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Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 6:57pm
by thirdcrank
manybikes wrote:.... He did not reply until today and the way it is written suggests that it is circular and is addressed to "Dear CTC Members". ....
I fancy everybody with an email address got one. They originate from HQ, not personally from the relevant councillors. Not very imaginative, either, just directing attention to the case on the CTC desktop. Rather patronising when that's already been widely published and anybody with a scintilla of interest will have looked already.
It does smack of desperation.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 7:05pm
by Karen Sutton
geocycle wrote:AndyB wrote:This came in an email from the NW councillors (Welna Bowden and David Robinson) just now:
In the latest edition of Cycle you will see two articles 'For' and 'Against' the proposal. In the 'against' article the impression is wrongly given that the club have to support loss making charitable activities. The reverse is in fact the case. With our present charitable activities and the overhead costs, the CTC Trust has, in the latest accounts, saved the club £430k . In the accounts, monies transferred from the club to the trust are for member services provided by the trust.
Sounds complicated we know; and that's one of the reasons why converting to a unified charity will bring greater clarity. Incidentally we have full confidence in the CTC's financial management. As part of the accountability process our financial advisor and chair of a management committee, both of whom are highly qualified financial experts, have examined the accounts in detail and confirm the positive figures presented. None of our charitable contracts are 'loss making'.
The financial benefits from becoming a full charity, partly with the opportunity of gift aid, will increase resources for the CTC to promote cycling. As your North West councillors we feel that this will provide increasing financial resources to our local member groups to support the excellent activities that they offer to you as members.
Just read this as well. Who do we believe? This pretty fundamental and you would imagine should be a question of fact rather than opinion.
I received the same email today.
I would also have thought that this should be easy to prove, surely it's in the interests of those on the Yes side to produce the proof? If they cannot then that is all the confirmation we need that the resolution should fail?
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 8:41pm
by drossall
thirdcrank wrote:I fancy everybody with an email address got one. They originate from HQ, not personally from the relevant councillors. Not very imaginative, either, just directing attention to the case on the CTC desktop.
To be fair, the one I got from the East councillors is quite differently worded. I fail to see why HQ would write different messages for different councillors. The pages referenced all link to the forum where the doubters are expressing their views.
I'm not finding the conspiracy theory that convincing. As I'm still undecided, I hope the anti case is better argued.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 8:43pm
by drossall
glueman wrote:Scanning various message boards it seems all the councillors are singing a similar tune - pure coincidence no doubt
That or, after examination of the arguments, they agree with them?
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 8:55pm
by glueman
drossall wrote:glueman wrote:Scanning various message boards it seems all the councillors are singing a similar tune - pure coincidence no doubt
That or, after examination of the arguments, they agree with them?
But why now and all at once? The idea they weren't all informed to write a piece on the merits of charitifisation beggars belief. I haven't heard a peep from CTC since going on-line in the 90s, yet today I receive a broadside with accusations against members who, so far as one can ascertain, haven't had any of their quieries addressed.
It's difficult not to see CTC as a centralised, on-message, agenda driven organisation when it offers a magazine reply to Simon Legg then uses an entirely different and far more immediate and comprehensive medium to undermine his points. Sneaky is the word I'm thinking of and I'm not sure I want to pay my subs to an executive involved in such underhand tactics to get their way.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 9:07pm
by thirdcrank
drossall wrote:thirdcrank wrote:I fancy everybody with an email address got one. They originate from HQ, not personally from the relevant councillors. Not very imaginative, either, just directing attention to the case on the CTC desktop.
To be fair, the one I got from the East councillors is quite differently worded. I fail to see why HQ would write different messages for different councillors. The pages referenced all link to the forum where the doubters are expressing their views.
I'm not finding the conspiracy theory that convincing. As I'm still undecided, I hope the anti case is better argued.
You are right - they were not all worded the same. I'm no believer in conspiracy theories - they need to much skill and subtlety, and certainly more than has been apparent here. OTOH, I think there must have been more co-ordination than coincidence for them all to write pretty much simultaneously. I presume that after years of everything going through pretty much on the nod, this has come as as something of a shock.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 9:18pm
by drossall
glueman - I understand where you are coming from, but the behaviour is still perfectly consistent with the overwhelming majority of Council genuinely supporting the proposals. Indeed, if they didn't, I'd find it hard to understand how those proposals could be put forward.
If I were trying to hide things, I would not do anything to encourage debate, because the proposals would probably get through on the nod. I would find a reason why it was not proper for the issues to be debated in these forums. I absolutely would not link the pages about the proposals to these forums, where the arguments against are being put so strongly.
Whilst the no camp may argue that they have not had a response to their points, the pages on the CTC site set out a perfectly reasonable case for the donations to the Trust, and the no camp have not yet responded to those.
It's quite a struggle trying to decide between two sides talking past each other, and frankly less talking past is happening from the yes camp so far. The above case for donations is at least a response to the points made.
And the inability to recognise that the other side may also be in good faith, even if misguided, is not always, in my experience, a characteristic of a strong argument.
Sorry, but that is where I am.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 9:27pm
by meic
I received no such email from my councilor and I am very sure that I will not do so.
Dont be so quick to dismiss them all.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 9:51pm
by glueman
The concern is the executive have become so divorced from the desires of rank and file members that they believe they have a mandate to take the club wherever they feel necessary. As a member of 30 years I feel disconnected from the ambitions of the club to become a government contractor or a cyclists' AA style lobby.
The club are showing no inclination to self-examination or reflection in the light of member's worries, or marshalling their arguments over the coming year to everyone's satisfaction. They show every sign of wanting to bump the matter through and discuss it later, exactly the type of behaviour that's decimated so many other once fine organisations.
My instinct is a yes vote will split the club down the middle and open up the field to newcomers, leaving the CTC exec where it wishes to be, as a contractor and pressure group with central funding its key income strand.
There's something of the inevitable about the current situation but that's because siren voices are being depicted as backward looking or agenda lead. A very rum way of carrying on.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 10:18pm
by glueman
meic wrote:I received no such email from my councilor and I am very sure that I will not do so.
Dont be so quick to dismiss them all.
That's interesting. Are we to assume some councillors are pro-No? And if that's the case why are their views not being issued alongside the Yes email campaign?
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 10:23pm
by meic
I think that the emails which you are getting are written individually by your local councilors.
My councilor will possibly write to us individually but I suspect he is being careful in gathering and checking his facts first.
Or he trusts his fellow cyclists to think for themselves?
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 10:23pm
by thirdcrank
drossall
I don't know about any "No" camp - I've just had doubts raised by the things I've read on here and found little in what might be called the official responses to reassure me. Dismissing anything not strictly addressed to the charity issue does not convince me because it is the context in which something like this happens which has the biggest effect.
My own broad unease about charity status - or at least the cornucopia of public funding it is expected to attract - is that it is a very handy way for the government to silence its campaigning critics and also to influence the way they campaign. The funding is often more illusory than real and in the present circumstances is likely to be savagely reduced.
I've no doubt that charitable status is a very tax efficient way of collecting money, but I'm not sure that a charity is best placed to provide individual member benefits since these hardly benefit wider society. I'm all for promoting cycling as widely as possible - and I like to think that I've done my fair share - but I frankly stop short at financing it from my own pocket. That applies even more to the shared-use, helmeted, flourescent cycling that the authorities favour.
There are some specific things which have been raised and have gone unanswered. eg SimonL6 has had a lot to say about changing auditors - something which sounds normal to me. The CASS recommendations - on which the official side so strongly relies - include this, but when I pointed it out - silence. I'd characterise the reply to my query about SimonL6's suggestion of a conflict of interests between the RtR and the CTC's consultancy wing as glib.
Other troubling things - such as the suggestion that the CTC HQ building was signed over at short notice by people who did not understand what they were signing - are hard to accept, even if they were "perfectly legal" and it's worrying if that considered the normal way of doing things.
I think it's a mistake to assume that people like me are part of a co-ordinated "No" campaign and so it's unrealistic to expect a sort of manifesto. I think anybody with doubts is entitled to express them and to have answers. They are under no duty at all to put up an alternative, other than the status quo. (As I understand it, the proposal needs a 75% majority to succeed. Perhaps that's why. On a practical level that does mean that every member thinking of voting "No" effectively has three votes, so it's probably worth addressing their worries.)
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 29 Jan 2010, 10:40pm
by Simon L6
glueman wrote:Further to the above post, while I have no qualms about the CTC emailing me direct, I can't recall another occasion on which they have done so. That leads me to believe they are very keen to bounce this one through and are prepared to use whatever tactics to do so.
Can I request that the No Campaign are given similar access to email addresses? After all, the club wouldn't want to be seen to be paying lip service to even-handedness in the club magazine, only to embark on dirty tricks in private.
Request all you want. Last Saturday's Council decided not to offer equal access - it's called leadership. Although they didn't count on Newsnet carrying a blurb for the FNRttC. One of these days Arthur will come up with a ride that attracts young people, women and people from ethnic minorities, and then he can go large on inclusion...........
I think my hand is being forced here - I'll find a way of publishing the budget forecasts and re-forecasts for the past year and the next three years as presented to the Management Committee.
I do object to one of Arthur's sallies - I consistently brought the failings of the membership system to the attention of Council from January 2006 onward, and visited Arvato for myself to see how things were done. Sadly Council took little notice - and those of you who have read the August 2009 report can see the results.
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 30 Jan 2010, 9:26am
by Si
We, in the WM, or at least those whose email addresses NO has been able to keep track of
, got a similar one:
Dear CTC member
I am writing to you as one of your two elected CTC representatives in the West Midlands to tell you my position in relation to CTC’s future direction, as discussed in this month’s edition of Cycle magazine.
-Your copy of Cycle should be with you this weekend
-- I am writing to urge you to look very carefully at the debate on proposals for a unified membership charity. David Cox my fellow West Midlands Councillor puts the 'Yes' case. The 'No' case is put by Simon Legg a former Councillor.
- I hope you will support the proposals for a unified membership charity when you get the opportunity to vote in April. This was supported by 17 National Councillors at the October Council meeting with only 1 against.
-Simon Legg refers to the running of the existing Charitable Trust as 'chaotic’ and that Council has not kept tabs on finances. He alleges that the Club has propped up the Trust.
-These allegations are not true. Management Committee (our oversight committee) , which I chaired for 4 years until a year ago, always looked rigorously at the accounts and membership processes before referring to National Council for approval. During his time on Council Simon did not oppose approval.
-The CTC group now has £1m in reserves and makes an annual surplus. During my 7 years on CTC Council our finances have become stronger, we have increased our membership to record levels and our campaigners have made Government retreat on proposed changes to the Highway Code which would have adversely affected cyclists.
-Many of the activities of the Club have been transferred to the Trust so there have been payments from Club to Trust but these costs would have been incurred anyway.
-The CTC Honorary Financial Adviser together with the current Management Committee chair, a former HMRC Tax Inspector, has looked at a sample of the projects we carry out with grants from public bodies. They found that these generated surpluses so there is no disbenefit to Club members.
-It is acknowledged that there have been problems with our Membership system but these have largely been overcome. With 60,000 members and various categories of membership there will always be some problems but we believe that we compare well with other organisations. When CTC started to grow significantly 10 years ago it was clear we could not create the capital to run a full call centre and mailing house to the standard you would expect. We have openly acknowledged that we had a serious problem some 4 years ago. Our previous contractor did not deliver what they had contracted to do so we terminated the contract and received compensation of £30,000. We also recovered our data. It is worth noting that we dealt with the problem a year before the contractor's owners (NFU) had to call in external auditors who found a £1m hole in their finances. Credit must be given to the Director and the Operations Manager who had more control over CTC’s records and finances than the contractor’s own organisation had. This is not an organisation that is poorly managed or in chaos.
-And while we have been managing CTC it is worth pointing out that we are now involved in delivering services to public bodies because these are helping to promote the cause of cycling, which is something that we believe members want us to do. CTC has reached out into the community and raised our profile but more importantly we are involving many more people outside our normal membership profile than ever.
-Our previous Council Chair, Jill Kieran, led the membership review of local groups, the first for 30 years. The changes introduced about 3 years ago have led to the creation of many new groups without affecting the healthy existing DA's.
-National Council has a wide range of experience and skills which have been utilised in developing the proposals which are to be considered at the AGM at Loughborough. I hope that you will be able to attend but if not please use your proxy vote to support the motion.
-Remember that the proposed new charity will absorb the existing Charitable Trust; Members will still be in control and elect the governing body.
-More details are available on the website. Find the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section and settle down to some serious reading.
Good Cycling
Peter Mathison
National Councillor for West Midlands
28 January 2010
Re: how much did the Club donate to the Trust in 2008/2009?
Posted: 30 Jan 2010, 3:43pm
by manybikes
If what SimonL6 says is provable - and it should be in the minutes- then perhaps the whole process and the result could be subject to judicial review? What do you think TC? That action might split the CTC apart.