ideas, prudent management, and "putting the club at the heart of the community" have all remained just that. A cruel con trick to make mugs like me part with our cash to help a millionaire play with a business with a £multi million turnover, enjoying free admission to matches all round the country, luxurious hospitality - put on for other millionaires within football - no matter how much money they've had to beg for off the supporters, whilst putting on a turgid low quality show for the same hard pressed customers. It's a sad, sorry car crash. Mismanaged to f**k by people with an utterly myopic vision. What a sad day it is for the club I grew up supporting.

Superb post. Absolutely spot on.

Oh FFS. Did you miss the last two referendums where either side argued about the potential outcome? Yep, definitely. St Mirren fans are too stupid for Fan Ownership

And here's another fanny who doesn't understand that part of the democratic process is to have the argument first.

More than that. Their version of democracy is to attempt to silence opposition. I'm free to put my money wherever I like. It certainly won't be in to an organisation where gambling seems to be the mantra of those controlling the funds. f**king bonkers

Vote for Putin, or don't. Some f**king democracy that is. The chief money wasters at the club pull the string of their puppets on the SMISA committee and we're all suppose to accept it. f**king disgrace

I emailed the electric bar just to prove a point. "No charge at all for any function held Monday to Thursday".

And here is the very definition of short term thinking. A behaviour that equates to the guy who passes all his wages away on the 20/1 three legged donkey running in the 3.30 on pay day. The club currently pays out in excess of £1.2m per annum in wages and associated costs. As a result of their recruitment policy St Mirren have got and are paying the likes of Jamie Langfield and Kyle Hutton not to play. They've got Andy Webster - another of the top earners and with 28 international caps often left out of the squad. Yet you think chucking an extra £2k per month at the team will solve all its problems. Community initiatives will raise money, will bring positive PR and will deliver more interest in the club from local people. That's a long term vision, not short term. It's not even a gamble. Yet sadly those chumps on the SMISA committee won't even put the easiest and most secure of options that I put forward on the ballot paper. Democracy my arse. There's more democracy in a Tibetan election.

He's certainly being proved right!

I should have listened to my best mate. He was right. St Mirren fans are too stupid for fan ownership. His case will certainly be proved when the vote goes the likes of Hendo's way. Utter, utter madness.

He can't read - that's the problem Cockles had. If he read my post properly he would see I said I didn't have to pay a fee to hire the function area in the bar. I don't know if the pub charges others but we were charged nothing. .

How? No more equity is being handed over in return for the cash and the purchase date hasn't been advanced any. All that has happened is that the directors of the club have decided they need to raise more money and they've decided they'll just take it off SMiSA rather than ask for equal investment per share from all shareholders. The proposal to hand over member cash for a player isn't even in the form of a loan to help bail out the club as would have been the way the last board would have done it. I'm not going to be taken for a mug I'm afraid. When you combine the committee taking an executive decision to grant an interest free loan with money that doesn't belong to them with the fact that there are no minutes of meetings being published, this is all starting to look extremely shady indeed. I've never encountered this with any other fan ownership programme I've ever been involved in and yet out of the five this was the one I had the highest hopes for. I'll sleep on it tonight but I'd imagine my membership will be cancelled in the morning. I'll let others be the mugs. My money would be better spent elsewhere.