George Irvine

[Pierre Farrugia]

<font color='#0000FF'>The following is from an email George Irvine sent to one of the founders (Deco Stop). He asked that we post it, and we are happy to accomodate that request.

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I am hearing that your list (with the exception of those who have a big problem with me) want me to post directly. Maybe you could post this for me by way of explanation. I really don't like the bulletin board formats, for one thing, but otherwise I really don't have the time to spend online with diving, and certainly do not have time to answer all of those who constantly want to take cheap shots at me or argue.

I used to be an institutional fixed income broker for Morgan Stanley, so after about 10:00 in the morning I really had nothing to do but talk to my buddies on the phone and play with email. Now I run my families businesses which involve six companies with operations spread all over the country and a big operation in Ft Lauderdale, and I don't even have time to get a drink of water anymore. I get up at five and go to the HOF to swim, run or ride, I get to work at 7:00, I eat at my desk, I leave at 5:30 to go back to the pool ( no sense spending an hour in traffic) and then get home at 7:30. I moved out of Ft Lauderdale and now live in Weston, which is 25 miles away, so there is travel time and that is when I make my personal phone calls from my cell. I eat dinner, do whatever I need to do in my personal life and with dive gear, and go to bed. I attempt to make time to work with the people on Jarrod's DIR Quest list because he is my friend and he is doing good things in my opinion, and because he asked me to help out. NAUI asked me to do the same thing with their list, but I have not had the time. I try to get back to everyone who has serious interest in getting information from me while I ignore those who want to pick a fight. In the recent case where I deviated from that, this was due to my loyalty to my best friend.

I do not think there is any need by me or any of my team to attempt to &quot;fix&quot; anyone or convince anyone of anything. We have set rules in our Project and there is no reason for anyone outside of that project to worry about that or care about that. For those who want to use what we have learned, I have attempted to put the important and useful stuff on my website which is WKPP.org. I do not report all the dives anymore, but do have examples on there which can be used by those who are interested to understand these things. I do not want bragging or constant yapping about our dives on any list or website. GUE used to put our dive reports on their site, but then the usual crowd scrutinized them for grammar and spelling errors or misstatements and used them against us. That has basically been discontinued other than by our Project Coordinator who carefully states what we did as to the important parts of the objectives which relate in any way to GUE. The diving end is really just paint-by-numbers anymore and is merely a means to and end. We just discuss the end and only the means if they change in any important way, or if we discover something worth disseminating.

I do not want members of our project soap boxing about anything on your list or anywhere else. Nobody needs to hear it. All it does is piss people off and cause us problems. I want WKPP to be out of sight, out of mind. We started our own training agency ( GUE) rather than train people ourselves and because we were having so many problems with people trained away from us. We disagree with what is going on in diving, tech diving and cave diving, so we did something about it for ourselves and anyone else who wants something different. That is GUE's deal now, not mine and not the WKPP's. We did not want to be associated with tec or cave diving in general due to the track record of the &quot;community&quot;. We had our lawyers and accountants set up 501-C-3's for both the WKPP and GUE so that we would not have to use the umbrella of the NSS. We are an independent non-profit project, GUE is a not-for-profit training agency with a non-profit research arm. WKPP has a board of directors now and people who run each area. I am frequently not even involved. For instance, on our next big outing which is coming up, I will not be there at all, I will be diving in the Bahamas on one of our customer's boats.

It is really too bad that there are so many terrible influences in diving, but I don't plan on changing them. We have done enough, and until the old dinosaurs and their ideas fade away, we will see tragedy in higher level diving, like the tragedy we see in recreational diving due to the horrific influences there. Everyone in diving always wanted us to keep our mouths shut and not make them look bad, and now I am offering that, so they need to go their own way and stop worrying about me. Everyone in diving always wanted some &quot;respect&quot; out of me. I am sorry to say that I can not offer that, as there is nothing to respect, but I will gladly stay away and let those who think they need respect try to earn it on their own.

I wish I had more time, but I am actually having a lot of fun with the businesses and the boats, which is where I started years ago - building sf boats and yachts.

[malcolm smith]

Many thanks for posting that Pierre.
All the best, Malcolm.

[Mark Davies]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Pierre Farrugia @ Oct. 14 2003,18:43)]It is really too bad that there are so many terrible influences in diving, but I don't plan on changing them. We have done enough, and until the old dinosaurs and their ideas fade away, we will see tragedy in higher level diving, like the tragedy we see in recreational diving due to the horrific influences there.

<font color='#000080'>Does anybody know (perhaps from his previous posts elsewhere) exactly what sort of thing he's refering to by this?

[Paul Oliver]

Mark

Yes, i'd like to know more about that as well, its a rather provocative statement that just beggars a follow up.

Dive safe

Paul

[Andy Phillips]

The guy wants to go away, so let him, I don't doubt his ability, just the method he uses to put it accross. I for one will not miss reports of or about him.

Andrew

[Gavin Yates]

<font color='#000F22'>Who is George Irvine? Didn't he used to be somebody?

[Mr T.]

Aye,

A former some-body in diving (for whom certain parties still feel a misplaced duty/honour to defend, regardless of what an arse he continues to make of himself on these and other boards) who now merely wears Speedos; allows his identi-kit/generic-blonde girlfriend to name him after a drinks-carrier (&quot;Trey&quot and runs his daddy's yatch company.


Gotta be a hard life....

[Dominic]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]Does anybody know (perhaps from his previous posts elsewhere) exactly what sort of thing he's refering to by this?

Deep air. Solo diving. Xmas tree configs. FFMs. Cylinder boots. Harnesses with more than 3 D-rings. Clips on shoulder straps.

All the non-DIR stuff..

[Rupert Bear]

If he had been as reasonable in approach as he seems to be in this essay then maybe more people would have listened to him. I think that he had taken this approach (this is what we are doing and why, you are wlecome to copy it) rather than the (do it my way or you are gonna die/are a stroke/idiots etc etc) then he would have had more influence in general diving. This sounds as if he is on the way out of WKPP, did he jumped or was he &quot;pushed&quot;?

[Mark Davies]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Dominic @ Oct. 15 2003,08:00)]All the non-DIR stuff..

<font color='#000080'>Within that context it seemed as though he's refering to organisational influences, rather than merely bad practices. I was wondering whether he was having a go at the likes of PADI and the other non-DIR training agencies (i.e. everyone except GUE)?