ECF Membership

[Sean Hewitt]

None of that of course should get in the way of his constitutional right as a free citizen to have a pop at people like Andrew

I think it's wrong to reveal private correspondence in a public domain. Especially when there is such an imbalance of power between the two parties involved. I hadn't realised that this value I hold is so out-of-touch with modern thinking. I apologise.

Peter, whilst in general it's true that you wouldn't want to publicise private correspondence I think Andrew appears to have wanted to correct a misunderstanding ; namely that a board member had asked someone to establish "who is a member through necessity rather than choice". That seems fairly reasonable to me.

[Peter Rhodes]

If the original statement - that a member of the board (implicitly) asked that the thread be started - emanated from the referred to correspondence then surely it is wrong to suggest that it was Andrew Farthing who revealed it? If a misleading claim is made about said correspondence, then i don't see why he doesn't have a right to correct the record.

Richard, I see your point but I think your equating (1) that Carol had claimed to be asked to find about about the necessity of joining the ECF and (2) the correspondence itself, as the same thing.

I don't believe Carol Williams had revealed the correspondence. She claimed that she had been challenged over the point of whether members join through necessity but that was all - she did not explicitly reveal the correspondence involved - which was then given in some depth.

[Andrew Farthing]

I did hesitate before commenting, even to the very limited extent that I did, on what was said in private correspondence. I was careful to restrict myself to the bare minimum needed to explain why it was, in my opinion, misleading to initiate a thread on this forum by saying (in a reference to private correspondence, of course) that a member of the ECF Board had asked someone to find out "who is a member by necessity rather than by choice". I've commented before on this forum about the difficulties of balancing the needs of correcting misleading statements and confidentiality. If, despite my caution, I overstepped a line, I apologise.

To pick up a couple of specific points made since my previous post:

Carol Williams's questions relate to the reasons why members remain members, not why they joined initially. Andrew Farthing's replies relate to why members joined initially. Andrew Farthing states he joined out of choice. However when he became a member of the ECF board was he not then required to be a member?

I'm not sure that the original query did make this distinction, but just to be clear: I am an ECF member because I want to be a member. The fact that Board members are required to be members is - believe me - incidental. I would be a member regardless, because I believe that it's a cause worth supporting. To support this claim, I would cite the fact that I choose to pay the Full membership rate, when it would be sufficient to be a Standard member to meet the requirement for Board members.

So ECF board members research opinions adequately before publication ? Try revisiting the financial processes.

There is nothing wrong with giving an opinon based on views expressed by a small circle of chess playing associates as the statistical sample needed to be reasonably accurate is in this instance quite small. However a disproportionate number of arbiters, coaches and board members should not be included as they total only about 1-2 % of active chess players. Of course opinions which become part of published strategy need a little more research.

This is a misreading of what I said. My point was that it is very common for people to express opinions without necessarily having factual evidence to support them and that the pragmatic course is to accept that this is the way of the world. The reason why I felt it necessary to reveal the specific context of the comment which started all this was because I had been trying to highlight what I thought was an unreasonable expectation.

Re Sean's suggested three reasons for being an ECF member: I would argue that what he calls "Financial" is nevertheless a matter of choice. I might change my gas and electricity suppliers because it made financial sense to do so, but this would still be choice, not necessity.

I don't understand the reference to bus drivers, let alone its relevance.

[David Sedgwick]

I don't understand the reference to bus drivers, let alone its relevance.

I do understand it, but one thing about which I agree with Peter Rhodes is that not everything should be spelt out on the Forum.

[Sean Hewitt]

Re Sean's suggested three reasons for being an ECF member: I would argue that what he calls "Financial" is nevertheless a matter of choice. I might change my gas and electricity suppliers because it made financial sense to do so, but this would still be choice, not necessity.

Of course that is true but, by the same token, you could then argue that a player playing in the British is choosing to become a member because he does not have to play in the British. I don't think either argument stands up to scrutiny.

The disctinction I am making is that for players in my 'financial' category they would not join if there was a net financial cost in doing so. They join mainly (perhaps solely) because they receieve more in congress discounts than the cost of their membership.

[John Upham]

I am required to be a direct member to :
1. continue as an accredited coach,
2. received a discount to some tournaments,
3. play in FIDE rated events such as the 4NCL and the e2e4 tournaments.

Until this year I was a full direct member and then I calculated that it was cheaper(!) to become a standard direct member and buy the extras one would get with full membership!

It would appear that full membership includes an involuntary donation (and I didn't want Chess Moves in paper form). I believe that this anomaly has yet to be resolved.

IMHO, the reference to bus drives does no credit to PRs argument and I would imagine most people know who PR is referring to?

[Leonard Barden]

I don't understand the reference to bus drivers, let alone its relevance.

I do understand it, but one thing about which I agree with Peter Rhodes is that not everything should be spelt out on the Forum.

I don't understand the references, but seeing them reminds me that more than 20 years ago WIM Teresa Needham, who was around 2250-2300 strength and would have been more than useful to the England team in some recent Olympiads, gave up chess to become a bus driver.....

[David Clayton]

In some parts of the country, we like to try to entice new players into competition chess without trying to put them off by demanding they sign forms and pay money to a remote national body.

In other parts of the country we encourage new players to join the national chess body through the ECF member organisation schemes. They can then play lots of competitive chess and join in the national grading system without being discouraged by having to continually fork out for grading fees. The chess prevention tax as Sean Hewitt describes it.

For example, internal club competitions, previously not graded because of the grading fee can be graded without additional cost. Clubs can enter additional teams in leagues for just a couple of pounds.

Regards

David

[Mike Gunn]

I became a full direct member about 15 years ago when I started playing chess at the local club because it seemed the natural thing to do (to support the national organisation). When I started playing in weekend tournaments I did the calculation to see if was playing in enough tournaments to mean the sub was paid for by the tournament discounts and other things received, (not quite). Later on (now that I play less weekenders) I kept up the subscription.

This "seeing if it is worth it" is fairly common characteristic amongst chess players, but at the same time there is a large number of players at club and county level who put in a large amount of voluntary work (and even, some times their own money) into efforts which make it possible for the rest to play organised, graded chess at clubs, in leagues and tournaments.

I think now is the time to bite the bullet and introduce a compulsory national membership scheme for all players who play three or more graded games a year. I used to think game fee was an equitable system, but I now see it as an expression of the "you pay for what you get " culture. The problem with this approach is that it goes along with the idea that you don't need to contribute to other activities like junior chess and chess development generally. Isn't it a much better idea that we are all in this together as members, contributing equally (or what we can afford)?

[Sean Hewitt]

Mike, I agree completely. And from experience of operating an MO I can say that such a membership scheme certainly works in getting more people to play more games which must be a good thing.

[Roger de Coverly]

I think now is the time to bite the bullet and introduce a compulsory national membership scheme for all players who play three or more graded games a year.

Do you want a closed shop? Does this also apply to non-Eng players playing just one Congress. If so, why do want to give them a free ride? (At the moment the ECF gets Game Fee for their participation)

If you think pay as you play is wrong, then are you going to advocate the abolition of congresses having to pay fees per player per event for International rating?

What would your sanctions be against players, clubs and leagues that didn't want to go along with compulsory membership?

[Kevin Thurlow]

Necessity.
Redhill used to have a bus driver as a member, we also had a dentist and an executive in a petrochemical company etc - amazingly we spoke to all of them, and didn't think their job was relevant, unless we had toothache for example.
I thought Teresa Needham was spotted as a bus conductress, rather than driver? This may seem a bit picky, but it is the ECF forum.

[Alex Holowczak]

I think now is the time to bite the bullet and introduce a compulsory national membership scheme for all players who play three or more graded games a year.

Do you want a closed shop? Does this also apply to non-Eng players playing just one Congress. If so, why do want to give them a free ride? (At the moment the ECF gets Game Fee for their participation)

If you think pay as you play is wrong, then are you going to advocate the abolition of congresses having to pay fees per player per event for International rating?

What would your sanctions be against players, clubs and leagues that didn't want to go along with compulsory membership?

Do your club pay fees per match a player plays, or an annual subscription?

[Roger de Coverly]

Do your club pay fees per match a player plays, or an annual subscription?

I'm not sure I see the relevance, because I was asking about how you would collect from people who aren't club members. In practice our biggest overhead is the weekly room rental and the simplest way of financing this is by an annual subscription. The county collects for Game Fee by charging a team entry fee. None of this involves the ECF and it's the simplest approach. In practice it means that only the County Treasurer has to count the exact number of games played. As both the clubs and county association are expected to be continuing bodies, I don't see a problem with them accumulating or subsidising profits or losses from one year to the next.

If you are talking about 10,000 individual members, then either you are processing them all via the Office or you are expecting clubs, Congresses, County Associations or Regional Unions to be your tax collectors. You also have to decide who would be the collector and enforcer where someone is a member of one than one club or plays in one than one league.

Collection by head by the County Association is what we had before Game Fee, as a Club Treasurer I was pleased to see the back of it. It's a measure of the in-fighting within the BCF/ECF that as almost as soon as Game Fee had been launched, attempts were being made to undermine the principles of it. The most obvious one was the membership for FIDE rating excuse.

[Roger de Coverly]

Carol Williams's questions relate to the reasons why members remain members, not why they joined initially.

I hope you might get a reasonably wide consensus that the ECF ought to be financed. As to whether that financing should require players to become guarantor members is a different question. Also whether it's better to collect by activity or by head both in terms of practicalities and effect. Also whether the national body is going to do the collection or expect volunteers to do the work.

I also think that the national level of hostility towards the ECF would increase quite considerably if you tried to insist that nearly everyone in the grading system had to become guarantor members in order to continue playing competitive chess.

Nearly everyone on this thread has said that they become members because they were required to do so.