Crump99

Made money but broke the club and led us to where we are now. Whereas we'd have survived if we'd told Holder to sling his hook and this thread wouldn't exist. Money is overrated!

Have faith. I just read this. Different topic but live in hope: "Chapman fully understands the frustration expressed by some Crendon Panthers fans on social media."

Is that like Holdergate but with a more popular outcome.

Hopefully they see sense and somehow skilfully extract themselves from this mess but if not then you can make a note of all excessive vehicle incursions, potential H&S infractions that you see during 2020 and report any near misses to the club for investigation and action, assuming that you still attend of course, and keep this thread updated.

I rock up early and leave late so don't see much of their alleged justification issues apart from being confused as to why cars are allowed to go left on entry and park near or on the roads at the back of the stand as that's not the arrangement. They were never asked to move that I'm aware of and no instruction was given that it shouldn't be done. It's good to get the bigger picture from someone who arrives as late as possible. IMO nobody sneaks in with freeloaders. It's clear who's in a vehicle. They are asked to pay as such and if they play up then the security bloke should show them round the hut and out into the public car park when they can either sort themselves out or go home. Probably the main problem for parking near the stand is lack of hard standing, and unless the EoES are more flexible now that they are moving (which seems unlikely) then regularly parking on and messing up the grass is, as it's always been, a red line for them. I suspect that's why the Arena car park was used whenever possible. As you say though, for the amount of vehicles that we should be talking about then there is plenty of on road parking leading up to the stand (directly behind the stand is a no no) and that's what always happened in years gone by before the Arena was suggested. Surely that's easy to manage with those not playing ball warned of future conduct or asked to move on the night. That's all parking away from access routes and virtually all pedestrian movement so that solves that problem. On the way out pedestrians and cars could meet currently but leave both the pedestrian and vehice gates open at the end of the meeting, problem solved! That's not a go at your post, I'm just putting my opinion on the useful points that you raise.

And we haven't either have we? So that'd be added expense, organisation and staff time?

It's not some great adventure to overcome like climbing Everest. You're just looking for solutions to a club self imposed situation with as much empathy as whoever came up with the bright idea in the first place to exclude disabled fans from their long standing, helpful parking privileges which I'm sure that anyone affected greatly appreciated. Any regular will have seen the buggy or a buggy so it's no secret. They used it to pick up, amongst other things, the speakers that sat in front of the stand before we got a decent PA system. Other staff can be seen driving around in it, or one of them at times, as could Neil when inpost, hence why he suggested it I guess. Useful in those isolated situations but it's a crap idea here when the sensible solution is obvious to anyone.

I guess that if a new problem was identified and somebody was trying to help then it may be possible to be patient, but in this case they had a system for the disabled that worked fine for decades, those supporters haven't been given a good reason why they have been turfed out of the stadium, and through no fault of their own they lose their independence and have to queue in the cold and dark for a buggy ride - you're all heart!

He doesn't though. They still pay on entry like everyone else. Who knows what it's all about because the reasons and lack of effort to deal with those reasons mentioned in a less draconian fashion don't stack up. What we do know is that for as long as the club still runs it doesn't think too much about fans that are inconvenient for it, so time for fans to be of the same mind perhaps. Following Frost/Mahoney and the promotion of Rathbone (of which Johnson was part of the management team) I remember fans saying that they had their club back. Well that didn't last long did it?

Especially on this thread. Their clarity of thought and reasoning is a refreshing memory.

Disabled parking inside the arena when properly organised and administered is low risk and how many recorded incidents have been attributed to it over 20 years? I suspect not many, if any. If they wish to eliminate risk then there are no doubt many bigger issues that can be highlighted now and during the season.

As I'm not a golfer and have no interest in it then I don't know. Any time that a golf buggy is mentioned I always get a mental picture of bingo and fleegle doing the pick up! Don't worry that you don't get that, it makes me chuckle.

And if abuse was an issue before then nothing gets the blood boiling like a good old queue of stressed paying customers.

Increase the difficulties and organisation to get in and out anyway and then double them.

And that (or some of it) was the logical step to the mess they created by not doing it in the first place before going nuclear. Personally I think that the reasons as the club laid out may be part of the problem although they were and are fixable as you say, but there is something else we're not being told IMO although we do know that it's a club problem as the EoES quickly washed their hands of the debacle. I'd just do badge number, name and vehicle registration to be used. Your system is too much data, you're not having all that. You're not gov.uk! I've no intention of buying a season ticket unless they reverted back to the credit card version when I might once again consider it so I'm sure some sort of discrimination would be claimed there. BB holders are, by definition, often not the healthiest and potentially don't want to, or can't financially, commit to a season ticket anyway? Posh make no such requirement on parking: "Peterborough United Football Club has a limited number of disabled persons parking places for home and away fans that are allocated to Blue Badge holders" - they do charge a fiver for convenience but the other option is to pay in the pay car parks anyway. The general premise I fully agree with though.

You mean similar to the dial a ride that the club had to introduce against their wishes when the EoES excluded (although technically they didn't exclude anyone) the clubs disabled fans from entering the stadium during the C Horton/Bratley period. Can you spot the difference there? And when the EoES eventually relented, the club, with consideration to their affected supporters, reverted to the erstwhile established effective service without problem.

Indeed. Before they ever got to needing warnings though they missed out the important bit about clear instruction and consequences of not following those instructions. The club said: " We respect the fact that the above hasn’t been caused by everyone issued with a blue badge, and we do also know and understand this decision affects everyone that will attend our race meetings that are issued with a blue badge." So regulars of years standing get caught up in their broad brush approach because they've assumed that everyone who turned up with a BB knew what to do. There were rarely stewards directing and we all know that today's public generally reply to an instruction from someone trying to do their job with F off or similar, unless they are told that that has serious consequences because there is a zero tolerance at the club to such behaviour.

It's such a weak excuse. People entering the stadium should have been told told that anyone not parking in designated places, or driving/parking on the grass, abusing stewards etc, will have their registration numbers taken, be warned and potentially denied stadium access in future. It's been done before and isn't rocket science.

A google search defines exclude as " deny (someone) access to a place, group, or privilege." Similarly privilege defines as "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." So technically they haven't denied access but that really is semantics because showing poor disability awareness and removing the privilege to allow their disabled fans to attend in comfortable circumstances if they're able is exclusion in anyone's book.

No idea and isn't that part of the problem. They haven't said, only mentioned the problems that they seeming didn't try to fix before kicking them out, thereby losing the sympathy vote for at least trying before taking the action the club would slam the EoES for doing (well previous promotions who cared that is). One assumes that it's a fair few or what's the problem with the traditional arrangement and trying deal with the club's organisational gripes and alleged steward abusers?

Sounds logical if your prepared to alienate and lose a section of your fan base along with the associated revenue stream.

Good news is that I've heard from Wealdstone and he's fit and well but just had the enthusiasm kicked out of him by Panthers management. The clubs regressive action against their own disabled fans (even the ones that played ball) amongst other things has left him drained and in need of a rest. I know how he feels and I suspect that he's far from alone.

As I said the Messiah at least kept the thread going. The topic is, make sure that if you know anyone that this might affect then do let them know because they probably don't bother much with speedway sites or internet generally and they'll not find the regressive action on the main local news media. They may not realise that the club has chosen to make their attendance more difficult or impossible, and certainly less pleasurable from 2020 onwards. They may wish to spend their time and money elsewhere. We know of some on here who feel like that and I've seen some saying the same elsewhere so I'm sure that there's more yet to find out who will feel that way, so do get the message out there.

Much like the fans and revenue the club seems happy to lose these days. Strange times indeed.

"Wealdstone has gone very quiet, has he been got at" was the latest tweet