I have tried hard over the years, and in writing this, to get Allen into a proper perspective; I'll try the chronological approach to the story

We first encountered Allen when he was advertising his shared-boat scheme in 1991: he briefly described it in a leaflet. As we had looked at some other not-encouraging schemes, we sent him a letter with about a hundred questions; he was polite to us in reply, suggesting he drive the 200mls to Sheffield, an offer which in the end we didn't take up, mainly because at that moment of development, he had all the boats OWNED by (his) central company in a timeshare fashion. When next we came across him, he had recruited a couple of the early boats, the scheme was essentially OwnerShips as we know it now, and we bought a (Special) share in Copperkins, starting our shared boating in 1993.

The next year Allen started on one of his 'grand ideas', this time to have a 70' narrowboat - eventually Odyssey - where (for the ONLY time) he collected a group of potential owners around a table and we committee-designed bits of the boat. Not wholly successfully, but she does still float . So GRAND-IDEAS is my first Allen-trait in attempting to analyse this love-hate we have for him; for me it's on the 'hate' side :-)

During this committee-boat-design process we all went to the pub (of Allen's choosing) for a meal; I argued with the manager about attempting to charge me a £1 fee for paying with my credit card (not allowed by credit-card companies in the UK in those days). It wasn't Allen's fault, but his next letter had a long apology about poor customer service; Allen is absolutely genuinely committed to customers being happy with his service, and service from providers generally. And over the years he has put a lot of OS money in doing things for, as he terms it, 'goodwill'.

(Losing the chronology for a moment). The jet-thrusters are just another Grand-Idea example - they look good, they don't work, and they cost a lot of money to put right - and Allen ends up paying for most of it himself. I know I should really hold my electronic tongue, but on the message-board I alluded to Derwent (my mythical "Derwent-boiler": I wonder if Allen, too, chuckled at it?) which was of course the name of the Dutch-Barge style narrowboat that was too deep-in-the-water and lost Allen about £40,000, perhaps more, in about 1999-2002. So CUSTOMER-SERVICE is my second Allen-trait, and it's on the 'love' side of the balance. We have used it to Copperkins' advantage at times: another very-long story, but we embarrassed him into paying for a complete new engine for us in 2004-05.

Back to 1995, and the owners' meetings. There was a scurrilous leaflet being circulated called 'Owner-snippets' slating Allen generally for poor financial management, and in particular for investing OS money in Premium bonds, in his own name, and iirc the name OS Company Secretary. It looked a dodgy thing to do, but Allen responded wonderfully well to the criticism, giving everyone a breakdown of the salary he paid himself (about £15,000 pa at that time), and the costs he was bearing; all the meetings gave him standing ovations. I led ours with a speech-from-the-floor along the lines of "Allen, you only have to look around this and other meetings to know what a success Ownerships is. I have here an increasing pile of correspondence over five years, showing the professionalism and customer-service beyond anything I could have expected or deserved. We all know about the team effort, but this is a thank you to you, Allen, personally" (everyone stands up, etc). And it genuinely did give him a tear-in-his-eyes. That's my third Allen-trait: PUBLIC-SPEAKING: he is very good at meetings, and gets the tone just right, even if he is defending an awkward political position.

This 'Ownersnippets' attack is an example of, maybe, the most influential Allen-trait: [long section removed: there are others who can speak more eloquently than I can on this]

Resuming the chronological narrative. After Philip Duerden left (2002 -he was the diplomat in OS relationship with boatyard-suppliers) was …[X]. He made a big personal effort to visit us on Copperkins when out much-argued-about new engine wasn't installed wonderfully, and we got on well personally. Odyssey had its devastating fire (not us aboard) in 2005; [X} went out to the Fens to meet the crew, and I phoned him in sympathy that evening; and we met often with [X] during Odyssey's rebuilding. In Feb 2006 [X] commissioned me (me the volunteer) to photograph the insides of all the OS boats for the website to help purchasers understand the differences between them. So when in the autumn of 2006 we phoned OS office from Copperkins about where to get an oil-change, it was Allen who phoned back: this was odd at that time. We had more questions the next day after-hours and we got through to [X], who because it was us, told us he had just been sacked. So I went for a coffee with him the next afternoon …[location] , and the story came out (remember that [X] was disgruntled at having lost his job, so had no need to be generous to Allen, but we both had the love-hate theme) ...

[…]

Also 'After-Derwent', there came 'Whisper', the wide-beam barge that Allen took to the 2004 London Boat Show, and moored alongside the multi-million-pound yachts, to 'fill a gap in the market' and (as he puts it) to 'give him a pension' with all the sales. He wrote amusingly about his trip through the Thames Barrier, towing with Dorchester (OS wide-beam) because Whisper was unfinished, breaking down, being rescued by passing boater, etc. Anyway, another long story: Whisper wasn't a business success (no orders at all), it cost Allen about £500,000 and was (is??) worth maybe £200,000. The insides of the contraption are upmarket, with internet-controlled devices, a typical Allen Grand-Idea. When I first heard of it, Allen said in one of his circular letters alongside the story in OwnerSnips that it was 'nothing to do with Ownerships', and I have to say, it give me confidence that with almost 100 boats Allen was making some money for himself, which he couldn't have been in 1995. I was genuinely pleased for him, much as I hated the look of Whisper and its patio-door-at-the-back (!)

And so on to how all of this is paid for and how Allen runs OS finances. Basically, whatever the 'think of OS as a bank' may suggest, I am Reliably Informed that Allen runs the finances as one big lump of money, on a cash basis. If he needs some money to pay for something, it is taken from whatever account has some money. That might be OS funds, it might be the combined sinking fund, it might be the 'Free-services' deposit fund.

So to an aside on the Free-Services Scheme. You pay, originally, £2,000 capital into a fund and Allen lets you off the OS contribution for the year - about £300 (PLUS VAT). And by doing it this way, nobody has to pay VAT: so it is a good scheme for everybody. (Another aside: the 2004 Finance Act said these sorts of idea had to be registered with HMRevenue&Customs so they could decide if to make them illegal) The £2,000 rules said the money was invested in "narrowboats in the scheme".

For 2004 Allen increased the deposit to £2,500 on the excuse of starting a buy-back scheme (after one year of not-selling, he would buy-back at 80% of insured value, or something like that). So just doing this - ie collecting £500 extra from each FSS members under the guise of winding-up the scheme and starting another - produced some good cash-flow at the end-of-year and the email ending the old scheme on 31Dec was dated 19Dec iirc. It even looked like panic at the time. Crucially the £2,500 rules said the money was invested in "boats". The small alteration justified, retrospectively, Allen using the FSS money to fund the losses in Whisper. If we asked anybody, even with the new wording, whether they had given 'informed consent' to their money being used speculatively in this way, they would laugh at us. Whether it is actually fraud would have to be decided via some expensive-lawyers who live-in-big-houses on the money they make arguing this sort of thing. _sigh_. But the intention was clear, and admitted by Allen, to use our money to fund a private scheme for Allen's personal profit (pension!), which if it worked would return the money to the fund with its owners none the wiser about the extra risk we were running.

As above, Allen used the monies in the various funds as a single lump. So whenever there is a shortage, it's easy to take on another Free-Services customer from those who applied to the last advert, and hey-presto there is another £2,500 in the account (with a minus £300 in every subsequent year, but then that's next year). At the point of the conversation [X] said the notional invested total was about £800,000 and the assets were maybe £300,000 maybe less. At this point Allen second-mortgaged his house for another £200,000 to keep OS afloat. And if we're cynical about him, to keep himself out of jail. Allen often speaks of OwnerShips finances, and as a company it is a separate legal entity - but there is no separate decision-maker on the OS board: it is (or was then) just Allen and one other. When he married Julie they needed £20,000 for the wedding, and [X] said Allen just walked into the office, said he hadn't had any expenses for a while, so he would have a cheque please.

From then on my toleration of Allen was much reduced. I told all this to a few selected people, and a subset of them still wish to remain anonymous, although they mostly contribute occasionally to the message-board.

Allen was circumspect publicly about [X] departure: we jousted on the board a bit, and when he thought I was stirring too much he deleted a thread, which caused more comment. He didn't know for certain about my discussions with [X], and called him to a meeting to explain how this PeterScott knew so much. And another shortened version of a long story, via a tense conversation on the front of Odyssey "are we still friends?" "not if you've wasted all my money,we're not", and some phone conversations, we arrived at the Copperkins' Owners meeting 2006. We looked at the collective total value of the boat, £25,000 - and added up our collective investment in Ownerships, including FSS, advance payments of maintenance, sinking fund - and that came to another £25,000. So we all decided to take out as much as we could, and also to try for a separate sinking fund, which WE controlled, and with our permission OS could operate on day-to-day basis: ideally the money would still be with us despite OS ceasing trading, if that were to happen. Allen agreed the principle but, probably to avoid it happening, found reasons why the bank 'insisted' we were still within OS umbrella. Anyway, he agreed in 2007 to us leaving the scheme, and we have been running Copperkins ourselves for these two years 2008-09. If I tot-up the total costs (including cost-of-capital and depreciation) of Odyssey for a year, it's just over £20,000 and for Copperkins it's under £6,000.

At the Odyssey 2006 meeting, we had just returned from the boat, so Allen knew I might not have read my emails, so he printed a copy, signed it in his own hand, and included it in my meeting notes, which he had also printed for me. I keep the signed copy by my bed, lest I need it for m'learned friends sometime (!). As I understand it, the 'inevitable belated success' of Whisper didn't in the end come about.

At the general meeting, Allen was really scared that I would blow the whistle. When I put my hand up to speak, I got a resigned "go-on-do-your-worst" sort of wave. So I told an old joke about an American hirer who told the boatyard-engineer looking into the empty water tank that they had, as instructed, connected to the water tap for half an hour each day: "we used that tap over there", pointing to the kitchen. Much amusement. But there was no whistle-blowing opportunity, even if I had wanted to use it: Allen has a great personal following, mostly well-deserved, and if I attacked him, then someone else could rally the defence in exactly the same way that I had done in 1995. The only difference, crucially for Allen I suppose, is that this time he was firmly in the wrong.

I have to say, I was incensed at that time. I told Allen he had betrayed my trust in him, both in business and personally. He had his practised hang-dog expression, and his pertinent question was what did I want to achieve? I think "Allen in jail" would have been quite good, but I didn't tell him that. It wasn't just Allen being at risk: it's his holding-in-trust the whole idea of shared-boat-ownership, which is such an obvious and beneficial idea. And Challenger was still going then, despite being run by Voldemort (but that's another story).

In early 2007 there was another strange incident about the Westminster Drive house. […] Anyway Ownerships now is run from an 'internet-office' distributed around the country, with fewer (two fewer I think) permanent full-time people than before.

It is worth mentioning that the 'early-payment' scheme in 2006 was another cashflow-raising opportunity, as Allen confirms. I was a bit worried this year that the second hurry-up letter for early 2010 payments was prestaging the crash, but it seems not.

[…]

And I just don't know what happened after 2006. There are some mutterings about 'new investors', maybe large-ish lumps of money from well-wishing owners. Then there is the moving of boatbuilding to Poland. And talk of Marina deals. I don't even know if Allen retains formal control of Ownerships the company.

With the Credit Crunch, he is doing well just to survive. We suffered another Allen-ness at the Ownerships Show in February this year: he created a super-buyback deal whereby HIS shares sold at the show had a guarantee of re-buyback if their new owners wanted to leave in October: another shortened story had the people we sold an Odyssey share to - which in all righteousness should have been our share - return it to Allen and move to a Challenger boat. My whinge is that the essential conflict-of-interest between OS and the owner created by buyback, and Allen owning some shares of the boat - just means my share will never be sold before his. And that was where we started in 1991 - we would not buy into a scheme in which the managers had ownership of the boats.

And so ends the epistle. As I say, it helped me to write it down. We wish Allen the best of luck with his cancer, and with Ownerships.

[…]

Regards

PeterScott

November 2009