Cycling UK Forum

more funds for member groups. Allegedly. Apparently the Gift Aid bonanza will be lavished on member groups. Indeed, only today, the new Member Groups Champion elect, Jim Brown, suggested that new groups should be given start-up funds.

That's the same Jim Brown that spoke against this resolution at the Belfast AGM....

1.This Annual General Meeting resolves that the service offered by National Office to member groups must be improved
a) Newsnet must be regionalised. Member groups must be afforded the opportunity to advertise events and club runs on Newsnet.
b) National Office must ensure that names and contact details of members are sent to DA and Member Group secretaries.
c) National Office must ensure that new groups are promoted on Newsnet.
c) Start-up funds must be made available to new groups. The AGM mandates the Council to set the appropriate amounts.
d) A standard website, in the CTC house style, hosted by National Office, should be made available to new groups.

It's a bit like finding out that those trousers you discarded when you had hair have just come back in to fashion.........

Simon L6 wrote:It's a bit like finding out that those trousers you discarded when you had hair have just come back in to fashion.........

And the guy who said 'everyone's shopping at the Gap, dude' has gatecrashed your party wearing the pair you left at the charity shop.

glueman wrote:

Simon L6 wrote:It's a bit like finding out that those trousers you discarded when you had hair have just come back in to fashion.........

And the guy who said 'everyone's shopping at the Gap, dude' has gatecrashed your party wearing the pair you left at the charity shop.

perhaps he fell of his bicycle on the road to Damascus...

of course it is absolutely unheard of for organisations to put people in charge of initiatives that those individuals don't believe in when the organisation wants the initiative to wither on the vine.

No one from my local member group will respond to my emails. I've got bored trying so now I've joined my local cycling club which, remarkable appears to contain as social ride leaders and participants, the core of the local CTC DA activists from when I first joined CTC! All of whom have joined BC for the insurance and let their CTC memberships lapse.

People are voting with their pedals in these parts.

.

And the same Jim Brown who stayed silent as Simon and I fought the corner for Groups in our time as CTC Councillors. Maybe only the local Eastern Region members were important then? Perhaps, just perhaps, it is now recognised that the DA stalwarts are the ones who will vote against the Resolution. And just maybe they are voting "No" because they are tired of being ignored by this presumptious Council who now wishes to take away the Club's member based status. Sorry Gaz. This smacks of trying to improve things for Groups now, so that if this Resolution is thrown out this time they may come back next year and get the support of those riding with the Member Groups. Cynical? Moi? Surely not.

I'll be at the AGM now. It was not possible up to this morning but a realignment of family commitments has now made it doable. I can hardly wait.

EDIT: The main problem Simon and I faced when attempting to bring Local Groups into discussion at Council meetings was not actually silence and lack of support from Councillors but actually getting any Council time allowed for discussion on Local Groups. I was simply told that Groups should be discussed by the appropriate Sub-Committee. The trouble was that none of the Sub-Committees had Local Groups in their remit. I was asked to head an email discussion group whose remit was to identify problems in the Local Group Resources, and produce more user friendly versions of the stationery. But trying to get a few minutes of Council time to feedback progress or get questions answered was virtually impossible.

Well, as the current Member Groups Champion (who wasn't even consulted about being replaced, I was just left to read it in the minutes of a meeting I'd been unable to attend - anyone might think I'd upset someone at the top ) I wish Jim well. If he does actually champion the Member Groups, then he'll find himself micturating off some vested interests.

Simon L6 wrote:more funds for member groups. Allegedly. Apparently the Gift Aid bonanza will be lavished on member groups. Indeed, only today, the new Member Groups Champion elect, Jim Brown, suggested that new groups should be given start-up funds.

That's the same Jim Brown that spoke against this resolution at the Belfast AGM....

1.This Annual General Meeting resolves that the service offered by National Office to member groups must be improved
a) Newsnet must be regionalised. Member groups must be afforded the opportunity to advertise events and club runs on Newsnet.
b) National Office must ensure that names and contact details of members are sent to DA and Member Group secretaries.
c) National Office must ensure that new groups are promoted on Newsnet.
c) Start-up funds must be made available to new groups. The AGM mandates the Council to set the appropriate amounts.
d) A standard website, in the CTC house style, hosted by National Office, should be made available to new groups.

It's a bit like finding out that those trousers you discarded when you had hair have just come back in to fashion.........

But new Member Groups have always been able to request start up funds. Perhaps the difference now is that this will be advertised?

a member group had asked, and not received. And DAs were also always supposed to get the members details - but not all DAs were.

Don't forget that for almost 6 months last year, no details of new members were sent out to member groups...

Regulator wrote:Don't forget that for almost 6 months last year, no details of new members were sent out to member groups...

I was getting the database sporadically, (April, June, September, November, December 2009). But as members joining online from March to September were not assigned to a member Group they didn't appear until the cock up was noticed in the Autumn. Aside from that, even when the missing members were added the number of members in our area dropped by almost 20% between October 2008 and September 2009.

Hi everyone,

Some time ago I identified the problem that since the last restructuring of committees that, short of full Council, there was no where for member group issues to go. Fairly informally some have been discussed at the event sub group - after all many of the same people are involved at national and local level.

Following a discussion at the last events sub group meeting I raised the matter on Saturday and I think we now have a resolution. Amongst other things we will now have a forum to discuss things like start up grants. Start up grants have been available for as long as I can remember and I helped allocate many of them as chair of the former DA and Events, then Cycling Development, Committees.

Several CTC Councillors will testify to the fact that I have often complained about the tiny rebate to local groups. That goes way before the 2004/2005 restructuring which concerned me. Solving that is one reason why I support re-integrating the CTC, giving direct control of all of CTC's activities back to members and their elected representatives and registering CTC as a charity. In all of the flack it's often forgotten that the move to solve the problems caused by the current hybrid structure did not come from national office - it came from "backbench" CTC Councillors. It does look as if the payment to local groups situation will soon be improved - I hope so.

Believe it or not I don't spend all my time thinking about the charity debate. Apart from a full-time job and the rest of life I am secretary of a local group which organises well over 120 rides a year. The "fun" bit of cycling is very important to me.

One of the problems with the resolution that Simon quotes, as I'm sure he knows, is that it was too presciptive in some respects but also missed out several other issues that local groups had raised at that time.

Many see some of you on the Stevenage Circular or Emitremmus? You'll be very welcome.

Best wishes,



JIM

As I am just a common member of the CTC I am not aware of the details of the structures.
I read your post as saying, that in order to sort the club out we have to become a charity.
I find that hard to believe, I am sure it is possible to solve these issues without making the move.

redspoke wrote:One of the problems with the resolution that Simon quotes, as I'm sure he knows, is that it was too presciptive in some respects but also missed out several other issues that local groups had raised at that time.

nonsense. I was set on improving the brand, and bringing the local groups closer to the National Office. All that was required was a bit of thought and a tiny amount of expense, and the resolution was, in relation to new groups, not prescriptive at all. It was opposed simply because National Office and a majority of the Councillors didn't want to be told what to do by the AGM.

Simon L6 wrote:

redspoke wrote:One of the problems with the resolution that Simon quotes, as I'm sure he knows, is that it was too presciptive in some respects but also missed out several other issues that local groups had raised at that time.

nonsense. I was set on improving the brand, and bringing the local groups closer to the National Office. All that was required was a bit of thought and a tiny amount of expense, and the resolution was, in relation to new groups, not prescriptive at all. It was opposed simply because National Office and a majority of the Councillors didn't want to be told what to do by the AGM.

You mean be democratic...