PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ON MY PETITION ON THE PREVIOUS BLOG POST. HAVE A READ WHAT OTHER VALE FANS AND SHAREHOLDERS HAVE WRITTEN. IT WILL BRING A TEAR TO YOUR EYES. IT DID MINE. WHETHER OR NOT YOU BELIEVE YOUR WORDS WILL FALL ON DEAF EARS ISN’T IMPORTANT. IT’S ABOUT A CLEAR DEMONSTRATION OF THE REASONS WHY WE, THE FANS, FEEL SO LET DOWN. IT’S ABOUT RAMMING HOME THE POINT THAT THERE IS NO WAY BACK FOR ANYONE ON THIS BOARD.

Martin

Dear Messrs Miller, Oliver, Lloyd and Deakin. After months of lies, misleading statements and missed deadlines I implore you to step down. You are ruining Port Vale football club and alienating its fanbase. After the nil-paid shares fiasco, the Blue Sky shambles, the scandal of the chairman’s remuneration package, the shameful treatment of Roy Sproson’s family and the mortgaging of Vale Park (among other horrific mistakes), I and the vast majority of supporters and shareholders want you to leave.

Martin Tideswell, Aged 39, Vale season ticket holder and shareholder

Martin, I’m with you all the way with Port Vale. All you true Vale fans need to let our voices be heard and get our club back.

Jonny Wilkes

I was lucky enough to be enjoying a tour of the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery as staff were putting the finishing touches to its new Titanic exhibition.
As the centenary of the disaster approaches, bosses at the city centre venue are understandably hoping for an increase in visitors riding, if you will pardon the pun, on a wave of nostalgia for the ill-fated liner.
But what struck me most about the display was the way in which people were being asked to vote on who they thought was to blame for the demise of the ‘unsinkable’ RMS Titanic.
Pictures of some of the ship’s officers are pinned to the wall – along with details of their role in the doomed maiden voyage.
This is a novel approach to telling the Titanic story through the people whose actions (or lack of) contributed to a catastrophe which captured the imagination of the public in 1912 and which endures to this day.
Among the suspects is the skipper who is, of course, the sole reason why one of the most land-locked cities in England is staging an exhibition to mark this most horrific of maritime disasters.
Captain Edward John Smith, from Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, was given the plum job of sailing the White Star Line’s luxurious new ship from Southampton to New York.
When news of the liner’s fate first reached the UK, my predecessors at The Staffordshire Sentinel wrote in glowing terms about the man dubbed ‘The Millionaires’ Captain’ – so favoured was he by the great and the good.
Smith was described thus: “He is one of the most experienced commanders and his knowledge of the Atlantic and its moods and phases is perhaps unique”.
Our report of April 15, 1912 – the day after the Titanic struck an iceberg – went on to speak of him as “exceedingly popular with his officers” and admired for his “tact, firmness and professional skill”.
Sadly, I reckon our city’s relationship with Captain Smith and, indeed, with the Titanic will always be a uncomfortable one.
It should have been a voyage that went down in history as a feather in the cap of our city.
Instead it was the great ship itself which went down in the icy waters of the Atlantic – bringing ignominy to one of our most famous sons.
Despite various inquiries and new evidence unearthed since the wreck was discovered in 1985, many questions remain about an event which has been immortalised in poems, books and by Hollywood.
The bottom line is that, like it or not, Captain Smith, from Hanley, was in charge of the Titanic on the night it sank with the loss of 1,517 lives.
No attempt to apportion blame on outdated safety procedures, inadequate numbers of lifeboats, missing binoculars or various members of the crew can free our man from that heavy burden.
You cannot rewrite history and I, for one, am glad that Captain Smith’s statue is in Lichfield.
I can’t think of any reason why Stoke-on-Trent would want to commemorate this unfortunate man beyond the plaque tucked away in Hanley Town Hall.
Our connection to the Titanic is nothing to be proud of – rather it is a quirk of fate.
Captain Smith just happened to come from Hanley and just happened to be the top man on the Titanic when it sank.
He didn’t design the vessel. He didn’t build it and, despite various romantic stories, we don’t know for sure how he conducted himself during those final two hours after his ship struck an iceberg.
It would be a different story entirely if he had personally rescued third class passengers from below decks, carried a dozen children to safety or ensured better use was made of the pitiful number of lifeboats the Titanic had.
The fact is we just don’t know what happened to the man who was at the centre of this awful human tragedy.
As a city we understandably celebrate the fact that the man who designed the fighter plane which helped to turn the tide of the Second World War comes from our neck of the woods.
But Captain Smith of the Titanic is no Reginald Mitchell of Spitfire fame.
To my mind, he was simply a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When people speak of major events of the Eighties, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War often spring to mind.
But I would argue that one of the most significant steps forward during my formative years was actually a radical change in attitudes.
It may seem incredible these days, but being gay in the early to mid-1980s opened people up to ridicule and much worse.
Mercifully, by the end of the decade, outdated stereotypes and overt homophobia were finally on their way out.
Here in the UK we had a couple of people to thank for this seismic shift in the way in which gay people were viewed.
One of the leading lights in this social revolution was the man who was to go on to become one of the people representing us Stokies in Brussels.
Michael Cashman is now the Labour MEP for the West Midlands but rose to prominence as an actor on BBC TV’s misery-fest Eastenders.
You have to remember that during the mid-80s gay-orientated content was still relatively rare on prime-time television.
However, Michael Cashman changed all that with his portrayal of yuppie graphic designer Colin Russell.
There was outrage when in 1987 the BBC screened the first ever gay kiss in a British soap opera between the character of Colin and his boyfriend Barry.
To be fair, it was only a peck on the forehead, but some national newspapers reacted furiously – dubbing the soap ‘EastBenders’ and branding the content ‘filth’.
Questions were even asked in Parliament about the appropriateness of having openly-gay men in a prime-time TV show as fears over AIDs grew.
At the time, huge misconceptions over the origins of AIDs, the way in which it could be contracted, and its association with gay men had caused widespread fear and confusion as our ill-advised health services struggled to come to terms with this ‘new’ illness.
It wasn’t until 1989 that the first mouth-to-mouth kiss between Colin and his partner Guido was screened and again it caused controversy.
Around 20 million people saw the show and some right-wing newspapers condemned the brief scene at a time when Margaret Thatcher’s government was championing a return to ‘traditional family values’.
Thankfully, however, attitudes had already changed.
Over time, the viewing public – including yours truly – had grown rather fond of nice-guy Colin whose character had helped to highlight issues such as homophobia and so-called ‘gay-bashing’.
Cashman quit the soap in 1989 and went on to found the lesbian, gay and bisexual rights charity and lobbying organisation Stonewall before entering into politics. Another person who was responsible for altering the way the public felt towards the gay community was George Alan O’Dowd – AKA Boy George.
I recall delivering the Sunday papers over a period of months (I’d have been about 14 at the time) and reading numerous stories about Culture Club’s ‘gender-bender’.
Despite suffering some horrendous abuse courtesy of the tabloid press for his androgynous appearance, Boy George was a superb showman – who also happened to produce some killer pop tunes.
I was bought the album Colour By Numbers – containing the singles Church Of The Poison Mind and Karma Chameleon for Christmas in 1983 and genuinely thought it was the bees knees.
Despite the criticism, the constant scrutiny, a media vendetta, and a battle with his own personal demons, Boy George went on to become one of the UK’s most successful recording artists of the decade.
At the same time, his simple live-and-let-live philosophy helped to win many hearts and minds and persuade the nation that being different wasn’t necessarily bad or wrong.
By the end of the decade, I like to think that the tide had genuinely turned.
It wasn’t being gay that was no longer acceptable – it was being openly hostile towards those who were.

Some may think that the great days of interest in space flight were the Sixties.
After all, people were genuinely agog when in 1961 Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in Vostok 1.
Then there were the numerous Apollo missions which culminated in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin showboating on the moon in 1969.
But it was another craft which reignited our interest in the stars when yours truly was growing up.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) actually began working on designs for a Space Shuttle in 1969.
However, it wasn’t until April 12, 1981 – exactly 20 years after the first manned space flight – that the Space Shuttle Columbia and its crew of two blasted off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, at the Kennedy Space Center.
They returned to Earth on April 14 having orbited the Earth 37 times during a 54.5-hour mission.
Although the Shuttle was to be involved in a further 134 flights and wasn’t retired from service until last year, it will always be associated with the Eighties.
It launched at the beginning of the decade and in 1986 the programme suffered its first, terrible tragedy.
The Challenger disaster occurred on January 28 that year when Space Shuttle bearing that name broke apart 73 seconds into its flight – leading to the deaths of all seven crew members. After a seal in its right rocket booster failed at lift-off, the Shuttle broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida as the world watched in horror.
The images of Challenger’s disintegration will stay with those of us who witnessed them on the teatime news for the rest of our lives – in the same way that the footage of the attack on New York’s twin towers does.
That wasn’t to be the last tragedy, of course. The Space Shuttle Columbia broke-up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on February 1, 2003 – again with the loss of seven lives.
But in spite of these setbacks the Shuttles Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour came through their missions with flying colours and the legacy of the 30-year programme is a proud one.
This unique spacecraft has carried people into orbit repeatedly, launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted cutting-edge research and helped to build the International Space Station.
The Space Shuttle itself is iconic for several reasons – not least the fact that it was indeed a ‘shuttle’ for ferrying astronauts to and from Space.
Sort of like a Minilink bus without the bad decor and fag butts.
It was the first reusable spacecraft which allowed the astronauts to land it like an aeroplane. The design itself, of course, was a thing of beauty as well as supremely functional.
Previously we’d grown used to traditional ‘rocket’ ships which pointed skywards and broke into bits before something akin to a Walnut Whip fell back to earth. Or into the sea.
The Shuttle’s aircraft-like design was something which we could all identify with – and which little lads like me imagined piloting in the same way that we dreamed about George Lucas’s X-Wing fighters or Battlestar Galactica’s Vipers.
Indeed, yours truly had a Space Shuttle toy – a little diecast model with cargo bay doors which actually opened!
It was about as close as a chubby asthmatic kid from Sneyd Green was ever going to get to the Shuttle programme.
I’ve missed my chance now, anyway.
The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, ended on July 21, 2011 when Atlantis rolled to a stop at its NASA home port.
Whatever the future of Space travel, the Shuttle’s place in history is assured.

Who would drive a gritting lorry, eh? What a thankless, anti-social task.
Other than bankers and traffic wardens, these poor souls must be the most unpopular people in the country.
Well, for about two days a year that is. The two days a year that everyone loses perspective.
Yes, the Great British penchant for moaning about the weather returned with a vengeance this weekend.
A heavy (but predicted) snow-storm hit North Staffordshire and South Cheshire around Saturday teatime – bringing gridlock to parts of our road network.
The Met Office had issued severe weather warnings but still many reacted with incredulity – as if a new Ice Age had sneaked up on them.
Motorists sat in queues of traffic for hours on end as blizzard conditions enveloped them.
The A50, the A34 and the D-Road came to a standstill as football traffic leaving the Britannia Stadium drove into a whiteout.
Where were the gritters, people wondered? (As if it would have made any difference).
The question they should have been asking, of course, is: Why are we so woefully inept at coping with a bit of snow now and again?
Why do we fail to fit winter tyres to our cars? Why do we act like it’s the end of the world when we see a few snowflakes?
In the wake of Saturday night’s snow storm, the local authorities will doubtless cop a load of flak for not preparing our roads properly.
Indeed, I await the inevitable backlash via The Sentinel’s letters pages about the inconvenience of it all.
To be fair, we’ve had the mildest winter since Adam was a lad – weeks and weeks and weeks of overcast skies and rain.
Personally, I’d rather have a covering of the white stuff any day.
The truth is, I’ve been waiting for about two months for some snow and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
I suspect, however, this puts me in a very small minority.
The problem is that, as a nation, we simply haven’t a clue how to act when we do have the odd flurry.
What’s more, sadly, most people have absolutely no appreciation of winter.
They sit in their centrally-heated homes, watching summer holiday adverts on the telly and looking balefully out of the windows as if the very pavement has suddenly become a death-trap and the roads a total no-go zone.
I’m pretty sure that when Sammy Cahn wrote Let It Snow back in 1945, this attitude wasn’t what he was trying to evoke.
Yes, I know it’s no fun stuck in a traffic jam. We’ve all been there. Yes, you have to be careful not to trip, drive slowly, wrap up warm, allow a little more time for journeys and travel prepared.
But, by the same token, a snowfall shouldn’t equate to the end of civilisation as we know it.
It’s certainly not an excuse to raid the emergency store of Fray Bentos corned beef.
You see, I’m convinced that it’s only in the UK that we view winter with such fear and loathing. Other nations undoubtedly scoff at our nesh-ness (my word) and laugh at the way in which everything grinds to a halt with a covering of snow.
Why can’t we learn to love winter? I don’t know how anyone can fail to wake up and not appreciate the sun-kissed majesty of a crisp frost.
Have we all forgotten what it’s like to be children? Have we forgotten that snow equals fun?
Have we forgotten listening to Radio Stoke while crossing our fingers and hoping to hear that our school has been closed because the boiler’s packed in?
Are our hearts so hard that we are untouched by the gift of a fresh blanket of snow which makes any tired old street look like a picture postcard?
I actually travel to Scotland annually to seek out the white stuff. What’s more, when I took my kids to Lapland last year to meet Father Christmas, a huge part of the attraction for all of us was proper, deep snow.
People moan incessantly about the cold over here, but the truth is, we don’t know we’re born.
When I was in Finnish Lapland, just inside the Arctic Circle, the temperature dropped to as low as minus 26 degrees celsius.
To be honest, nobody noticed how cold it was until we got back to the hotel. We were too busy sledging, driving snowmobiles, building snowmen and pelting each other with snowballs.
I remember looking out of the lodge windows at the pine trees and the moon-lit snow and thinking that there couldn’t be a more beautiful sight.
What a shame we don’t appreciate it round our neck of the woods…

It is sad but true to say that there is a generation of Port Vale supporters who have grown up without experiencing any real success.
It’s 11 long years since the club’s day in the sun at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium for the LDV Vans Trophy Final win over Brentford.
Before that you have to go back to the mid-Nineties when the team was managed by ‘He Of The Flat Cap’ – otherwise known as ‘The Bald Eagle’ or plain old ‘J.R’.
John Rudge may hail from Wolverhampton but he is a genuine Potteries legend and, unless you come from these parts, it is difficult to appreciate just how much a part of local footballing folklore he is.
He is one of only a handful of men who have crossed the great divide between Port Vale and Stoke City and somehow managed to retain the respect and admiration of both sets of fans.
As comfortable as a public speaker at a fund-raising dinner in aid of Vale’s youth team as he is talking tactics with Tony Pulis at the Britannia Stadium, Rudgie is a special bloke.
To fully appreciate the reverence with which he is held by Vale fans like myself, you have to journey back to December 1983 when he took over the reins after manager John McGrath was sacked.
Under McGrath, Vale had lost 13 of the opening 17 games that season and J.R. was unable to prevent relegation to the old Division Four.
What followed was a season of consolidation during which Vale finished twelfth before Rudgie took fans on a dream journey which included promotions, a number of genuinely jaw-dropping giant-killings, several trips to Wembley and some cherished silverware.
J.R formed an unlikely alliance colourful former chairman Bill Bell and together they oversaw the most successful period in the club’s history.
As marriages go, it was a fiery affair.
One afternoon, as a cub reporter, I was camped outside the old main entrance awaiting confirmation that Rudgie had signed an extension to his contract.
He swept past me, refusing to speak, jumped in his car and sped away from the ground – only to return a few minutes later.
“What’s going on, gaffer?” I asked.
He told me that the chairman had annoyed him so much by quibbling over money that he had decided not to sign a new deal.
However, as he drove away from Vale Park, Rudgie had spotted a small group of fans at the gates holding up a banner pleading for him to stay. Thankfully, that persuaded him to turn his car around and sign on the dotted line for another eight years.
Rudgie was manager at Vale for 16 years and during that time generated almost £10 million in transfer income for the club.
He nurtured the likes of Robbie Earle and Mark Bright and had a wonderful eye for talent – bringing a raft of quality players to the club whose names trip off the tongue of any Vale fan worth his or her salt.
These included Andy Jones, Mark Grew, Ray Walker, Bob Hazell, Darren Beckford, Simon Mills, Neil Aspin, Dean Glover, Martin Foyle, Gareth Ainsworth, John Jeffers, Robin van der Laan, Ian Taylor, Nicky Cross, Keith Houchen, Andy Porter, Paul Musselwhite, Steve Guppy, Jon McCarthy, Bernie Slaven and Marcus Bent, among others.
They were Vale’s golden generation – delivering FA Cup victories over Spurs (1988), our neighbours down the A500 (1994) and cup holders Everton (1996).
I was in the Press Box for the Stoke and Everton games and I am ashamed to say I was as un-impartial as you can get.
I remember the action from the Everton game like it was yesterday and recall beforehand having every confidence that our wingers would cause havoc for the top-flight team. Which they did.
Damn we had a good side. I reckon we’d have beaten anyone that night.
Rudgie was the mastermind behind it all and led us to Autoglass Trophy Final victory in 1993, the Anglo-Italian Cup Final against Genoa in 1996 and no less than three promotions to the dizzy heights of the old Division Two (now The Championship).
The only shame is that when J.R. did leave Vale Park after 19 years and 834 games in charge, it was after being sacked by Bill Bell.
Cue an outpouring of grief among Vale fans which included noisy demonstrations and the infamous ‘flat cap’ protest march.
You see, we knew what we had lost – even if the chairman didn’t quite appreciate J.R. who went on to take the club to an industrial tribunal and win a £300,000 pay-out.
I’ve heard the odd Vale fan label Rudgie a traitor for joining Stoke City.
It’s nonsense, of course. The truth is most of us just wish he was still ours.
Following his dismissal in 1999, no-less than Sir Alex Ferguson is reported to have said: “Every Port Vale supporter should get down on their knees and thank The Lord for John Rudge.”
To be honest, I think many of us were too busy praying he’d come back.

It costs eight dollars for adults and four dollars for children but I’m told by a colleague that it’s well worth the admission price.
The National Geographic Museum in downtown Washington is a state-of-the-art, interactive tourist attraction.
And right now the top draw at this top drawer venue is our very own Staffordshire Hoard and the powers-that-be there are making the most of its one and only U.S. appearance.
Want to build your own medieval helmet? No problem.
Want to learn about the epic Beowulf saga poem, Anglo-Saxon culinary expressions or wheat-weaving and corn dollies? It’s all there. Fancy going exploring with your family? Just grab a field guide and backpack to help you get the most out of the Hoard exhibition by ‘looking, moving, touching and doing’.
This is history how it should be taught. Dark Age history enlightened by modern technology and made accessible to all.
Contrast this then with the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery’s first attempts to showcase the Hoard.
Granted, museum staff will admit that the initial exhibition was thrown together in miraculous fashion in a space which wasn’t really suitable.
But while it may not have put off the tens of thousands of visitors who flocked to view samples of this breathtaking discovery, what our little display has done is highlight the Hanley venue’s shortcomings.
The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery is a building which hasn’t really moved on in two decades.
Yes, it has a world-renowned collection of ceramics and a dedicated friends group but I’m afraid that isn’t enough to make it a decent tourist venue.
The fact is if you don’t like pots then I’m afraid you’re going to be rather disappointed.
Take our Spitfire exhibit, for example. The creator of the fighter plane that turned the tide of the Battle of Britain was born down the road in Butt Lane but our tribute to his work of genius is something of an embarrassment, if we’re honest.
The Spitfire is tucked away in a darkened room and overlooked by a mannequin which wouldn’t seem out of place in an infant school art department.
Aside from this, the rest of the museum is a hotch-potch of displays – sort of like Bargain Hunt crossed with a taxidermy conference.
All this changed, of course, when we acquired a share of the Staffordshire Hoard. Or rather, it should have done.
Museum staff knew only too well that the Hoard presented a wonderful opportunity to transform the city centre venue from a rather niche tourist attraction into a major player.
However, news that a major funding bid for a permanent Hoard exhibition in Stoke-on-Trent has been turned down by the Arts Council is a major blow – and not just for the 13 museum employees whose jobs have been put at risk.
It is worth saying that the Birmingham Museums Trust bid was successful. Why am I not surprised?
We have brilliant and passionate staff at the Potteries Museum who did us proud at short notice with regard to the Hoard.
People like collections officer Deb Klemperer with whom I shared a podium at the special Sentinel sneak-peek viewing of the Hoard the night before the exhibition opened.
They deserve our support as they pick themselves up after this latest disappointment and go back to the drawing board.
As Hanley prepares itself, via the ludicrously-named City Sentral, for the kind of regeneration not seen since the advent of the Potteries Shopping Centre, it is vital that the Cultural Quarter steps up to the mark.
If we finally get a bus station not reminiscent of Eastern European town during the Cold War along with a new, multi-million pound shopping centre, then we must ensure our all-round offer to shoppers and visitors is of the highest standard.
We have a first class theatre and a museum that now has all the gear but no idea (or should I say no resources) of how to display its riches properly.
We must bid, bid and bid again for funding to display the Hoard in all its glory and position Stoke-on-Trent as the home of the Staffordshire Hoard.
Councillor Mark Meredith, cabinet member for economic development, has assured us that in spite of the failed hoard bid its “business as usual” at our museums.
That’s the problem though Mark, isn’t it? Business as usual means a few score visitors on a week day.
Remember the queues snaking around the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery when the Hoard first arrived?
Remember the excitement when we learned the bid to acquire this national treasure had been successful?
We must not lose the impetus now.
If marketed properly the Staffordshire Hoard could be priceless asset to the city rather than simply another hidden gem at a venue that simply hasn’t moved with the times.
I can feel a campaign coming on…