canarykiller

Thank you! Glad to be getting the ball rolling with Villa Talk.

Thanks Blandy! A couple of early issues raised by your mods.... It appears the is sometimes still a problem loading page 2. This is a problem - because thats the bit where you vote on the issue of standing! It has improved from the start where we lost 4 of the first 8 surveys - the data leakage is now running at about 6%. I have been told that if you keep clicking 'next' it will load eventually! If it doesn't it is best to try and go again - it'll probably work the second time, and we won't be double counting, as the surveys that don't reach page 2 don't tell us anything so we will discard any attempts which don't make the second page! I'm sorry it's not perfect, but I am just an enthusiastic amateur with a survey monkey - so roll with me if you can. Secondly - the question around client references is clearly optional as I didn't want people not filling the survey in because they couldn't be bothered to dig out their reference. However, both here and VV have raised some doubts about this that I honestly hadn't considered. We put it in place as an alternative to asking for an address or an email, to help us verify the data and show we hadn't just sat there making a load of responses up. Several of you will be in Villa supporting families, posting from the same IP address, others could post from home and work to up the vote - so the data is open to question/corruption. The client ref provides some degree of evidence that we have actually surveyed real people - especially on the paper one, where I could have just sat down and tried out 300 different styles of handwriting! It has been pointed out to me that when we are all trying to book our tickets for the FA Cup Final next year, there could be someone being told their client reference has already been used - and they will be looking at me! Someone else has pointed out that it could give me access to your Villa cash - which I really wish I had thought of before I booked my Spurs tickets! All I can say is that the data is password protected and I am the only person outside the club who has access to it. I honestly haven't even thought about your references till it was brought up with me, and if you could see all of your comments - you'd know why! Some of them are absolute poetry, nearly all of them are well thought out and argued - I would love to publish a book of the best of them! It is up to you whether you want to trust me with it or leave it. I'd genuinely not thought of all this stuff - as I say, just an enthusiastic amateur - Definitely fallible. The main thing is, I have the beginnings of something we could genuinely do something with here - so please just fill in the bits you want to - and add your voice.

Hi All! I've had a chat with the mods and they are happy for me to start a new thread, even though on a search I can see that you have all been talking about this quite recently. Some of you may already be aware of this from other forums/social media or from meeting me before the Newcastle game In short - if we can provide proper evidence that Villa fans want safe standing areas, the club have indicated that they are willing to step up their campaign to get it going, but as it's going to be pretty uphill for them given the significant opposition they will face from many quarters, they aren't going to do unless they know it's what we want. There's a survey at the bottom of this article - but please read the article, & look at the little video if you can, because I have had a few responses that clearly demonstrate that people haven't been paying attention! Safe Standing Supporting the choice to stand or sit Aston Villa FC have become the first Premiership club to publicly back the introduction of “Safe Standing”. However, the current facilities and ground regulations mean that Aston Villa cannot allow fans to persistently stand in seated areas during the match. In fact, the club are regularly threatened with closure of sections of the ground if they cannot control persistent standing in seated areas. Sections of The Holte are under threat, and some away allocations (both ours and away fans at Villa Park) have been reduced. Aston Villa FC know that many people want the choice to stand or sit. Currently we are in a no-mans land. The people who want to stand are told to sit down, the people who want to sit still have people standing in their way, and the stewards, who come to work to help people, find themselves locked in pointless arguments with fans who basically just want to enjoy the game. The club has no easy task taking this forward, so they want to know whether YOU, the fans, want them to invest in a continuing campaign for a “safe standing” trial area at Villa Park. I am an ordinary season ticket holder from L7, and having got pretty frustrated during the Rotherham match, when the ever lively Brigada fans were taken out from behind me, I felt the time had come for me to try and do something. So I contacted the club, and I started this survey last Saturday before the Newcastle game with their blessing. I put together an information sheet, and a short survey which sets out to show whether there are any particular groups of people who are put off by standing. I took it to Family Fun Day because its important to find out what young Villa families think about this. What I found was 100% support for safe standing. Parents don't want to stand up with their kids, but were still in favour because they want their kids to enjoy watching Aston Villa the way they did when they were younger, but of course, safely. A safe standing area is nothing like an old style terrace. It consists of barriers only 2 steps apart, with a designated, ticketed space within which you can stand safely, without being subjected to any surges or over-crowding issues. Safe standing areas have seats which are bolted in an upright position for most games, but can be released to allow seating for matches or events which require it. Of course - seated areas would still exist alongside this, just as they always did. This is what it looks like..... There is loads of further information, pictures, videos, myth busters at http://www.fsf.org.uk/campaigns/safe-standing/ Aston Villa are proposing that the first trial is of just 256 seats, which are situated in the area by the corner flag, in the lower left Holte End, next to The Trinity Road Stand. This area has been chosen because it does not adversely impact on the sight lines of those who will remain in seated areas in the rest of the ground whilst the trial is conducted, and is small enough to be accepted and get us started. If it is successful, it could be expanded. Please let us know your views, positive and negative, I'll be in the Holte Suite doing a paper survey before the Man City game, & I'll be in other areas in the weeks to come....... or just fill this in on line for me.... Remember, this is a survey, not a petition, whichever side of the argument you're on, get your voice heard, I have already got 100 paper surveys and nearly 300 online so it's rolling - so join the debate and lets have a proper conversation.... http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5BSLL6G Thank you amfy x