by researcher 17 Replies latest jw friends
I had a friend who would pay the landlord of a pub, that was close to the venue, he gave him £1 a day.
Then a couple of years later, the society had that carpark designated and you had to pay the society, £10 for 3 days (whether you went the 3 days or not)
Scam!!!!!
Huh? I've never heard of this policy before.........At the summer assemblies around here, you have to pay for parking, but it doesn't go to the Society, it goes to the city who own the parking lots.............
Re the U K policy :
i have been out of touch for a few years now, but I was Cong Secretary up until 1997. The Convention Co ordinator in the congo, (secretary) had to pre order car park tickets for the District assembley . Eg at Twickenham there were car parks ,both adjoining the ground and some more in locality . No ticket, no entrance. One paid a set fee (£5 or £10 ?? from memory) and it covered all 3 days .. We understood that it covered the cost of renting the extra parks
I think there were different policies depending on the venue.
As best as I can remember:
The WTS tried very hard to get the city or venue owner to drop the parking charges for the conventions along with concessions.
Most places dropped concessions readily enough but a few places still insisted on parking. The majority of venues that dropped the parking charges was where the WTS would issue WT parking passes to be purchased at the hall prior to the convention to gain entrance to the parking lot at the venue.
Though it was never stated outright, it was assumed by the publishers that the WTS was being charged by the venue or city for parking based on estimates of attendance and was therefore passing the cost to the publisher and as good publishers we had no problem with ponying up the dough. We, of course, assumed wrong. As the article that blondie posted shows, it was all a scam. The WTS had negotiated some of the cost of parking into the rental price or negotiated free parking altogether, then turned around and charged each of us $10 to park at a parking lot that had already been acquired in the price of the rental of the venue. Once it was leaked, by an ethical brother no less, the jig was up and the plug was pulled on the scam. Since then parking has been free at the majority of WT conventions.
Someone mentioned that the brother who blew the whistle was DFd. Is there proof of this? I don't remember hearing about that.
edited: Duh. If I had finished reading the article I would have seen it. Doh!
Yes, indeed, well done, Blondie!
And welcome to New Zealand!!
OMG, I remember the donation for parking arrangement. I never realized that this was another scam to collect money and not pay fees to the rented facility.
Me too!
Dragonlady76
i just looked at the links blondie refered to....and it reminded me of when i was working in food services...sandwich prep at circuit assemblies...i would be handed a sheet of various sandwiched and their contents and the sheet i was given was a duplicate of the costings made by the food overseer...making a sandwich was pennies but then overheads were added and then it was rounded up but still a reasonable price was arrived at....then this price was doubled and rounded up...didnt think any thing of it cos obviously the cost of the sandwich defrayed the running costs of the assembly
at a district convention in edinburgh the convention overseer from bethel that year was ron drage and on a particularly hot afternoon a lot of people were walking on the concourse instead of sitting listening and so he phoned each buffet captain and told them to open their buffets and sell stuff.....if they are not going to be listening they might as well be making us money...he said......fair point
tijkmo of the 'food services only simplified things for the hierachy but made things much more difficult for the r+f aswell as taking all the fun out of assemblies especially for young people who no longer had an opportunity to meet other young people in a spiritual working enviroment until quickbuilds came along and you could only go on them if you had a skill and werent pioneering cos rbc overseer wouldnt sign your report card cos you should have been out on the ministry' class
