ECF Annual General Meeting 13 October 2012

[Alex McFarlane]

I liked an earlier post from Sean which suggested that Adam if elected could have been instructed to tidy up the membership list.
Whilst this statement is true it failed to acknowledge that until Saturday that self same list had been Adam's responsibility as Director of Home Chess!!
Why weren't the desired changes implemented in the first place?

[Rob Thompson]

in the past has he shown he is a competant director.

I didn't expect this statement from you, for sure.

[William Metcalfe]

So sorry about my spelling its been a long weekend and i have just finished a long game of chess.Now please tell me why that is a new low.I went to the meeting with a open mind i was not going to vote for Roger Edwards[Apart from the 1 vote that Cumbria mandated me to vote for Roger] but i changed my mind after he spoke at the meeting.So now lets get back to Adam in the past 15 months he got into a dispute with the person running the flagship event of British chess he gave no help or even offered any help to Lara.Now explain to me how a compitant director would get himself into that position.He was not there to explain himself,He did not produce a statement or somebody to speak for him to explain himself.Now tell me why Council was wrong in not voting for him.

[Paul McKeown]

Ok lets cut to the chase ... ... ... answered

Oh FFS! Is every North-easter an illiterate whose only contribution to the forum is the character assassination of anyone who has ever dared disagree with Lara or Alex? Isn't this getting ridiculous?

[David Pardoe]

Here`s some more of Adams views.....that dont seem particularly unreasonable, and show a person who is at least open to discuss things....

Bob Clark wrote:
Adam Raoof wrote:

I agree. I think that we can really simplify the membership scheme both for players (less categories, one would do for me), and for organisers (integrated membership and grading database, we're working on it). We also need a specific scheme for Juniors, at a base level of about £5 perhaps, or £10 to cover any junior up to the age of 16, with a membership officer dedicated to getting more junior events graded, and more juniors to join up. We already have a magazine, but it really needs to refocus post-membership as the audience will probably widen enough to attract a sponsor or two.


Adam, if this is your view of how the membership scheme should work, will you be proposing changes in your new role as Membership and Marketing Director?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't you previously posted that you believe there there should be a single membership category costing around £25 per adult.
Is that still your position?


Personally, probably yes. However I agree with Richard, we have what we have, and I would think the best thing to do is to see how it goes for at least a season - my feedback is that people don't actually mind having to join the ECF, and it doesn't put them off playing events - rather it actually, dare I say, excites them with the possibilities.

They do have real practical problems understanding what the scheme involves, what level they should join at and are happier to give their club secretary money to pass on to the ECF than using PayPal to do it online.

What we have to do is on the one hand help organisers create events, so that our members can participate. On the other hand we have to fund the ECF to provide the infrastructure to create that environment. My club, Hendon, used to have very quiet nights where no matches were taking place and when three or four people would turn up and play a few casual games. I made a point of organising events on those nights, FIDE rated blitz tournaments, ECF rapidplay rated events and simuls with our stronger players such as IM Lorin d'Costa. Now forty people (out of a membership of 70) come to a club evening, sometimes paying an extra fee on top of their usual annual membership fee, and we have problems fitting them all in! We used to have two teams, now we have five, and we still can't satisfy demand for rated games.

The ECF is not so very different from my chess club, or yours. If we require (and I do believe we should require) membership for playing graded chess, then we have to deliver something in return. I have hopefully contributed something to improving the grading system by bringing Mike Bennett into the grading team to revitalise the grading database. I would really like the ECF to put some money it raises from membership back into the national Grand Prix, at least £5,000, to kick start a new prix for events requiring membership and advertising the ECF on their websites and entry forms, with a proper award cermony to be held each year at the British Championships. We need to have more rewards / awards in general.

I think that Alex Holowczak is going to revitalise the ECF Club and County Championships with his ideas, and those ideas will need financial backing, though I actually think they will pay for themselves in the long run.

We have a lot of events that just don't run each year without some support, and some that run with no support at all. If I am going to be paying to join the ECF and asking others to do the same, that has to change. We need to get more young people involved in the organisation of the game, as arbiters. We need to get all organisers using tournament management software to run events, and delivering grading quicker as a result. The two things are linked. We have to encourage all junior events to be graded nationally so that we can monitor their development, probably by offering the grading and the right to qualify for junior teams and national titles in return for junior events enforcing membership.

I don't agree with what Roger has proposed, and I don't think it has made him more likely to be elected.

_________________
Adam Raoof
FIDE Arbiter / Organiser
http://www.chessengland.com


I wonder if Adam didnt put forward an official manifesto because he may have felt that people at the ECF were reasonably clear on his position...and his position regarding the Membership issue hardly looks `radical`.
I suspect he probably didnt put this down because he felt that his position was fairly `middle of the road`, which is what it appears to be.
I think the ECF should revisit this, put some past prejiduces aside, and give him a recall, if he`s still interested.

[Paul McKeown]

Thank you, David. For once a post that I could read.

[John Cox]

Ok lets cut to the chase ... ... ... answered

Oh FFS! Is every North-easter an illiterate whose only contribution to the forum is the character assassination of anyone who has ever dared disagree with Lara or Alex? Isn't this getting ridiculous?

This does raise another question, of course - how much of this sort of nonsense is simply chippy provincialism? I have no idea of the answer, but it's rather noticeable that those who get mistreated by the Council in this way tend to be from the metropolis.

[Roger de Coverly]

[
It has never been what this advocate of membership has ever argued.

Maybe not, but all the usual suspects in favour of a membership scheme were arguing in favour of the Farthing plan both when it had a single category and when it didn't. Personally I'm not in favour of membership schemes with any degree of compulsion which includes economic compulsion as currently implemented by the ECF. I've never thought it a problem that the ECF should be rewarded in proportion to the amount of chess activity it generates. Almost everyone else in the food chain is.

[Roger de Coverly]

Here`s some more of Adams views.....that dont seem particularly unreasonable, and show a person who is at least open to discuss things....
If we require (and I do believe we should require) membership for playing graded chess, then we have to deliver something in return.

As far as I am aware the Farthing plan had to offer the £ 6 Congress scheme and the £ 2 league scheme in order to get enough support to reach 70%. This enabled the ECF to deny that it wanted a scheme where it was compulsory to be a member to play graded chess with the implication that non-members would be banned from competitions.

So what does the phrase "we should require membership for playing graded chess" actually mean? Would it exclude Scots and Welsh and others from English Congresses unless members? Would it demand from the player available to play one game a season the same costs as one playing two hundred? Would it be expected that clubs default games rather than field non-members?

30% of Council votes were opposed to the Farthing scheme in 2011. Is it supposed that they would be in favour of a harder line version in 2012?

I don't myself think it was a totally a vote on issues, I suspect AR had annoyed too many people on Council. Evasive and economical answers about the finances of the Sheffield British at the 2011 AGM may also have been unhelpful.

[John Upham]

I would still argue that I was far more competent than you to administer the game of chess.

Hear hear Martin!

[John Cox]

So sorry about my spelling its been a long weekend and i have just finished a long game of chess.Now please tell me why that is a new low.I went to the meeting with a open mind i was not going to vote for Roger Edwards[Apart from the 1 vote that Cumbria mandated me to vote for Roger] but i changed my mind after he spoke at the meeting.So now lets get back to Adam in the past 15 months he got into a dispute with the person running the flagship event of British chess he gave no help or even offered any help to Lara.Now explain to me how a compitant director would get himself into that position.He was not there to explain himself,He did not produce a statement or somebody to speak for him to explain himself.Now tell me why Council was wrong in not voting for him.

For God's sake, man. I can't believe this needs spelling out, but here goes.

We're all on the same side. People with an obvious track record of huge contribution to chess at a local level should not be lightly cast aside when they offer their time at a national level. They should be treated with respect. It should be totally inconceivable for this sort of thing to happen, certainly without warning.

In my opinion, if Council delegates see an uncontested election coming up and they've got doubts about the candidate, the first thing they should do is search their consciences and see whether those doubts are in fact motivated by personal dislike and ego. If the answer is yes, then they should resolve to abstain. They should also reflect on a rule of life which states that when people say 'I could never work with X again' , what they invariably mean is 'I could easily work with X again if I had to but I don't like him and I intend to do him down if I can.'

If the answer is no, then they should contact the candidate, express those doubts and seek reassurance. For example, if someone truly thinks that they can't vote for someone without a personal manifesto, then they should say so openly before the meeting. It's *pathetic* waiting until after the meeting and then saying that the candidate only has himself to blame. You're all to blame. What has happened is a disaster, because it possibly involves losing the services of someone enthuasistic and able - and God knows the ECF can do with some of those - for ever, and for no reason. Saying 'now tell me why Council was wrong in not voting for him' misses the point entirely. This sort of situation simply shouldn't be allowed to develop. It creates the impression of a pack of squabbling schoolchildren, using the Council meeting for the settling of scores and not the efficient dispatch of necessary business.

Anyway, there should be none of this petty nonsense about manifestos. I've no idea how the board of the ECF goes about making the almighty cock of things it invariably does, but how it *should* go about things when it creates a new post is to set out some kind of job description, and it's reasonable to assume people who stand for that post propose to carry out that description. I imagine the ECF has some kind of policy about membership, and I don't suppose it's for the Membership Director to change that policy on his own say-so. He should implement it. No-one needs a personal manifesto to say they're going to do that. All that going on about manifestos does is create the impression that Council is fixated on making sure that would-be Board members recognise how very, very important Council and its members are, which is not a good look.

The same applies to candidates not attending the meeting. If it's truly that important to you to ask them questions, contact them beforehand and do it. If you can't be bothered to do that, you are the problem, far more than the candidate. Believe me, your questions are not necessarily so important and interesting to everyone else that it's worth making 40 odd people schlep up to Birmingham to sit through them.

As for the other two points made, I have no idea if they're right or not. Possibly Adam has been totally useless all year. I rather doubt it, but it's possible. But if that's what people think, they should raise it before the meeting. That's the main point - no organisation which isn't utterly dysfunctional lets this sort of thing happen in public.

[John Cox]

There was an instance a few years ago when Malcolm Pein wasn't elected as Non-Executive Director on the grounds that the directed proxies weren't counted (the Teller got it wrong). If they were, he would have been elected. The Board was therefore minded to appoint him as NED in those circumstances, but he declined.

This is too funny to be true, assuming it is true. You couldn't make it up. Or rather, more accurately, if you did try to make something up to illustrate the sublime, overweening, gigantic, massively self-important unfitness of the ECF Council to run anything at all, this would have been *exactly* what you did make up.

Not even in a brewery.

Please, AH, do let us know the name of this hapless Teller. He deserves a greater role in history.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Please, AH, do let us know the name of this hapless Teller. He deserves a greater role in history.

Andrew Leadbetter.

[Roger de Coverly]

I imagine the ECF has some kind of policy about membership, and I don't suppose it's for the Membership Director to change that policy on his own say-so. He should implement it.

You could suppose that the ECFs policy is to implement the Farthing proposals as hacked about/modified by the April 2012 Council meeting. The October 2011 meeting showed the original version of the proposals to only have 70% support. The limited public statements of the prospective Membership director indicated that he wanted to implement his own, harder line, version. But as suggested, I suspect the rejection was not solely on policy issues.

[Brendan O'Gorman]

Please, AH, do let us know the name of this hapless Teller. He deserves a greater role in history.

Andrew Leadbetter.

Well done, Jack. Excellent illustration of Andrew Farthing's reservations about ECF directors posting on this forum. I wonder whether Andrew will be so willing to volunteer for this task (or others) in future.