by
Tracey Curtis-Taylor » Tue Oct 02, 2018 11:02 pm
I am sorry that the 2018 AGM is confronted by a motion about me. It comes at the suggestion of the Chairman. I felt that the process whereby massed proxy votes at the 2016 AGM stripped me of the Woodhams Award on the never explained grounds that I had ‘brought the LAA into disrepute’ was deeply flawed. The Chairman was not prepared to consider the possibility that his actions and those of the Board before, during and after the AGM might have been anything less than exemplary; he issued the challenge.
Since the LAA was notified in September 2018 of a motion asking members to agree that what was done in their name in 2016 was wrong, the PPruNe chat forum has been awash with repetitious and abusive messages from a small group of trolls with an impressive capacity for hatred. They are incensed that the Times dared to publish a feature on the LAA and myself by a journalist specialising in aviation matters. Nasty stuff about me previously run by the Daily Mail and the Sun evidently troubled them less.
This obsessive discussion – slightly moderated in language – has now transferred itself to the LAA forum where some twelve angry men have spent the last two weeks agreeing with each other. Expressions of outrage that the previously expressed democratic will of the membership that I be disgraced would be subverted by the motion sit rather oddly with this message posted on 2 October 2018 about how to defeat it: “If every contributor to this thread can galvanise five LAA members and ensure those votes are posted (collect/post them yourselves if you have to), it's job done. Many of us are in groups where our co-owners are compelled to be LAA members. Use that disadvantage to our advantage”.
I have made a statement on the motion which will, I hope, be seen by all members; but just to correct a few of the bilious fantasies being peddled on this forum:
• I am not a liar, nor in the habit of taking credit for the other people’s achievements.
• I have never solicited an award from the LAA or any other organisation.
• I do not have the backing of a ‘
PR machine’ or ‘legal team’, nor do I possess an influential ‘entourage’ of ‘establishment’ figures. ‘Tracey & Co’ are imaginary foes; if the trolls really think they are the proles they utterly deceive themselves.
• I have no agenda to subvert the LAA. The object of Stewart Jackson’s motion is to clear my name of allegations gratuitously made against me and the LAA’s name of being vindictive and misogynistic, and move on.
• The claim made in a message of 20 September that the passing of the motion would be followed by ‘all manner of other undesirable actions being brought to bear’ is arrant nonsense.