Are they fit to fight for us? - Alcyonenews

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Islands Trust

Posted January 29, 2021

Are they fit to fight for us?

The uninvolved end up ruled by their inferiors. (Plato)

A Gang of Eight Trustees, all offshore from SSI, with the connivance of the Trust, work to kill the 2017 “Consensus” to Change the Trust. They seek to cement this “broke and un-fix’d” Trust on us to suffer it forever. The SSI local Trustees, Grove and Patrick, uttered “this is not nice” and retreated to fake “neutrality”, Pontius Pilate fashion. Peter Luckham, Chairman of everything Trust, said he was irked, too, but quickly joined them to make it the Gang of Nine.

The SSI Trustees are in effect aiding and abetting the “inferiors” to keep us, the SS Islanders, “uninvolved” so that they, the “inferiors” would “rule” us. It is like giving kindling and matches to Nero – or worse, because Nero was insane enough to entertain with his violin those burning.

“Inferiors”? Yes, they all are. Nine people ganging up to impose this Czarismatic Trust on the 10,000 of SSI, just cannot brag about their ethical stance. Nor can the pair of “local” Trustees, nor yet Luckham-the-flipper.

The Gang of Eight held an inaugural meeting in Victoria on January 18 and transformed themselves into the august-sounding “Governance and Management Committee”, acronymed “GMC”.

There is no SSI representation on the GMC, nor yet any complaint by the SSI trustees who are left out of it. Instead of crying “Foul!” the SSI Trustees are sleeping their way through the crisis, oblivious to what is happening to the society they owe loyalty to ...

The orchestrators of the scheme claim personal gang-wide ineptitude, as the cause of their “missing” the existence of SSI and the Consensus. Likewise the SSI Trustees would have us believe they were taken by surprise when the subversion surfaced, as if their lack of vigilance is excusable and as if becoming “uninvolved” was an option. They better come to terms with that.

Crocodilian tears rolling down his cheeks, Lee Middleton, the Trustee from Saturna, who started this scheme, did not deny his group is ganging up against the SSI, but he downplayed it: “That was a screw-up” he said. “We apologize to SaltSpring for being blind.” (DW December 9, 2020, bylined E. Nolan).

Middleton, the confessed “Blind Screwer”, got to lead the Gang of Nine who in turn are to lead the Trust to a new Jerusalem. After the confession he became GMC chair and what does he do? He leads the GMC to carry on “screwing” Saltspring. The dimensions of the impropriety of the GMC, knowingly and willingly “screwing” the 10,000 people of Salt Spring is neither explicable nor excusable. Period.

I call on SSI Trustees Peter Grove and Laura Patrick to stand up and fight like hell, for that is their calling. I call on them to declare that SSI LTC resolutely rejects the GMC; and to strenuously object to the Trust misappropriating our taxes to pay the GMC to “screw” us; and to proclaim our determination to implement the Consensus and to demand respect for our right to determine ourselves the “Change” that would make the Trust tolerable to us. I call on them to declare Peter Luckham persona non grata in SSI. I call on them to offer their resignations, at least from their “perk posts”, if the GMC is not replaced or remade into an honest body to implement the “Consensus”.

The essential first task for the implementation of the Consensus is to delineate the governance we, the “locals” expect from our “Local Government”. It is not for the Trust, its GMC and its Consultants to tell us what we really want. No, chaperones, keep them off our shores, for they make us sore. We can do our own thinking.

I suggest we retain an island Chartered Accountant to:

* Lay the foundation for the implementation of the “Consensus” by starting and running a dynamic forum through which the people can determine the Change we need and demand; and the checks and balances to protect society from Czarismatic governance.

* Invite submissions in writing; declaring categoricaly that each and every one submission will be exposed to review and be debated, society-wide. The opening 50 (?) words of each submission to be an “abstract” showcased in an ad-hoc Ideas Bank with a link to the whole submission.

* Requests for information will be equally accommodated in this forum and so would be any refusal of information relevant to the debate.

* Submissions signed with a nom de plume would be acceptable, this for the same reasons we hold the secret ballot sacred.

* The Trust and the Trustistas are welcome to partake on equal terms with the rest of the people.

This is Democracy at work. It can be sustained only by merit and excellence. The moment a better idea surfaces, its predecessor dies. It does not get better or safer than that, anywhere this side of Hell.

The people of SSI are not known for passivity ...