Deliverance!?

[PeterFarr]

(Cue Vincent Price, Peter Cushing & Christopher Lee? No, I don't think they are members of the forum. Anyway, they're all dead, or are they? Better get home before the sun goes down as I pass a number of churchyards.)

Christopher Lee is still alive (or at the very least undead). And still acting at past 90 - he was in "The Hobbit"



This is Vincent Price playing chess with Christopher Lee... though its just a publicity shot actually.

[Martin Regan]

rdc wrote:

They walked out in a hissy fit when the voting membership on Council quite rightly said that they couldn't endorse the development of a compulsory or universal membership scheme without knowing the broad outlines of the concept. It later transpired that they wanted everyone to pay something like a Gold level fee, but that grading would be optional. In other words if you weren't a member you wouldn't be in a grading list, although whether this meant that all your games would be excluded or the result not published was never made clear.

Where to begin, sweet Jesus, where to begin.

All that has happened in the past five years in membership debate and navel gazing could have been avoided had Council actually listened to what the board was in fact asking.

It put before Council a simple proposition: we believe a membership scheme is inevitable. speak to your members ask them what they want the ECF to actually achieve. When this is done, we will create a model to achieve it. Membership fees could be anything from 1p to £100. WE HAD NO FIXED VIEW.

OMOV could or could not be included.The concept was that something had to change. At the meeting the strategy, as usual, was overwhelmed by the tactics. Peter Sowray was so disgusted he resigned that evening. Faced with the loss of my majority and with a hostile president and council, I decided I had better things to do - good people then followed.No hissy fit.

In a final comment, rodger, in the period that you have posted 1,000 erroneous comments on the membership scheme, I have sold one business and created two others. Sometimes a sense of perspective is required.

[Roger de Coverly]

It put before Council a simple proposition: we believe a membership scheme is inevitable. speak to your members ask them what they want the ECF to actually achieve. When this is done, we will create a model to achieve it. Membership fees could be anything from 1p to £100. WE HAD NO FIXED VIEW.

The Council rightly rejected your scheme because you wouldn't outline the broad parameters and for that matter many of them didn't share your beliefs.

Were you proposing a flat rate scheme? Did you propose a complete ban on playing competitive chess if you weren't a member? If not what was the watering down? As I later understood it, it would have been to exclude either games or players from the grading list if they weren't members.

As to what the ECF should achieve, that's really not a question to put to Council at the tail end of a meeting. There are certain constraints in that the ECF is the English national chess body. That leaves it with a number of core functions which have to be achieved.

[David Sedgwick]

Peter Sowray was so disgusted he resigned that evening. Faced with the loss of my majority and with a hostile president and council, I decided I had better things to do.

Perhaps this belongs in chess history, but how interesting.

I've long suspected that Martin Regan didn't really want to resign on 27th April 2008, but that Peter Sowray forced his hand by making it clear that he would be going anyway.

Five and a half years later, we have the confirmation.

[Roger de Coverly]

Five and a half years later, we have the confirmation.

This thread refers
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... on+rumours

Various postings on the Streatham blog from that era are also relevant.

Andrew Farthing proved rather more adept at setting the ECF on a course of Membership only.

At the next Council meeting, the SCCU motion on school chess has been relegated to the foot of the Agenda. Presumably the advocates believe demanding membership for participation in inter school events is a desirable outcome. It follows quite logically from the Regan proposals and those who supported him.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Out of interest, which motion would you have sent to the bottom of the Agenda?

[Roger de Coverly]

Out of interest, which motion would you have sent to the bottom of the Agenda?

Number 14, which reads as score settling.

Aren't there more important things to discuss than who has the right to bring motions before ECF meetings?
(edit) There's a Governance Committee. Throw it to them to chew over. (/edit)

[David Gilbert]

Better get home before the sun goes down as I pass a number of churchyards.)

And watch out if passing the pubs and clubs too. Mention of Christopher Lee only reminds of the moment Mr Midnight tempts Captain Invincible to fall off the wagon. Probably the greatest moment in Australian musical comedy drama!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9MuEA2eF8c

[Angus French]

Out of interest, which motion would you have sent to the bottom of the Agenda?

I suggest a simple rule: Motions for which explanatory text is provided should come before those for which it isn't.

[Martin Regan]

The Council rightly rejected your scheme because you wouldn't outline the broad parameters

If you can not grasp the concept that the board was asking those who pay any membership to define the scope of the organisation that the membership fees could support, then I really can’t help you. Despite your posturing the board had NO scheme for Council to reject - merely a belief that membership was the way forward . The board was in effect saying to council: massive changes are needed and we seek the help of the players to define what will emerge at the end. We wanted to define the size of the wood – we found that people like you wanted to count the leaves.

[Martin Regan]

I've long suspected that Martin Regan didn't really want to resign on 27th April 2008, but that Peter Sowray forced his hand by making it clear that he would be going anyway.

Not quite accurate David. When I first took up the post I had a conversation with the SCCU web master (he may or may not remember) in which I said if I could not achieve what I had said I was going to achieve, I would resign. I couldn’t ,so I did.

[Roger de Coverly]

Despite your posturing the board had NO scheme for Council to reject - merely a belief that membership was the way forward . The board was in effect saying to council: massive changes are needed

You were rejected because you had NOT made the case for changing the ECF's financing. Membership wasn't a new topic, it had been raised and rejected many times over the previous ten years. Ask yourself why it was repeatedly rejected.

If there wasn't a scheme to reject, Council refused to accept your belief that membership was the way forward. So before committing themselves and the Board they wanted to agree that membership was the way forward. They didn't, not least because of the wide variety of potential schemes.

Start from membership implies that you aren't allowed to play chess unless a member. That's normally what a private membership only club implies and the way that the USCF and FFE operate. That's where the Bridge people have gone, for official competitions at least. Crucially though they finance themselves with a levy on activity, rather like Game Fee in fact. It was believed that in your eyes the term "membership" meant a per head annual levy, but if not so, why not leave it open?

[Roger de Coverly]

Kingpin draws an interesting comparison.

http://www.kingpinchess.net/2013/09/i-a ... o-are-you/

Andrew Paulson has the advantage from his publicity machine over the last eighteen months means that anyone who follows chess knows who he is. It's also a disadvantage that they also know that the initial promises of changes to the presentation of chess haven't materialised.

[Roger de Coverly]

When I first took up the post I had a conversation with the SCCU web master (he may or may not remember) in which I said if I could not achieve what I had said I was going to achieve, I would resign. I couldn’t ,so I did.

If anyone wants to see what he thought he could achieve, it's here

http://web.archive.org/web/200610050059 ... ecf.co.uk/

We were warned about mandatory membership
http://web.archive.org/web/200707210835 ... 9&Itemid=2

A mandatory membership scheme is in the long-term interests of English Chess

But note the caveat

but we stress that such a scheme can only be introduced with the full backing of all chess players

It's a shame really that line by line dissection of election platforms didn't take place in 2006.

[Martin Regan]

Quote:
A mandatory membership scheme is in the long-term interests of English Chess

But note the caveat
Quote:
but we stress that such a scheme can only be introduced with the full backing of all chess players


It's a shame really that line by line dissection of election platforms didn't take place in 2006.

Struggling to see the point – what is it about those two statements you find odd?