Nick’s Response to my offer to assist at Extreme Festival
Gentle readers: Before you read this a couple of warnings.
1. Yes it is messy and does get personal
2. Because Nick has removed my original post his reply is somewhat out of context and therefore the ESA membership will probably be a little confused! The original post is safely stored here : http://whealson.sk8school.co.uk/2008/05/31/sk8school-at-eastbourne-extreme-2008/
I am not going to add any further comments at this stage, I will agree with Nicks post on this one point immediately however and that is - I did ask that all of this happen in public. The only other thing I have to say is a thank you to Tony D for his comment after Nicks - I do agree with you, however there is of course a lot going on “under the surface”, that you won’t yet be aware off. This “public scrutiny” whilst not pleasant, some would say damaging to the skate community and perhaps skating in general is in my view a necessary evil.
The Astute will of course note that if one person in a disagreement has asked to make everything public, whilst knowing the risks, he must presumably have good reason for doing so?
This is Nicks post, utterly unedited and in its entirety. Initially I’d like the reader to view it and my original post and just make a few mental notes, gauge it for yourselves. I’ll do the dissection later, not now as it’s all a bit heated and besides there’s just too much to read!
I truly hope Nick will build a login and join me in the dissection over the next few days or week here.
Please feel free to build a login and comment away Nick - no one gets banned here!
Nicks “Answer”
Dear Tim W
Thank you very much for your post. I am somewhat surprised to see you discussing these issues so publicly. Certainly this is the response I was hoping from you almost 2 years ago. However your email now needs to be put into context. The ESA cannot simply ignore some of your unethical business practices that you personally put into place against the ESA and other skating businesses in Eastbourne. As it was your decision to discuss this so publicly, I think this is a perfect opportunity to raise some of our concerns and explain to all of our and your members the reasons behind the ESA not being overly keen in working with skate school.
Firstly I appreciate that the ESA is having a major impact on skate school. I know that you simply cannot compete on price or services. The fact that we can offer the same level of service for a tenth of the price must obviously be of concern to you. Knowing how you have operated in the past we are certainly not surprised to still see so many snide comments about us littering your website. We are skaters and that’s what we want to concentrate on! We certainly do not want to stoop to your level.
However, you specificaly asked me to respond in public, explaining why you are not involved currently at the Extreme festival. This suggest to me that you are once again miss leading your members as you are fully aware of the reasons as this was explained to you by myself and the Eastbourne Borough council.
However you would like to know why we are uncomfortable in working with you. Most skaters will not be aware that when we started the ESA you tried to high jack and miss lead skaters in Eastbourne by promoting yourself within the ESA, stating on your site that people who have lessons with you will be then registered as an ESA member. With your IT skills you used the internet to direct those looking for the ESA to your website. Unfortunately not only did you try to trade and deceive members of the public by pretending to be involved in the ESA but you pursued the same action against a small local based skate hire business. Taking their name of ” Wheely good fun”.Your action led to you receiving a very strong worded letter from their solicitor. Soon after, we had a meeting ourselves explaining that we would also take legal action if you continue to mislead skaters and promote yourself as part of the ESA. We were asked by thier solicitor to save all of your web pages just in case you decide to continue with such practice.
Our next issues with you were when you decided to book and use the Sovereign Centre hall under our name. Maybe this was an innocent mistake on your part but surely even with your common sense you would have realised how unusual it was to use a sport centre facility for free. We of course passed on your details to the centre so that they could charge you and not the ESA for the hall. I was informed that this led to you being banned from using their services again.
This brings me onto the Extreme. Once again your letter is very misleading. The Eastbourne borough council and I made it very clear to you that if you wish to participate in the event it needs to be organised and discussed with the ESA. May I again remind you that the funds raised in the ESA pays for the running of the skate festival. We have volunteers that give up their time 3 times a week through out the year to support the association and extreme with no financial gain to them. It is thanks to the ESA members that the festival runs. Yet you selfishly want to high jack the Extreme festival simply to promote your services for your own financial gain .To pretend otherwise and state that you are simply trying to help us is completely ridiculous and out of character. You only seem to want to help when Extreme is on.
The fact that you mentioned in your letter that your services will be “free of course” is laughable as it was your money driven attitude to charge everyone for skate lessons and skate hire last year that prevented you being in the festival. It was your attitude that led us to invest in skate hire equipment and qualified skating instructors.
Why should a private business gain financial reward off our volunteer workers without offering any form of logistical or financial support. That opinion was relayed to you very clearly by Mike Marcham from the Eastbourne council. Why do you continue to pretend that you are unaware of this?
The Extreme festival is about promoting skating and having fun. Please try to remember this. I really hope this year that you will try to conduct yourself appropriately and professionally, then we may discuss your possible involvement. Simply employing dirty and under hand tactics will not do you any favours with me or the ESA team. Once again you seemed to have angered the ESA team with your arrogant attitude. As for us being short of responsible adults, may I just add we have such a fantastic group of adult skaters that many are offering their services to help with Extreme. They certainly appreciate what we are trying to do and I think you should try too.
As for involving skate school to get that professional touch then maybe we will have to survive without your card board paper banners. I suggest that if you talk about yourself as being professional then you need to demonstrate that to others through your conduct. Based on your past conduct and your arrogant letter this may be difficult.
Once again Tim, if you wish to participate in the Skate festival then you need to go through the right channels. To organise your own skate event at the Extreme is unlawful and this has been clearly explained to you by prior council communication. You high jacking the festival for your own financial selfish gains will again be raised in the council meeting and I’m sure the council will once again write to you expressing that very opinion.
From now on Tim please send your correspondence via the appropriate channels. Please note that your account with us has been suspended.
This letter has been read and indorsed by the ESA team.
END QUOTE
This entry was posted on 01/06/2008 at 07:51 pm and is filed under Nick Esteve. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.