Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

It’s that time of year – when the renewal form for your GWOCGB Membership accompanies Wingspan.  Do you or don’t you?

Lots of Wingers who are still very active in their own Region are no longer bothering with the Club at national level.

For example Yorkshire Wings Region counted heads recently and discovered they had 76 (yes, 76) active Regional Members who were no longer members of GWOCGB.

Even though Yorkshire Wings has been a troubled Region in recent times and is currently facing further challenges (even committed GWOCGB loyalists are planning to break away as a separate group) this must be quite a big proportion.  And this pattern of disaffection with the national Club is likely to be reflected fairly widely across other Regions and it therefore presents quite a challenge to the Club’s National Committee.

Can they risk trying to force people to pay up or be thrown out altogether, as they would have done more or less automatically in years gone by? Or has the penny dropped at last that continues………

Intentionally impersonating Police Officers?

I have been looking into the circumstances surrounding the stopping, by Police Motorcyclists of Greater Manchester Police, of the Lead Marshall of this year’s Salvation Army Toy Run.

This Article also provides some background legal information and access to an opportunity for you to express your views about the matter if you wish – both to the Chief Constable of GMP and the Police Officer who was involved.

Peter Granger, the biker who had been asked by the Organisers to be Lead Marshall of the Toy Run, said that after being stopped he was told by the two Officer involved that he would be summonsed for something – they didn’t know quite what it would be at that stage, but he would definitely be prosecuted for something.

According to Peter they had a real go at him. He was of course riding his ex-police ST1300 which still had its blue and yellow livery and its blue lights, which he was using at the time.  (The bike had no police badges, nor the word “police” anywhere on it and Peter was not wearing any item of police uniform.)

After showing his licence and being issued with a “producer” for his insurance, which he didn’t have with him at the time, Peter was allowed to go on his way – although not until the Toy Run had moved on, leaderless and substantially disrupted.

A few days later Peter was arrested for impersonation of a police officer by means of a surprise early morning visit to his home involving continues………