canarykiller

Hi! (I looked for an old AVST thread but couldn't find one - so I hope it's Ok to start one!) I'm doing a fan consultation stall for AVST with Lee Preece (The Villa's SLO) in The Academy (family fun zone - North Stand car park) tomorrow before the Arsenal game from 1-2pm. People can just come along to talk to us with comments, compliments, complaints or suggestions & we'll either answer them if we can, or take them up with the relevant person. We thought it'd be good for people to feel they had a regular place to take their issues with the cub - If it works we'll make it a regular thing. You don't have to be a member to come and speak to us, but the opportunity to get signed up will be the if you want to. Maybe see some of you tomorrow? Cheers!

It is gaining momentum though. I am currently field ing calls from supporters groups up & down the country about getting a survey going. I have become a bit of a national safe standing survey mentor. It is all a bit odd, but it does seem that suddenly loads of club's supporters a on it and getting active. Even Liverpool fan groups have started coming out and talking about it. this would have been unheard of 12 months ago. In fact 'This is Anfield' have published a fantastic series of articles arguing that all seater stadiums are all part of the cover up & demonisation of the 96, and far from 'disrespecting' their memory by standing, they should be arguing for its restoration. The Arsenal survey was by an established supporter group, and got 17,000 responses with 92% in favour. Although theirs is much bigger, it was all online, where a third of ours was done face to face. The 2 therefore sit really well together, Arsenal's for pure size of the response, but our for the evidence base. It can be argued that an online survey has a bias towards those in favour, but our work face to face is able to evidence that this is the true picture. Face to face surveying also enables you to get a conversation going, get people talking about it, answer people's questions & concerns, as well as enabling you to target families, women, older people, people with disabilities - all the groups that people reckon won't want it to happen - and show that they want it too. The next premier league meeting isn't till Febraury, and I am closing the online survey tomorrow. I am hoping that other club's supporters picking up the baton will keep the momentum till then and enable Paul Faulkner to get this on the table. If you are mates with fans of other clubs - whether it's Albion/Blues/Wolves or glory hunters - talk to them about it too - get them to track down where it is getting moving at their club, or to get in touch about starts something up themselves. Just anything that keeps people talking will help.

Hi! Sorry I have been away for a while, but I guess we are at that stage where it slows down a bit. I have had a couple of meetings with Paul Faulkner & Lee Preece. They have produced a paper of the survey results which are still showing over 97% in favour of safe standing. They are really pleased with the survey, and believe it gives them something to take forward, but now they really need other clubs to come out in favour too. With that in mind, I was interested to see that Arsenal have published a major fan led survey on 'atmosphere' wich also shows 92% in favour of safe standing. this also shows that things are moving, the tide is turning, fans are starting to stand up & ask for this now. (black Scarf is the name of the fan group - you can find them on twitter - they are well established and it is a much bigger survey than mine) I went to a national meeting of Supporters Trust on Tuesday, and spoke about what we have been doing at Villa. People seemed impressed and I spoke to some of the reps of other clubs afterwards. I am hopeful that we can go down this route to get other sets of supporters to go out and survey their own fans. We need fans up & down the country to demonstrate that this is what fans want. the good thing about Supporters Trusts is that they are about working together as football fans on common causes, like the recent 'Twentys Plenty' campaign for cheaper away tickets. This is a really god place for me to be taking this forward. Paul Faulkner probably need half a dozen other clubs to be able to show their fans are behind this before he can get it properly on the table, and then we need a total of 14 Premiership clubs to suppport it to take it back to parliament. The Football Supporters Federation are also doing some publicity about my survey to encourage fans of other clubs to take it forward. ......and the campaign will be featured in the evening mail and on the official site tomorrow, with some frightening pictures of yours truly, having come straight from work and looking absolutely nothing like your average Holte Ender!

If you attended the meeting, then it most definitely is up to you if you wanted to say It was my first Trust meeting. I've been asked to take on a role there that I would like, so I'd prefer not to F it up by speaking out of turn before I even get started. No carrots or sticks needed for me - I'm just genuinely nice! [https://www.facebook.com/SomethingFreeUK/posts/479411978794777:0quote name="P3te" post="1115271" timestamp="1383246373]Am I being cynical thinking that maybe this is being milked for all it's worth to get more people to join the Villa Trust for the next meeting?

PF has done 2 web chats and an interview in the H&V magazine. If this is your idea of being kept in the dark you must like being blinded! Nothing new, nothing you haven't heard before, just interesting to hear it from the horses mouth - it gives it a different flavour. That's all.

Nice question. Yes I was, not only in content, but the clear honesty & openness with which it was conveyed.

It really isn't up to me, & I can't describe the 'how' in any meaningful way. It's genuinely (as I said on the other forum) a 'you had to be there' thing. Not in a top secret kind of way, but in a meaningless without context kind if way. I don't know if that helps - I don't know if anything other than a transcript will - & we haven't got one, & everyone is going to remember it a bit differently - & there lies a potential minefield beyond the one we somehow already landed in! Seriously - we need to move on. Its done.

I've only just loaded this app & it posted when I was adding a sentence at the end of he first paragraph. I was going to say .....'anything particularly surprising'

No - the sensitive part was not about ambition. Ambition was what most of he questions were about. I'd also say there wasn't anything It was an open meeting, & if loads of people had turned up then clearly the contents would've got to here, but equally, the meeting may have had quite a different feel. There were a small number of Trust members there, which gave it a very informal feel. So, the nature of the meeting changed due to the lack of wider interest. Repeating what was said won't give you any new insight, it was being there and getting a feel of HOW things were said that was interesting. I'm a bit stunned by the vitro tbh. I appreciate that there are people who live far away, or have work commitments, but I wouldn't mind betting that most of he people jumping up & down were in front of their telly less than 10 miles away, & weren't even interested enough to submit a question prior to the meeting.

The government doesn't have to sanction it, there's a loophole. I can't remember what it is exactly, but it is around the fact that the law only says that grounds have to have seats (which rail seating provides). It is ground regs that say you actually have to sit in them - and this is governed by local councils/ football authorities. That might not be exactly right - but John Darch from the safe standing roadshow, who makes it his business to know such things, definitely said that there doesn't need to be a change in law, and the reasoning was along these lines. It is definitely true to say that there is nothing in it for a government, so there are limited reasons for them to invest anything in it. However, interestingly, the police really liked it. they thought it was not only safer, but easier to manage. If the police backed it in these terms, then the government might too. The Hillsborough families do hold a lot of sway, in both footballing circles and in terms of influencing the government. They have a right to hold a strong view on this, but they do not have the right to irrationally dictate the future. Liverpool fans stand up in their seats like everyone else, and rail seating is safer than that.

Definitely! I have to admit that my instinct was to feel a bit gutted when I read last week that Man United have agreed to look at it. So many responses on the survey have talked about how great it would be for this to be another thing that Villa lead the way on, it'd be just typical for Man U to jump aboard at the last minute to steal our thunder! But - the truth is that if Man U support it, it WILL move, because they'll take Sky with them, and the pace of the whole movement will completely change. Man United's interest can only be good news!

Oh - there are some pics on twitter @amfy.

Sorry I am late with an update! It was good! At first it was really hard to get anyone to stop. It was always going to be tougher outside than it has been on the previous weeks where we have mostly surveyed people who were sitting around tables. The weather didn't help but it could have been a lot worse - certainly the worst rain of the day was just after we finished surveying and I made the dash along Witton Lane just in time for kick off. In the last hour we got a lot of interest & it was pretty non stop - lots of people checking out the rig, and picking up surveys. At one point we had a queue for clipboards! The biggest boost of the afternoon was the police coming to look at it, and then tweeting their support. This is a big positive for us Paul Faulkner popped down to see us a couple of times & overall, John Darch from the FSF was really pleased. I am due to meet up with Paul Faulkner next week to see where we go from here, but it is all really positive. We have something we can take forward. If it is true that Man United are ready to jump on board, things will really start to move.

It's pretty much a mini safe standing area, so that people can see it and try it out. I still need some help setting it up at about midday though!

Villa-Revelution - your Villa Cash doesn't begin to Pay for my shoes and bags habits! Anyway all! We have got the Safe Standing Roadshow coming to Villa Park on Sunday! It'll be set up by The Trinity Road ticket collection offices. We need some help setting it up at about midday. You wouldn't have to hang around after -unless you want to help with the surveys, you can just clear off to the pub! Any offers? Thank you. We are on our last push this weekend - and then I'll be meeting Paul Faulkner somewhen around the Everton game to see what we can do with the results.