Is there any confirmation of a major crane accident?
Construction Halts & other cutbacks - Here's what I think happened
by Listener 30 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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notsurewheretogo
Any more details on the crane accident 5 months ago? I never knew this... -
TheOldHippie
The letter has the following phrase: "Now here's the difficult announcement". When ever did a WT letter contain such a wording? -
The Searcher
Listener - under normal circumstances I'd probably agree with your "assumptions", but things aren't normal in WTBTS - land!
1) They've sold off the Brooklyn properties for $900m (allegedly)
2) Costs of public Watchtower & Awake magazines cut by 75% - from 768 pages per year, to 192 pages.
3) Revenue greatly increased by the "pledge arrangement."
4) Huge savings by cutting D.O.'s, S.P.'s, Bethelites, selling Branch Offices, and a lot less printed literature.
5) Raiding the congregations' bank accounts.
All of the above indicates (IMO) that the Org is not short of the necessary cash to finance a new and cheaper H.Q. - and ending up with a huge profit from the sell-off in Brooklyn.
You said, "but something occurred that forced them to introduce the changes". I agree with that - but what that "something" is, didn't cause all of the draconian cuts as a result of an accident 5 months ago, because most of them were carried out well before the accident.
I still strongly suspect that the Org is being forced by some serious creditors in Wall Street to impose all these changes to avert bankruptcy. Maybe we'll find out soon!
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Listener
I agree TheOldHippie, it doesn't read like a typical JW org letter. It is supposedly written by the chiefs of the Warwick Construction Group 8 to the volunteers within that group. There must be a lot of communications within these groups.
Regarding the Warwick accident, there are no official reports. The report appears to be first mentioned on JW archive. According to that report a crane carrying a wall fell to the ground and the crane driver was injured.
Another problem that they have is the site contamination and they commenced court procedures for reimbursement of costs incurred in cleanup and restitution costs. This action began in June 2015. There has been no news since then.
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Listener
Your points are noted Searcher and thanks. If your assumption is correct it is even more irresponsible of the Organization to now find themselves in this position. They must have had their heads buried in the sand for years now hoping that the problem would go away, or even worse, think that God was going to fix it for them even though they have been in charge.
I think it helps to consider facts and unverified information to try to come to some explanation because the society is not forthcoming with any information of substance. They've even tried to divert attention away from these matters by giving mixed messages and giving themselves a new image.
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Watchtower-Free
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freemindfade
From I believe some of the building in bk have been sold technically for a whole but the actual handover takes a lot of time. Like every thing tied up in escrow for a few years. They may have been forced to hurry up Warwick because that time is coming up fast and they need to be out of bk -
sir82
Plausible, but I have no idea how it would ever be verified. -
Magnum
TheOldHippie: The letter has the following phrase: "Now here's the difficult announcement". When ever did a WT letter contain such a wording?
Good observation. That wording is casual and informal - not like what would be seen in a typical WT letter. Also, I've never know WT letters to contain contractions ("here's").
Also, I noticed this sentence: "We take this time to thank everyone for your sacrifice thus far". It's grammatically incorrect. They switched from 3rd person ("everyone") to 2nd person ("your"). WT letters definitely contain grammatical errors, but I've never seen that type error before in one of them. It should be "We take this time to thank everyone for his or her sacrifice thus far" or "We take this time to thank you all for your sacrifice thus far".
Listener made a good point, though. This letter came from the Warwick chiefs and is an internal letter - sent to groups it oversees. It probably wouldn't have been proofread and edited as one that was from WT and sent to, for example, all congregations.