Bachmann Deltic Review.

Ah, but I don't make a habit of it, there lies the difference. You on the other hand have been an apologist on numerous occasions for the said "gentleman" and that truly does make you an equal of his. Funny how the plonkers on this group flock together :-) Shame really as both of you genuinely do have much to contribute.

John

"John Smith" wrote

And a Happy New Year to you too!

John.

Personally John, in your position having recently made such a public hash of your friendship with a well respected contributor on and off this forum, I'd be a little contrite and keep my criticism of others to myself. You might want to make a New Year's resolution on the topic then you might get the respect you do actually deserve. You have more positive things than most to contribute. Concentrate on that.

Oh and you might well want to consider whether you should be defending the abnoxious and indefensible merely because they happen to have purchased £10k worth of product from you over the years. Brings your impartiality into question :-)

John

Irrespective of your comments, do you have a valid E-mail address....??

Colin Meredith

Should anyone on a newsgroup? The reality is that disclosing a real email address is an open invitation to spammers to send you all sorts of lovely mail. I made that mistake many years ago and had to change email addresses as a result.

Of course I have a valid email address but I'd be mad to disclose it here! Why would you want to email me directly?

John

"John Smith" wrote

That's a matter of opinion in more than one respect.

I wasn't defending anyone, just merely pointing out that your rudeness, earlier in this thread, suggested your manners were no better than the person you were criticising.

John.

Nothing personal intended and I can assure you that, as the relevant people know, I don't entirely disagree with your comments.... If you check through the replies then you'll find many similar to yours, including mine. I've got nothing to hide and I too know the truth.....spammers don't bother me either as they are reported but, one way or another, they'll sometimes get your e-mail ID.....no matter how hard you try to stop them.

Come on John, you apologised and your friend was so mortified even after your apology that he even mentioned it on his website. That does not sound good from any angle. Certainly no triumph. I'd be interested to know how it is a matter of opinion.

Interesting point and one that I would strongly agree with under normal circumstances. Steve Jones is not a normal case as he has shown on several occasions on this newsgroup and anyone that has taken the trouble to look up the electricnose website will likely have been taken aback by the less than mature approach taken. So in that particular instance I would suggest that my language was if not appropriate, a little tame. But then that can be a matter of opinion?

One point that really is interesting me, and possibly others, is where do you stand on the matter of Mr Jones' contribution. Was it acceptable? Was it spot on? Was it in rather poor taste or was it appalling? You know where I stand and where many others stand, but where do you stand? I do not think I have seen your opinion.

John

Hell, I never saw it as personal. I was just intrigued by your question. I've always found the best with spammers is not to get caught by them rather then trying to resolve the problem once it starts. But you are right, they still do get your address in the end, its just that the volume is lower the more you try to protect yourself.

Because I'm an all round nice guy? :-)

Don't know about me being *all round*, may be"half left and half right" and still a nice guy....;-)) Colin.

"John Smith" wrote

I don't particularly wish to draw this out further but I feel I must just make one further comment on this issue, particularly, as you have pointed out, Pat Hammond has chosen to prolong this matter further on his website.

I've *known* Pat Hammon for nigh on twenty years, during which time I've met him on, say a maximum of, half-a-dozen occasions (almost exclusively at model railway shows) and maybe spoken with him on the telephone a similar number of times. He did, on just one occasion, visit my home to buy some empty Tri-ang boxes which he said would be useful for his collection, and for which he paid me a nominal amount.

Now, as a consequence, although I would include Pat in my list of professional acquantances, I'm afraid friendship to me is a deeper issue than that, and I would never have considered Pat to be a friend in the generally accepted sense of the word.

Of course Pat's claim that I betrayed his friendship (a deeply emotive statement of course) couldn't possibly be just an example of him embroidering reality a little to make himself appear in a better light?

You can't defend your rudeness by asking me what my stand is on what you perceived to be the offending first posting. Is it beyond your ability to be critical of someone without resorting to such literacy masterpieces as:

*The man is a prick. What more can one say.* I don't suppose for one minute that you have any personal axe to grind against Mr. Jones?

Whatever you may think of me and my comments about Pat Hammond, I can say is that I never resorted to that level of immature and meaningless comment, and apart from the one issue on which I tendered an apology I still stand totally behind the rest of the points I made about MREmag in that particular thread on this newsgroup.

John.

The following **......**, e-mailed to me personally by a close acquaintance of SJ, is an exact copy which I hold on file...you will note that Steve Jones has contradicted himself as he then did, in fact, ban myself, and others, (AFTER we left of our own accord) from the group *Demodellers* of which, at the time, he was the moderator. I have asked Steve Jones, on several occasions, for reasonable answers for his actions......I received no reply whatsoever and remain banned from the said group, for a second time, without a valid reason as to why, yet again. The only explanation which I, personally, can offer is that he didn't like me suggesting a correction of his attitude at the time when I was first banned. An explanation for the second ban ? ....I had already left in protest of his actions (*read-only*) so your guess is as good as mine, especially as I'm still confused by the *cooling-off period* ......a bit of harmless banter, no bad language, between group members.

** > On the Tallis and Colin front, I put them on read-only for a cooling off

Why not jump in with both feet? No wonder Pat was mortified.

I suggest you re-read me last posting where I indicated that in normal circumstances I would agree with you that my initial posting would have been inappropriate. However, Mr Jones post was certainly not within the bounds of normality and rudeness is particularly appropriate in his case. Some people need a dose of what they dish out and he is a prime example. That said, I re-iterate that that would not be my normal stance. That Mr Jones posting was offensive is pretty much beyond question as has been mentioned by many other than unsurprisingly yourself. In fact I cannot think that I've read an email in support of his manner.

So I think I have explained/defended myself as clearly as I can. What about you?

Oh dear John - this could have been written by your mate. Now who is being offensive? Seems to me that my abilities are just fine. You are the one hiding from the truth.

To return to your opinion of Mr Jones original email, this is important because it gets to the core of what an offensive man you really are. You chose on this occasion to lay into me because of my "offensive comments". Fair enough and oddly enough I'd respect you for it if you were even handed. But when your bully boy friend makes what are by general consensus offensive and highly insulting comments, you keep quiet and when asked your opinion on it, do your best to avoid answering a very relevant and valid question.

So come on John, what is your opinion of Mr Jones original email. The one where he called other posts stupid, their authors incompetent, inferred hidden agendas and described people as being too stupid to read amongst other things.

John

"John Smith" wrote

I did, but only after the same inference was made on at least three occasions, firstly by Pat Hammond and then twice by you. I'm sorry if you don't like the reality of what I wrote, but it is certainly a fair interpretation of the truth as far as I'm concerned.

If Pat's idea of friendship is half-a-dozen brief meetings and a similar number of phone calls, then no wonder he is so easily mortified.

I personally would not have commented in that way, but equally so I would not have resorted to *pan calling kettle* to make my any sort of reasoned comment in criticism of that original posting.

John.

"Colin" wrote

acquaintance

In case anyone thinks differently the personal email referred to here was sent to Colin Meredith by me.

It would be churlish of course to point out *why* I'd made representation to Steve Jones on his behalf on this and on one previous occasion when his membership of two Yahoo groups (ModMod & Demod if I recall correctly) had been, let's say *interrupted*.

John.

"> I personally would not have commented in that way, but equally so I would

Fair enough. However, it does strike me though that your criticism of Mr Jones's post is fairly mild given the content of said post. Far milder than the criticism you meted out to me. Given that Mr Jones' post was not only unprovoked but certainly further ranging in its contempt for contributors to this newsgroup, that strikes me as strange. Also strange that it has taken this long to extract any form of disapproval out of you. Must be something to do with all the business he puts your way clouding your judgement?

So I guess my request is, the next time you feel it appropriate to have a go at someone, please consider whether you are being even handed. In a nutshell - Have a go at all obvious wrongdoers or not at all. If you are seen to be even handed, then you would enhance the respect that I believe you deserve for your other contributions to the group and your excellent website. If you take pot shots at only those that are not your immediate buddies/major customers, then you earn contempt.

All the best for the New Year

John

"John Smith" wrote

This is really none of your business, but Steve Jones is now modelling USA railways which I do not sell, so your latter point has no relevence whatsoever.

His switch to American modelling was mainly down to total disillusionment with the inaccurate stuff being churned out by the UK manufacturers, and about which he clearly feels most strongly. Again I will repeat that I wouldn't personally comment in the way he did, but perhaps frustration at the way others gladly receive whatever fodder is chucked at them by the UK manufacturers might explain (if not exactly justify) some of his comments.

The point with what Steve wrote was that his comments were not specifically aimed at any one individual. Yours were precisely the opposite and were insulting to an individual on directly personal basis. That I consider unacceptable, irrespective at whom it is aimed.

Were you being constructive in your criticism, or just personally offensive?

I still wonder whether you're not grinding a personal axe here for some reason, and would question whether you would have made your comments had the original poster been other than Steve Jones?

John.

John,

I suspect that John Turner is not as free to respond to this matter as he might otherwise be.

John is a subscriber to the DEMOD mailing list on Yahoo and is a regular poster to that group, and it is obvious that he has done a fair bit of business with members of the group.

Here are a couple of extracts from posts by the recently appointed Moderator, Simon Bendall.

17th December

25th December

Steve Jones was the owner of the DEMOD group (and might still be - I can't find confirmation) so any criticism of him could render the critic a disruptive element, and subject to heavy moderation, or ejection.

I dare say this message will put me in the disruptive category - I'll let you all know what happens :-)

And if anyone is worried about the legality of copying bits of messages from DEMOD to this newsgroup, it should be known that one or two bits from this newsgroup have been copied to DEMOD recently to be used as Aunt Sally targets.

Jim.

"John Turner" wrote in

specifically

This time you are really taking the piss (if you will forgive that naughty word). On numerous occasions on this newsgroup over a considerable period of time, said gentleman has made a number of personal slights aimed at persons various. Besides which the whole inital paragraph of his latest diatribe is aimed directly at a poster called Ian. I am sure Ian enjoyed being described as incompetent, a stupid poster and having a hidden agenda. I reproduce it below for your enjoyment. I'd be interested as to how you perceive this not to be a personal attack on the part of Mr Jones.

Steve jones wrote: "I don't normally comment on the more stupid posts on usenet, but this one is more incompetent than most and I suspect a hidden agenda. Bachmann employee? Or just somebody who now realises his verbose "review" rather embarassingly missed the models most obvious defects?"

We could continue to analyse Mr Jones' post further but the point has been made. I think you are running out of credibility John and once again seeking to defend the indefensible.

Actually I'm trying my best to be constructive and I like to think it shows. You chose to have a go at me and funnily enough I take exception to it when you remain silent and apologetic for your offensive friend.

Sorry to disappoint you, no personal axe to grind. Indeed, we are the people having the discussion!