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updated 19.7.06
COMMENT
rjh: - Such is my reticence that this page is usually absent. I am alone responsible for it when it appears. You can disagree with me in Open Forum.
19.7.06, revised 20.7.06
ECF MATTERS
We hear today in Open Forum from Martin Regan of Cheshire, to whom thanks. He draws our attention to an important ECF document, on future Membership schemes, which has appeared on the Cleveland site. Why it has appeared there, rather than on the ECF site, I don't know. Perhaps someone in Cleveland has leaked. For whatever reason, important ECF information has been disseminated on a County site which some of us elsewhere would have liked to know about.
Thursday 20th July. I don't know if I was premature yesterday in censuring the ECF Board for keeping us in the dark on this issue. It seems it was a leak, not authorised by the Board. I've heard who the (anonymous) leaker was. He has done us a service, though he might have done it in a more open way. How soon the Board would have gestated I don't know. I believe the document is now on the NCCU site also.
I do censure the Board for their failure to publish the minutes of the ECF Extraordinary Council meeting 24.6.06 which led up to this. They have not addressed the concerns which they acknowledged in March (see ECF page 4.3.06). I understand the Atticus CC site http://www.atticuschess.org.uk/ is a good place to go to for Northern debate.
There is another issue, which I am certain does not exonerate the Board. The ECF website has become more and more out of date. It is almost impossible to get up-to-the-minute information onto it. This is not the Webmaster's fault. She has simply not the time to run a professional website. A fundamental and professional change of approach is required.
11.2.06
This is an Editorial which appeared the other day in our sister publication the SCCU Bulletin (Editor rjh).
ECF BOARD MEETINGS
The new slimmed-down ECF Board has had two meetings since the AGM that we know of, one of them three months ago, but we can’t report on either of them. There is no Union representation any more. No reports have appeared on the ECF website. Joe Public and your Editor don’t even know what was on the agenda.
The Federation was never very good at reporting meetings. There always were slots for website Reports, generally filled in three months late if at all. There are Board slots now, suggesting good intentions, but the slots are empty. It matters more now, and good intentions aren’t enough. Some of us care. We don’t want the minutes, ECF, but at least give us an idea of what’s going on.
There was always a danger that the 9-man Board might come to be seen as secretive and remote if it failed to communicate. The ECF must address this.
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rjh: - Since that appeared I have heard that the Board plans a meeting with the Unions. This was said to be the intention at the start, but nothing had transpired and, even now, the Unions have not received notice of such a meeting. It will be welcome when it happens. I do not think it will answer my colleague's concerns. We can do better than a Board which talks to the Unions once in a blue moon. The Board slots beckon.
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