Cairngormwanderer wrote:Ronnie Hillbagger wrote:[
Hi Neil,
Sadly I cannot make the AGM this year. I accept that you may be addressing a wider audience, fair enough, however, my question that you failed to address still stands. They are not accusations but facts and as an MBA trustee you are ideally placed to answer them head on are you not?
I'm a trustee, but I very much doubt that your father was called Mr Hillbagger. All I know is that you appear to be another anonymous troll hiding your identity while harping on about points that have already been answered by Essan.
Hi Neil,
I am not a troll and I suggest you calm down with the insults. You may be an MBA trustee but your earlier rant does you and the MBA no favours, as does your similar attack on Colin Scales in the MBA Autumn Newsletter - incidentally you appear to have privileged access to the MBA Newsletter to get that reply in so quickly. Sadly, you seem to have a habit of playing the man and not the ball and I suggest you need to have a long, hard think about that. Essan may or may not have answered the questions but surely you have an official voice, and as an MBA trustee it would be good to hear your position from a trustee would it not? My question still stands.
Since you seem intent on focusing me rather than the debate I'll indulge you as to my position. I am a long standing MBA member of more than 15 years and no my Dad's name was not Hillbagger as I suspect yours was not Wanderer... I fully support all the good work (and, yes, I've have been on work parties) of the MBA and it's charitable objectives. And no I wasn't bothered when the MBA published the locations of bothies in 2009. Then in early 2017 The Scottish Bothy Bible was published. To my dismay the MBA logo appeared in that dreadful book. At that time I asked myself "what should I do"? I decided to do nothing - apart from discuss the issue with friends/other members - unless direct harm was caused to an MBA bothy by the Bothy Bible and I decided to keep my counsel to myself whilst keeping myself informed regarding the 'debate' about the Bothy Bible and bothy commercialisation. What I've witnessed over the last few years - mainly on social media - was unedifying but informative nonetheless, and you, Neil, have been at times bilious in the way that you attack people (as demonstrated on this forum) and as an MBA trustee you should really know better.
Due to the closure of An Cladach as a direct result of the Bothy Bible/bothy commercialisation I have decided to break my silence and I opted to use this excellent outdoor forum to do this and get news of the An Cladach disaster 'out there', as social media is a cesspit that does not cater for reasoned debate. It breaks my heart to see what I and many others have predicted would happen to our bothies. The fact that the MBA trustees have supported the Bothy Bible is truly awful and as a result the closure of An Cladach is on them as much as the Bothy Bible. What will be the next bothy that is closed due to commercialisation? Will you, Neil, still support the Bothy Bible then? At what point will the MBA trustees say 'enough is enough'? At what point will they admit to a grave error with their involvement with the Bothy Bible and apologise to ordinary MBA members? Why won't they sever their ties with Geoff Allan and the Bothy Bible? They would get a lot of support form MBA members if they did.
As I say it breaks my heart to see what is going on re bothy commercialisation and from now on I will not be silent. The outdoor community has a right to know about these issues and how decisions made at the highest level in a Scottish charity have contributed to such entirely predictable problems as we now see at An Cladach.