English Chess Forum

Ray Keene is good at diverting rich people's money into chess. Other people are good at checking facts. It amuses me that over the years Ray Keene has trained an army of amateur fact-checkers to follow him around correcting everything he says for the benefit of the 12 people who care. They're not th...

I may be being charitable here but my guess is that those who devised this particular scheme probably weren't total rogues but honestly thought that they had found a loophole in the law Somewhere along the line, someone thought to themselves "It's illegal to get income out of your pension before yo...

HMRC disagreed with some of the technical arguments and decided to apply tax. That's quite an unfortunate little detail for them to quibble about. Given that "tax" in this context refers to a 55% penalty levied by HMRC on any funds withdrawn from a pension without their permission, and that the who...

My concern with all of this rancour is that chess administrators may be put off by the sheer amount of hassle it creates and just give up. Also, as the ECF has a complaints process i fail to see the need to air the issues in such detail until that process has at least finished. That would allow the...

It adds credibility to a theory that the delay in appointing a Development Officer was down to internal feuding between ECF Directors as to who was the favoured candidate. Count me as one of those who had assumed underneath the headline argument, this was ultimately a symptom of a wider conflict be...

Today I received a fundamentally flawed ruling by the Complaints Panel, and I intend to appeal. This matter is not over by a long chalk. There is not enough facepalm in the world. Tim, your involvement with chess has been a draw for Forest Hall*, a draw for the North East**, and at this rate will b...

Rule of thumb, a competition that has an attack named after it is prestigious enough to not have the wrong person win it

I tried it. (Well, if it got a harrumph out of Lord Robertson...) When it says it's pairing you with a human player, it isn't. It's pairing you with a rock-stupid AI. If you've got a queen in your hand, you can go all-in without a second thought. For all the thought they put into the hand mechanics,...

I do have complete confidence in the highly qualified panel of Gareth Pearce, Suzzane Wood and Roger Emerson. Best regards, Tim Wall" If, after arguing at length about the procedure adopted to appoint a panel, someone states that he has "complete confidence" in the "highly qualified panel" then tha...

So we've learnt that Tim doesn't want to replace Carl Portman, supports the work of the ECF, and doesn't have a problem with the panel appointed to hear his complaint. But he's still "extremely unhappy". Down with this sort of thing.

Having said all that, if there was a satisfactory explanation as to the date of that letter, this whole matter could have been killed off a long time ago. The absence of any explanation does, I have to say, leave me a little uneasy. Suppose Carl walked out of the interview having been told that the...

Coming back to the central issue, while my sympathy for Tim Wall is somewhat limited, I note [and I have said this before and so apologise for the repetition] that the dating of Carl Portman's communication remains unexplained. To that extent, I feel Tim has a fair point. He makes assorted fair poi...

I have received a reply from Non-Executive Chairman Julian Clissold today. It is breathtaking in its blatant misrepresentation of my complaint, and the way he ignores the Elephant in the Boardroom: That the directors who consider the complaint (or appoint a complaints panel) should not be the same ...

I read today the article in CHESS by Tim Wall about the history of the Northumbria Masters. It is a good article. Made me think it would be nice if chess organisers could all get along a bit more, though that may be a naive attitude. :( No man ever needs to be convinced, either of the need for ever...

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 5:41 pm

On the other hand, if he's not happy either with the panel or with the manner of its appointment (I have no opinion on the matter either way, for the record) what is he supposed to do, if not say so?

Blog about it for everyone else's entertainment, obviously