Sunday 11 August 2019

Volatile Mood Under The Sheds


You could say this weekend’s Trader mood was volatile. Poor business, unfavourable press, and concern over some license renewal letters that went out during the week all had impact. Add in a TRC agenda item about a demerit points system for Traders and the drums were beating loudly.

Demerit systems are unlikely to get a good reception from independent business people like QVM Traders. As one Trader said many of us refused to accept our School Headmaster’s instructions and probably one reason we ended up at QVM is because we wanted greater freedom in our business lives than regular employees are able to achieve.

Toeing the line is not our strong point, but the observation was made by another Trader that if there is to be a demerit system it should apply equally to all. There are rules that we want our neighbours to follow, and most Traders believe that bad behaviour should be policed. The last thing we want is un-structured preference being shown to some Traders over others. A carefully balanced, structured points system would treat everyone fairly.

Let’s not go too far down this track because the subject is up for discussion at the next TRC meeting and more will be revealed in due course. But perhaps we can make one suggestion – change the name - drop the Demerit Point nomenclature and call it a Trader Community Co-operation Rating. That sounds a lot more positive and something we might even have accepted from our School Headmasters.