starliaisonDirk Gently 3. I believed that STAR was slowly dying as an organisation through lack of new-blood coming through. STAR had never had an election and didn't have a membership which was properly representative of all Reading supporters. That's not down to STAR, as it represented its members, but that was a by-product of the fact that STAR's members primarily join to travel by coach (*). I felt STAR had never found a way to answer the question “I don’t travel by coach, why should I pay a tenner to join STAR?” - and that was damaging them as an organisation and shaping their policies in the wrong direction. I believe STAR needs to open its membership wider and cheaper (possibly via a zero-cost, e-membership, or maybe a very low-cost membership with "top-up" for "Travel membership") so that it will be more attractive to *all* Reading supporters. With a larger membership, it'll be more effective, more representative and it'll have a much larger talent-pool of people who will, hopefully, participate more.
Don't get me wrong, I put a lot of effort into helping found STAR and helping run it for 8 years, and I don't want to damage it or get into a slanging match with anyone. But I want STAR to be a dynamic, representative and inclusive mass-membership campaigning organisation, as I believe that Reading supporters need and deserve an organisation like that. I could see STAR getting less and less effective and moving further and further away from being the type of organisation I believe it needs to be, and got to the point where what I felt I could achieve through STAR wasn't worth the time I was putting into it.
I know all too well how much you put into STAR Dirk, and I don't want a slanging match either as we have both put in many more hours for our fellow supporters than most if not all of STAR's critics. We may disagree on parts of STAR's purpose but we have tried to involve others and it has slowly happened.
FYI since you resigned we have had new volunteers standing for election so the new blood is coming in, and they are not regular (if at all) coach travellers and also not friends of existing board members, so it is still progressing and this year was very close to having to hold an election, which as you know is the goal (not often attained) of most supporters trusts.
Unless RL has got it wrong, I can't take anything you say seriously about wanting to be representative of Reading Fans when your policy is to ignore the largest online or offline community Hob Nob Anyone?
