I was looking for advice/help/constructive criticism but seem to have received almost complete silence.  Do any/many people read SCF?  and if the do why don't they contribute?  Any Forum needs contributors and comments.

all imvho

   Done

My humble donation has been made, more to follow.

No money, no blog, no news, so please find some!

I for one am very pleased to have noticed that the very modest Dr Robert Cowan has very quietly placed a DONATE button on the SkipCottageCurling Blog!

Not before time Bob and I hope that you are pleasantly surprised and contented with readers generosity!

To all your Blog readers I would say 'Lets keep Bob on the road!'

British Curling website has a list of "staff" at http://www.britishcurling.org.uk/Staff-g.asp

Don't think British Curling has any staff?

As for DA's point - the last Board was elected by the outgoing BCA Chairman (representing the English CA), a representative of the Welsh Curling Association, the Chairman of the Scottish Wheelchair Association, the CEO of the RCCC, and representatives from sport Scotland and UKSport if I remember right.

I was thinking of applying but after reading the comments by DA it might not be a great idea!

"anti selection" and "radical" and an active dislike of a member of staff would come in to the argument as well as my age - 70 next time round.

I hope GM doesn't apply since I would rather see her continue to Curl at the top level and hopefully represent Scotland/UK in the future.

all imvho

OK so who is up for the job?

But if some of the "anti selection" lobby go for it - would they have any sort of chance?

Who elects / chooses the persons to fill the positions? UK sport? Sportscotland? RCCC? Home nations?

Again - as with the RCCC CEO - i doubt if any kind of "radical" person who was likely to shake things up would get the job.

So the fulltime RCCC CEO wasnt GM's cup of tea - how about director / chairman position for her - not so time consuming for her and would prove to all of us that we had somebody with curlings best interests in an influential position.

anybody else fit the bill for the other positions?

Thanks, Robin. The principal reason why Jamie had to get rid of us was because he wanted control of the project, and with us on board he would have had to negotiate. I believe the mash they have now is a direct result of his involvement. But let's leave it there, I am doing my best to complete the report that will spell out the whole business for the record and I will make it known here once the report is available.

Sorry, my fault; I slipped into "management-speak" there and didn't make myself clear.  A negotiation only happens if both sides are minded to work together and strike a deal.  Before the negotiation actually takes place, both parties (in this case, there were two parties) need to be persuaded by the other that a negotiation is worthwhile.  For whatever reason, Jamie Montgomery was not minded to work with you.  He called off the negotiation, in other words, almost before it started!

It is interesting perhaps to speculate why he did.  Some potential reasons might include:

The price or technical specification did not meet his requirements
He felt that he could get a better deal elsewhere
Personality conflict
Lack of confidence on his part in your plans / level of expertise

We could go on, but there are three or four for starters.  

In any case, we seem no further forward now with the project than we were when you were involved in these discussions - something that I know you will find galling in the extreme.

PS  Is anyone else finding it annoyingly difficult when typing a long-ish post; for some reason, the script page seems to "slip"?