My Final Thoughts On The NI Choice Awards
There is no NI Choice Awards.
And I’m guessing nobody won the “car of your choice (max value £23,000)” either.
I think it’s at the point now where I can say that. Months of uncertainty have led to weeks of confusion, which have ultimately ended up at what seems to be a brick wall.
If you’ve been following this saga, you’ll know that it hasn’t been straightforward. The responses given to questions from nominees by the Chairman of NI Today (the less said about this strange conglomerate the better), Mr Antony Carville,and other members of his ‘team’, have been confusing, vague, at at times downright rude.
I personally was strung along by Mr Carville, with assertions that confirmation emails would be sent, and information would be released. I’ve been accused of things by Mr Carville which, other than being quite offensive to me, have no basis in reality. He has done ‘research’ on me, according to tweets he has sent to people. Weighing all this up, coupled with the general attitude of NI Today, queries about an online award ceremony have turned into something a lot more.
Lots of people have asked questions of Mr Carville and his organisation, and all have been met with dead ends. A week of filibustering from Mr Carville led to people being blocked on Twitter, and now on Facebook.
The NI Choice Awards Twitter account is now locked.
The NI Choice Awards Facebook page has deleted all questions and comments from members of the public, many of which were along the lines of “Who are you?”, “What exactly is your organisation?”, and more generally, “What the hell is going on with this whole awards thing?”.
At this stage I still wonder how many of the “39,000 votes” were received by text, and will these people ever have the cost of their texts refunded?
So, in summation, I’m now going to just assume that it’s dead in the water.
It’s a shame, because as the people I have spoken to regarding this, and taken the time to meet up with in person will know, I would have loved nothing more than to have been proved wrong, and for the whole thing to be genuine.
I reached a point where I started to worry I was just being some sort of pompous prick, demanding answers from somebody I didn’t know. I began to worry that “Maybe this is just a guy who perhaps does just want to run a successful awards ceremony, and I’m stamping all over it because of the amateur way it’s proceeding”.
I started to worry that I may end causing trouble for people. Perhaps Mr Carville IS a budding web entrepreneur, and some idiot from Twitter has turned up and started shitting all over something positive he’s trying to achieve.
Perhaps people from the businesses and other organisations that have asked people to vote for them and take part in the NI Choice Awards, will end up having to explain it all to their customers and clients, and the thing that was meant to promote their organisation ends up damaging them.
So I’m done. I’m assuming I’ve been stripped of my nominee status, and I won’t be having any more contact with Mr Carville or his organisation-unless they want to make any more disparaging remarks about me, or even maybe to sue me. I can’t rule anything out when it comes to this bizarre organisation. They did, after all, threaten Twitter user @keithbelfast, last week-“we are requesting the PSNI interview you”.
NI Today claimed to have “successfully defended our brand of NIToday against Cool FM, UTV and the BBC”.
Perhaps the BBC, UTV, or Cool FM would be able to shed some light on this.
Maybe the Belfast Telegraph (who Mr Carville claims to have been in contact with) could run a piece on the awards.
Perhaps Stephen Nolan, whose show was also a nominee in the awards, could get Mr Carville on his show.
Or maybe Watchdog might end up having a look at the whole thing. But as far as I know, nobody has been in touch with them. Yet.
Because I’m not having anything more to do with an organisation that relies on private threats and besmirchment in an effort to prove its point.
And as for the Wish NI Foundation, that’s for somebody else to look into.
(Also,I want to say a big thank to all the people on Twitter and Facebook who have supported me in trying to get to the bottom of all this-they know who they are. Thank you!)
