Cycling UK Forum

This is a reminder that there's still time to apply for election to become a Trustee of Cycling UK and join the board. The deadline has just been extended by a week to to 09:00 on 7 August.

Full details. forms etc. at https://www.cyclinguk.org/about/cycling ... -a-trustee

I was just looking on here after receiving my voting papers and studying carefully the election addresses for the candidates. Just incidentally then, why was the deadline extended?

In the nominations committee notes for each candidate I was puzzled to see two phrases against all of the candidates but one; "strategic management" and "behavioural change" and I confessed that I groaned. I spent the last half of my professional life in an SME which gave me a welcome break from what I'd had my fill of in the first half … "Corporate Bulldust". Strategic Management is what anyone running company with their own money in it does. "Behavioural Change" was a bit new to me, it sounds very much like "re-education" and very sinister so I looked it up and find that "behavioural change theories are not universally accepted."

As for the one candidate that didn't list that, well he is from Wales. What's the matter there then? Doesn't Wales also need these skills applied to it? This candidate has the note: "understanding of public policy in devolved nations, especially in Wales" I would appreciate knowing in what way this differs from England.

I have the postal vote with my latest copy of Cycling UK and tried to vote online BUT, it took me to an old vote and would not accept my security codes.

keithpoole wrote:."

As for the one candidate that didn't list that, well he is from Wales. What's the matter there then? Doesn't Wales also need these skills applied to it? This candidate has the note: "understanding of public policy in devolved nations, especially in Wales" I would appreciate knowing in what way this differs from England.

I assume by public policy they are referring to devolved government policy on things like education, health care and general social and transport policy. It’s easy for anyone outwith the country in question to not be aware of the differences. It’s something we see quite often from a WM government when they blame the Scottish Government for something which isn’t devolved.

Paulatic wrote:

keithpoole wrote:."

As for the one candidate that didn't list that, well he is from Wales. What's the matter there then? Doesn't Wales also need these skills applied to it? This candidate has the note: "understanding of public policy in devolved nations, especially in Wales" I would appreciate knowing in what way this differs from England.

I assume by public policy they are referring to devolved government policy on things like education, health care and general social and transport policy. It’s easy for anyone outwith the country in question to not be aware of the differences.

Yup, that kind of thing. When you're a charity trying to argue the case for more support for cycling, it helps to understand whom you should be persuading. It's a complicated subject. (I have enough knowledge of the subject to know just how complicated, but no experience of working within it.)

Every year the trustees do a "skills audit" - might sound pretentious, but basically it's working out what experience and skills we think we ought to have collectively, then listing what we've actually got, then looking for the gaps. Knowledge of the workings of the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales (and NI when they get their act together again) turned out to be a weak area, so we were looking for candidates with some experience of it.

Andy (trustee)

keithpoole wrote:I was just looking on here after receiving my voting papers and studying carefully the election addresses for the candidates. Just incidentally then, why was the deadline extended?

Nearing the deadline we didn't have as many candidates as we'd have liked. It turned out that, unlike the last few years, there hadn't yet been a message from the chair out to all members specifically encouraging them to apply, so we agreed to send one and allow a bit of extra time for people to respond to it.

My wife is one of the nominees.

She wasn't paying much attention to the request for trustees, but the announcement of the extension finally, explicitly mentioned what sort of skills they're looking for. All the previous requests were (I'm making this up, but it's along these lines) asking for the usual, generic, high-quality applicants who are keen on cycling blah blah blah.

When they talked about wanting experts in change management etc my wife suddenly realised that she could do it and would like to do it, so applied. And now she's on the voting list.

So, thanks to AndyK, Dan Howard et al for sending out that email. It worked. Looking at the list of nominees, it seems to have worked very well since they all seem to be high-quality candidates.

keithpoole wrote:
In the nominations committee notes for each candidate I was puzzled to see two phrases against all of the candidates but one; "strategic management" and "behavioural change" and I confessed that I groaned. I spent the last half of my professional life in an SME which gave me a welcome break from what I'd had my fill of in the first half … "Corporate Bulldust". Strategic Management is what anyone running company with their own money in it does. "Behavioural Change" was a bit new to me, it sounds very much like "re-education" and very sinister so I looked it up and find that "behavioural change theories are not universally accepted."
.

I know these attributes are important in the world of modern mega-charities, but it was this collection of management-speak that made me put my voting paper in the recycling.

I suffered this during the last year's of my working life (and am now starting to see it in my volunteering world) and it really is like a cold bath.

Rather than an inane sentence mentioning these fashionable skills perhaps the board could inspire the membership with a paragraph stating how the candidate might be the round peg for the round hole that they are seeking.

It's far too corporate to encourage participation.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly using hovercraft full of eels.

keithpoole wrote:I was just looking on here after receiving my voting papers ...

Thanks for the reminder. I'd squirrelled Cycle away when it dropped on the doorstep and forgotten about the voting papers .

Votes now cast.

mark a. wrote: Looking at the list of nominees, it seems to have worked very well since they all seem to be high-quality candidates.

You're not kidding - I'd happily vote for any of them, I think they all have something to contribute and I'm struggling to decide between them, which isn't usually the case. I hope those that don't get elected this time will consider putting themselves forward again in the future.

A big sell for me is #years membership. If someone joined last year, it's a turn-off.

mcmahonsport wrote:I have the postal vote with my latest copy of Cycling UK and tried to vote online BUT, it took me to an old vote and would not accept my security codes.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the URL you need is ersvotes.com/cyclinguk19 whereas the old one was the very similar /cyclinguk2019.

keithpoole wrote: "Behavioural Change" was a bit new to me, it sounds very much like "re-education" and very sinister

Quite. I've just had a read of the candidates addresses in my voting paper, and seeing phrases like "managing large scale behaviour change programmes" immediately had me thinking of what is being done to the Uighurs in China.

I strongly agree with Belgiangoth "A big sell for me is #years membership. If someone joined last year, it's a turn-off."

jgurney wrote:

keithpoole wrote: "Behavioural Change" was a bit new to me, it sounds very much like "re-education" and very sinister

Quite. I've just had a read of the candidates addresses in my voting paper, and seeing phrases like "managing large scale behaviour change programmes" immediately had me thinking of what is being done to the Uighurs in China.

I strongly agree with Belgiangoth "A big sell for me is #years membership. If someone joined last year, it's a turn-off."

CYCLING UK as to be more attuned and sensitive to the variations of intergenerational, social, cultural, religion and sexual identity that is reflected in the UK today.

We have to realized that over time social interaction between individuals within any group reflects those individual experiences of the society in which that groups function today and their individual experiences from previous experiences of other societies. Of course, individuals can have a range of experiences and their reaction to these experiences is dependent upon numerous factors including various noises. Over time a dynamic society will transform it behaviour and interactions from being acceptable to NOT acceptable and vice versa.

What does CYCLING UK need to do
To attune it interactions and presentation and services to be acceptable to the hard to reach groups that may come from diverse backgrounds.

Just a reminder that the deadline for voting in the trustee elections is 09:00 tomorrow, 31st October.