GMWRAG has whispered. Who will heed the whisper?

So, the poll results are in and GMWRAG members have responded with a resounding whisper in low numbers but, nevertheless, “some numbers”. Indeed, more people voted than have attended some GMWRAG meetings on occasion (!) so we’ll go with it and declare ourselves quarantined or quorate or quixotic or quite easily pleased or whatever the term is.

And the verdict is:

• you want virtual meetings but you’d also entertain a virtual social.
• Zoom is very much the tool of choice.
• most of you would prefer to stick with the traditional “GMWRAG Friday” despite the efforts of others to screw that up. NAWRA, we’re looking at you (sternly).

So, by our reckoning we have missed meetings in Bolton, Manchester and Trafford with Oldham to come in September 2020.

We fully appreciate that circumstances may reduce the number of services capable of running a virtual meeting but GMWRAG hosts should know where they are on the meetings list – here’s a reminder – and the process has long been that hosts organise their own meeting and provide a chair and minute taker.

So, the big question now is who will step up and set us going once again? GMWRAG members, we’re looking at you.

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GMWRAG on Tik Tok

Bah, humbug.

No, this is not a post about GMWRAG creating a new social media channel on Tik Tok (featuring dancing WROs and cavorting judges twerking to the latest K-Pop hits obviously). This is a GMWRAG post explaining that our last poll included Tik Tok as a joke. The worrying thing about that joke is that either the majority of you decided to bite back; didn’t realise that Tik Tok is not a place for hosting online meetings or… we were hacked.

So, the 70% of you who voted for Tik Tok for a GMWRAG social… no! We’ll come back to that in a moment.

However, we also noted that nearly 60% of you would like a GMWRAG meeting ahead of a social. We’re not sure how this will pan out but below you can see a few more quick polls we’d like you to complete asap and we’ll move things forward from there. We note that Bolton, Manchester and Trafford were due to host meetings this year and all 3 have escaped thus far. If the vote is for a meeting ahead of a social we’d appreciate it if at least 1 of those 3 services could step forward to host and make the arrangements to do so.

Anyways, here’s your further starters for 10.

GMWRAG has now firmly put away it’s errant sense of humour.

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The minutes of the Bolton GMWRAG meeting are now available.

The minutes of the recent GMWRAG meeting in Bolton are now available for download. These include a brief summary of the key points of the presentation from Maximus.

Contrary to the statement in these minutes that the Salford minutes were not available and will be circulated with the Bolton minutes… yes they were and no they won’t be! Punishments will be administered in due course 🙂

Can we remind members that our next meeting is now scheduled for June 2016 and is a return to Manchester. More details have already been posted and we’d like to thank those members who have already emailed to confirm their attendance. We will try and acknowledge these in due course and will forward them to Manchester as well. We are waiting to hear from Manchester as to whether this level of advance notification is really necessary and will report back accordingly.

In the meantime… CHOCOLATE FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND!!!

 

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The next (and future) GMWRAG meeting(s).

Now, GMWRAG members, please pay attention and listen very carefully. We shall say zis only once! Possibly.

A few years back we had to rejig the organisation of GMWRAG meetings thanks to the reality of public sector cuts decimating services in Manchester, Rochdale and Bolton. A core group of Salford, Stockport, Tameside and Trafford kindly agreed to rotate hosting meetings in order to ensure we could continue.

An unexpected but entirely welcome rejuvenated service in Oldham assisted with this aim but further service reviews and staffing changes in three of the first four above have meant that meetings over the past year have very much had to be organised “on the hoof” as services in the midst of being reviewed to death felt that hosting a meeting for a full day was a step to far in the midst of other stresses. We are very grateful to Stockport Advice, Salix Homes and Bolton at Home for stepping up at short notice to keep the show on the road.

GMWRAG fully appreciates this and so in a bid to provide some stability this year we are pleased to welcome an offer from Manchester to host our next meeting in June 2016. This pushes back meetings in Trafford and Tameside. It would be really helpful if all GMWRAG members could check out our meetings page and note these changes but if you can’t access the site in work then 2016 and 2017 currently look like this.

June 2016 – Manchester.

September 2016 – Trafford.

December 2016 – Tameside.

March 2017 – Oldham.

June 2017 – Stockport.

September 2017 – Salford.

December 2017 – Bolton.

All hosting members need to note these changes dates. There may yet be further date changes as none of us know what the remainder of 2016 will bring but we will try and avoid this if we possibly can. We will try and contact someone at each host in due course to firm all the above up but, if there are issues, it would help us if you “Contact GMWRAG” ASAP to let us know.

There will be a more specific post about the Manchester meeting imminently.

For those of you who periodically complain about the length of these posts, please remember not all members can access the site in their workplace, for a variety of reasons, so it is important that the posts contain what is elsewhere on the site.

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