Who do we Represent?

The 'representative groups' that are ripping off the taxpayer and failing to properly support the position of the Survivors is a scandal. The two 'property based groups' are SOCA-UK and Right of Place and I have attended meetings organised by both groups in the UK.

SOCA-UK hold public meetings on the first Saturday of the month in a pub in Nr London. The pub is quite close to Tommy Waters's home and the meetings have become as stale as the stench of old beer attracting an audience of about 6 or 7 plus the Waters crowd. It's as good to keep away from all that stuff now.

The ROP mob used a rotten trick in the spring of 2002 to boosts its membership list. At taxpayers expense it advertised a public meeting at the Novatel in Hammersmith and said copies of Sean Ryan's Report 'Towards Redress and Recovery' would be available to all who came to the meeting. The meeting attracted about 200 people and everyone wanted a copy of the Report.

However, in order to receive it you had to put your name and address into a sort of receipt register and sign it, and the ROP people told us the Dept of Education & Science officials required this as proof the Report was being distributed to the survivors. Copies would NOT be given out unless they were signed for in this manner we were told. I refused to complete the register and helped myself to a copy from a pile on the floor.

It was all a sleight of hand and a few weeks later some friends of mine received unsolicited membership cards from Right of Place/Second Chance, as did many others who attended that meeting.The receipts register had materialised into a membership register and I never went to another of their awful meetings since their objective was to obtain 'members' regardless and at best their advice was quite awful.

The membership cards trick was pretty low even by the standards of the Cork mob who think themselves more clever than a cartload of monkeys.