My response to Andrews claims on SR, please do not respond and lets let it die. This is the first and only time I, Christopher Burns, have asked anyone to post on my behalf in relation to Andrew Lees recent post and I thank Bruce for obliging me; Firstly, I received some information about the police interest in SR a couple of times over the past 18 months and I called Greg and passed on the warnings, as one does for ones mates. Secondly, I do not rat on mates to the Police. Thirdly, Andrew Lee was not involved in this until 10 days after the Daily Telegraph article as I was dealing with the organ grinder not the monkey, Andrew’s comments on events prior to 2 Dec 2013 are anecdotal and therefor worthless. About 18 months ago at one of the regular road safety meetings I attend I was approached by a senior NSWHWP officer asking me about SR running time trials. No such thing says I and left it at that. I advised Greg of the enquiry and suggested that he might want to take it easy as the police are watching his group. I also passed on the message to several other groups advising the same thing and almost everyone pulled their heads in. At MAW Oct 2013 I was asked again by a Senior NSW HWP officer about the time trials run by SR through the Nasho. I advised that feedback from SR was that they were not running time trials and they cant control all of the people posting on Facebook etc. and once again I called Greg and gave him a heads up that SR has been noticed. Tuesday the 19th Nov I get a call from NSWHP advising they were running an article in the Telegraph on the coming Saturday and I would receive a call from the reporter for a comment. The NSWHWP officer once again asked about the time trials and I advised that none of it was true. Reporter called he said the press release from the NSWHWP looks bad and he advised that SR had been accused of running time trials through the Nasho, I informed him that was not the case and to the best of my knowledge there are no organised time trials being run by any group in the Sydney region and this rumour had stemmed from another story quite some time back. He said he would water the article down a bit and needed a comment from me to balance the story, half of my quote went in the article and the full quote is listed online on the comments page. Once again I called Greg and gave him an update. The reporter and I organised to do some photos on the Thursday night and I managed to arrange for this to be well away from Five Dock in order to keep the reporter and photographer away from SR. On the Saturday when the article came out I called Greg, amongst others, and advised him that the article was a public warning to all the ride groups to pull their heads in and suggested it wouldn’t hurt to put a statement on his SR Facebook site to highlight the Good works they do, charity runs, mentor rider training etc. I specifically asked Greg if he wanted my assistance and he said yes. Greg then suggested we get Andrew Lee involved, Greg would call him the following week as Greg was out of town. Andrew Lee was brought on board on the 2 of Dec, more than a week after the article, and most of the ensuing conversations were carried out on PMs in a three way conversation with Andrew Lee, Greg and myself and include me advising Andrew on two occasions that I am quite happy to drop this and leave them to it and he could let me know how he gets on. I also have a text message from Greg thanking me for my help dated 4/12/13 at 08:22 a full week after the article in question and the same day I was banned from SR. Andrew Lee then posted some codswallop about the “Facts” on SR 7/12/13 which resulted in me expressing my displeasure to Greg in a PM and that I had received advice that Andrew’s comments were defamatory. As enough people can attest to, I then made three offers to Andrew and Greg to sit down and get this straightened out, all offers were refused or ignored. I eventually tracked Greg down and an agreement was reached between Greg and I that this would just be let lie, unfortunately over the past couple of months Andrew has continued to insinuate publicly and privately that I had dobbed SR into the coppers culminating last week with Andrew posting his second version of proceedings, which is ill informed twaddle at best and unmitigated bullshit at its worst and contradicts his previous version of events. This spiteful attack was in apparent retaliation for something someone else said on someone else’s site that I may or may not have had a beer with….once. On Saturday, I was then accused of leading a concerted campaign to bring down SR, which could not be further from the truth, especially when you take into account the extraordinary amount of time and effort I had put into assisting SR riders and Greg in particular with information about various issues, enforcement queries, defects queries and offers of assistance with resource material for rider mentoring etc. If anything it is in my interests to see SR succeed not fail. All I can say in hindsight is I have been unfairly targeted for the Telegraph article and falsely accused of dropping SR into the Police by someone that was not even involved at the time and who’s subsequent comments and actions have only sullied his own name, tarnished the reputation of SR as well as splitting the motorcycle community which I have worked so very hard to unite over the past few years. I wish to thank those that have been in contact with me in an effort to resolve this issue through shuttle diplomacy and I am sorry to hear that their efforts to set a meeting to straighten this out have been unsuccessful. I am humbled at the number of people who leapt in to defend me from a cowardly attack that I was completely oblivious to and I am sad that their efforts to defend me, knowing I had no avenue to defend myself, has resulted in their banishment from SR. I respectfully request that no more comment, however well intended be made on this matter in an effort to heal the rifts. Christopher Burns
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 23:33:26 +0000
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