... all this emotive stuff they have been gorging on recently is making some dubs go really vocal...
konceptual99
JoinedPosts by konceptual99
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New - JW Flash Mobs...
by konceptual99 in... all this emotive stuff they have been gorging on recently is making some dubs go really vocal.... .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc2cra-rwm8.
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the insanity of Sam herds talks at the convention
by purrpurr ini've picked up two that stood out to me but i'm sure others will have noticed more:.
he gave an illustration about fearing god and he said it is like a wife who has spent all day preparing the evening meal for her husband and she hears him come home and perhaps she is trembling a bit out of fear that he might not like the meal she has cooked for him....!!!!!!!!????.
the other was about verbal abuse and how it should not be used but rather than site the effect it has or the forms it can take he said that we shouldn't call each other " dumb dumb" or "knuckle head" .
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konceptual99
I agree about the deep rooted sexism Paris. I am not suggesting that's what I thought about Sam Herd, just reflecting the concensus of opinion I heard from conversations with various ones. Even some of the most independent sisters I know thought he was lovely. It's the cult of personality.
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konceptual99
Lett did not give a face to face talk at Twickenham. He presented the audio drama via a pre-recorded video preeee-sentation.
There was audible laughter at his facial expressions. The guy looks like a nut job.
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the insanity of Sam herds talks at the convention
by purrpurr ini've picked up two that stood out to me but i'm sure others will have noticed more:.
he gave an illustration about fearing god and he said it is like a wife who has spent all day preparing the evening meal for her husband and she hears him come home and perhaps she is trembling a bit out of fear that he might not like the meal she has cooked for him....!!!!!!!!????.
the other was about verbal abuse and how it should not be used but rather than site the effect it has or the forms it can take he said that we shouldn't call each other " dumb dumb" or "knuckle head" .
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konceptual99
@Apognophos
Sorry, which convention was this? Not this summer's RC?
He came out with this at Twickenham. He might have used it elsewhere if he did the same talks I expect.
The "knuckle-head" thing just made people laugh. It's cultural. We don't say that in the UK but the point was understood. People found it endearing.
The wife fearing her husband raised plenty of smiles as well. Of course people had raised eyebrows but it's not unusual to hear old school brothers come out with claptrap like that. People don't take wholesale umbridge. They just think he's an old boy and brush it off.
Sam Herd came out of his time at Twickenham with a shining reputation. They loved him. They thought he was gentle, humble, understanding, concerned and not what they were expecting.
The knock backs I got when blowing cold water over his talks were quite pointed.
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The long weekend of B.S begins - UK.
by quellycatface inisn't going to be wonderful??.
not being there..
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konceptual99
They actually apologised for something?
Yes Heartofaboy, they actually apologised for something. In fact they apologised for two things.
The first was the shambolic way they (dis)organised things for the infirm and those with special needs on Friday. They completely underestimated the numbers and they ran out of facilities very early on. There were many who simply could not be properly accomodated.
The other apology was for the complete and utter cock up in organising the shittle (I mean it that way) buses going back to the hotels. There was no organisation of the queues. People waited patiently for bus after bus, only for them to turn up, stop in the wrong place and then have a bundle of brothers barge on, pushing and pulling - ignoring those who had been waiting for far, far longer. I know of one brother who in the end had to physically block the steps to the bus to let his pregnant wife, another family with a pregnant sister and some elderly ones get onto the bus where they had waited for bus after bus for almost 2 HOURS and simply been pushed out of the way all that time. All he got was abuse from his "brothers" in the melee. So much for brotherly love and showing an interest in others. I don't know how he showed that much restraint.
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A new member
by LP97 ini'm a 17 year old from scotland.
can i just say this site is absolutely brilliant.
finally found people with open minds and free thought that doesn't just consist of "well the wt told me this so it must be right".. my story is that i'm just like any other child of a jw...brought up into a life of indoctrination where "the world's" thinking is automatically wrong.. that is until i was 14 - a light turned on in my head.
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konceptual99
Welcome LP. Glad you are awake before you get consumed into dubdom.
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Sept 1 service meeting mystery revealed
by Saltheart Foamfollower inthe letter has appeared at last - just for uk.
it is a money grab for the new bethel which has been approved.
there is a video to be shown - just watched it - brief summary of uk bethels, why current one is too small, why we need money to build a new one.
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konceptual99
Good job Saltheart. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were one of my fave reads in my teenage years btw....
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The long weekend of B.S begins - UK.
by quellycatface inisn't going to be wonderful??.
not being there..
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konceptual99
Oh - I forgot to mention the other landmark announcements.
They actually made TWO apologies from the platform. One for the disasterous way they handled the infirm and those with special needs on Friday. The other was for the chaotic way they organised people queing for shuttle busses to their hotels. Delegates who had paid thousand of pounds had to wait 2 hours to get on a bus then spend an hour driving 3-4 miles.
That was a first that I can remember.
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6 branches subsidize the rest of the branches.
by hoser ini went to the meeting this morning and we had some guy from overseas bethel give the public talk.
6 countries subsidize the rest.
he said in some countries all the donations that they get from contributions don't even pay the electricity bill for the branch buildings so money has to come in from these 6 richer countries.
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konceptual99
I think both theories are true. They are turning assets into cash for a number of reasons, including getting more assets. In the short term they have plenty of money. The question is what the projections are like? How sustainable is the current cash flow? As I have expressed elsewhere today I don't think the WTS is going to run out of money anytime soon but I am sure that the projections for the next 20-30 years do not make fun reading for Letts and co.
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Fudging the Numbers: Is the WTBTS in decline?
by Coded Logic init's no secret that the wtbts has a cash flow problem.
over the past three years they have closed 20 of their 116 branches.
they have sold off most of their properties in and around ny (including some kingdom halls), drastically reduced the # of printed pages for the watchtower and awake magazines, reduced the printing of books and other materials, increased the number of single page tract campagnes, installed cc machines at their assembly halls, and are now seizing of controll of property assets from local kingdom halls using renovation projects.
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konceptual99
This topic has been analysed many times on this forum. My reading of the situatuon is that the WTS has gone through the same process most large corporates have done over the past 20-30 years as the use of technology has changed the landscape as far as doing business is concerned.
At a corporate level they have downsized. Part of this is because technology allows them to do more with less. Part of it is numbers. There is growth but mainly from poorer parts of the world. There are strong indications that those in richer nations are giving less. It would also can be assumed that those donating as a percentage of the number in a location is reducing. The funds have further to go.
The WTS has been able to realise funds from capital tied up in assets such as property. They are doing this in Brooklyn and around the world. This does give them a big injection of working capital but they can only do this once for a given asset. Of course, further investment is happening (e.g. Warwick) but they have to have operating bases and cannot forever buy, develop and sell on the scale they have at the moment.
However, the change to how halls are funded is interesting as this allows them to once again grow an asset base. In countries like the UK where each congregation is a seperate charity there are some protential issues here. In another thread about a special local needs upcoming in the UK I thought it might signal some begging for the new branch build at Chelmsford however someone made this point about the rules around charities and property ownership. It could be that the WTS will change the structure of congregations in England and Wales to make this property grab more straightforward.
The reductions they are making in literature production are part of the downsizing and cost savings. I am not convinced that all of this is being driven by cash flow projections - it could still be an element of the dog wagging the tail rather than the other way round - however the net result is the same: they need less money to operate and therefore can mitigate the effects of reducing income over a longer time.
The other aspect to consider is the WTS is driven by numbers. They NEVER comment on negative figures, only ever promote positive numbers. They will do everything they can to spin the numbers to present decline as growth. Have you noticed the lack of emphasis on the amount being printed nowadays? All the hype at Twickenham was about the number of languages the web site is in, how many people attended in the UK, how many hours are being done (never contextualised of course) etc. The only mention of printed material was when one of the printing overseers was interviewed and they talked about brochures and that they had printed enough to make a stack X number of times the size of The Shard (the tallest building in Western Europe).
For the moment the proselytising in poorer nations will keep the growth as a net gain for some time, perhaps decades. The publishers figures is fudged in the sense that it always presents a peak, not an average but is not the important one. It is still possible to extrapolate information by comparing figures to historical numbers and by slicing and dicing reports to take into account location for example. There are posters on here who have done sterling work.
It is obvious from their efforts that the WTS is not really growing in a sustainable way. It does not really reflect an organisation being blessed by God. It is not preaching in a meaningful way to the vast majority of the world's population. My personal opinion however is that reports of the death of the WTS have been exagerated. It can go on for years, not just financially but also with the duping of millions of people. It will take something of huge magnitude to hasten any decline. I don't even think that a very public peodophile scandle would do it unless it could be proven there was a GB sanctioned cover up of epic proportions.
1-2% growth in western nations has been the case for years. Even decline would not shake most people just so long as the overall numbers are growing.
The biggest risk to the WTS is education and awareness. The hype of this summer and it's conventions will die down and people will be back to the same old same old. The changes going on do keep people on their toes but you cannot change everything or do things quickly without consquence. I live in hope that more and more people will wake up but the WTS have proved masters of managing congnative dissonance.