[pp.int.general] Invitation to the PPI General Assembly 2011

[Andrew Norton]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 1/20/2011 5:29 PM, Gregory Engels wrote:
> Andrew, please stop senseless bitching around.
> 
> If you are thinking some things in the PPI needs improvement,
> you are very welcome to step up and lend a hand, espetially
> since you are trying constantly to give an impression, you
> are an matter expert on anything involved running the PPI.

I'm as much an 'expert' as you, as I've done the same job you're doing,
and did it for as long. Although when people asked ME hard questions, I
tried my best to give them answers, rather than trying to avoid
answering them by going 'stop trolling'.

Plus, 'step up and lend a hand' - well, i've certainly tried. Of course,
that the streams that passed for meetings never really worked for me,
and often were incomprehensible when they did, and the comments and
suggestions were ignored, or, as in this case, dismissed as 'trolling'.

There's also the case of my year off. That ended in July, and I took a
position with the USPP. Silly me, for reading the intent and the spirit
of the statues, combined with the active history of the PPI, meant that
what I felt I *could* do was limited. Besides which, I kept checking on
your meeting agendas and public documents (very few), there just didn't
seem like there was anything at all to help with.

Seriously, you guys at the absolute PITS at documentation. From reading
the agendas and minutes (when they're posted - its not like the
extremely scanty information in them couldn't be posted real time during
the meeting) the activity from the last meeting to now can be summarised as:
*Lost the website/forum
*Had half the taskforces go dead
*had a press release parroting service (which doesn't work at presnt
because of point 1)
*Had a party of the month thing (which again, doesn't work because of
point one
*Finally paid out the money from the last conference in the last month
or two (according to emails here, and your meeting minutes)
*Flat out ignored all the conventions, common practices and so on under
which the PPI had been operating on since 2007.

> 
> some observations on what you again (and i beginning to
> suspect that you very well might do this on purpose) got
> wrong:
> 
> 1. An international coordinator for PP-DE coordinates, as
> the name implies. I do no represent PP-DE, this is the job
> of our Chairman Jens Seipenbush and his vice Andy Popp.
> I am also not (and never was) an official delegate from PP-DE
> to PPI. (I did not participated in voting in Brussels nor I am
> among the first under-signers of the PPI Statutes)

However, your job is to work 'internationally' on behalf of PPDE (I know
what the job does and entails, again, like your present position, it's
one I've held before, for the USPP in the first half of 07), to
coordinate. Yet your PPI position means you have to coordinate between
parties as well. So, you're doing the same job, for two different
masters. THAT IS THE ISSUE.

When you are talking between parties, the motivation could be for PPI,
or PPDE, and though you might specify one, that there is a potential
question over the group motivating your actions & the very fact you
would have to specify one shows the problem.

Drop one. Even if you believe it doesn't make any difference in
practice, it most certainly has the APPEARANCE of something that stinks
to high heaven, and as you (should) know by now, politics is 50% appearance.

> 
> 2. A (local) election campaign for a city council seat over here
> in germany is very different from campaigns in the US.
> In no way is it a full time job, even for the "established"
> parties. Everyone in the city council is _supposed_ to be
> a "normal" citizen, who is leading a normal life and have
> a normal job, besides of his political engagement.

I know exactly what you mean. That was the reason it took me so long to
reply last time, as I spent some time looking into things, and
researching, and asking some German friends of mine.

You already have one part time, unpaid political job that you campaigned
to be elected to, on the promise you would do the best job you could.
You did that in April 2010. Now you are running for election for a new
part time, unpaid political job, where you (I would hope!) promise to do
the best job you can.

You're so busy trying to tack on job titles and political points for a
CV, you're not doing the jobs you already have very well. You just can't
be, unless you have some ability to warp time.

Lets just say you DO get elected in them. Where is the time for this
position going to come from? will it be from your business? unlikely, as
it pays your bills. So, that leaves two options. Either the time comes
from time you would have spent on PPI stuff, or from more free time.
Now, I don't know if you remember, but I held your position a while
back. I know how much work should be going into things (in fact, the
reason i stepped down was because there was so much, that I couldn't
cope, which is why there's now a board of you to do the same workload),
so either your work-time on the PPI is going to be curtailed by this new
post (assuming you get it, and certainly while you're on the campaign
trail), or you weren't doing enough work for the PPI to have your lack
of work be noticed. If the former, you're letting us all down, and if
the later, why do we even need you?

There's also another point.
Why, at no time, have you publicly announced to this list, to the people
you promised to work for (as head of the PPI) that you were seeking
other offices? That your ability to work on the job the people on this
list elected you to do will be compromised? That is, after all, the sort
of transparency many of us are seeking from our own governments.

> 
> 3. you have strange ideas on how I should spend my
> time. I would like to say, that this is not of your concern.

Ah, I see. Basically you are beyond accountability then? That would
explain a LOT of things.

Andrew

- -- 
Andrew Norton
http://ktetch.blogspot.com
Tel: (352)6-KTETCH [352-658-3824]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJNOMNXAAoJECjjuYTW3X5HeGEH/R6tj5igtsnY41UxaDX75HIJ
lT2QzZIcn+C9xXb09m+f62dFu5NVJWR2+RQRDWIHxEbap4jtdwTuu4x2H5L1eci3
4duqCfj0sdm1gLiIPzp1t3C1wAQwhF6TqGflgJFT4yJHv4m6uqPRReMwJExezg3L
OSa+2ZkWrA0Nt0Am+xYqujiRJL9pqoh/JE2l3dw0gHS5rhxE2rFLCgdIMhQy9Zax
A2W+P/qqOo9i8AGiwo9rjiPp1ZqQUPf3i2eleocc5Ej9xLY/2Hcj123qr4V+1waB
o+cbrCnjT/cmaNjBOdy4WqajQvKdz/jw5/yaw3JXP49L8tm/HkCHZ8a6DZtKSjo=
=ziKi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----