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updated 22.4.10
ECF NEWS
ECF FINANCE COUNCIL MEETING
17.4.10 in London (1.30 pm)
"Shall we have a card vote to decide if it's one-thirty?"
     In the President's absence there were two candidates for election as chairman of the meeting. As one-thirty approached, only one of them was present. The CEO opened the meeting at one-thirty on his watch, with one candidate still absent, to immediate protests that his watch was fast. Skulduggery was not alleged. Disappointingly there was no card vote, and thumbs were twiddled till everyone agreed it was one-thirty. Candidate A then secured quite a lot of votes in his opponent's absence. Then Candidate B arrived, thirty seconds late and just in time to vote for himself. Candidate A won. He was John Paines, and Candidate B was someone not universally known for punctuality at meetings.
     32 attended, we think, plus an observer or two. We didn't get a chance to look at the lists of apologies and proxies. But the biggest proxy-holder ("I'm the only representative from that part of the country") was the same person as last time and the time before. He had 16 votes.
(1) The Tenth Director. It was noted that the Board, after the 2009 AGM, had appointed John Paines to the spare tenth Directorship. He had chaired two Board meetings and helped with preparation of them. "Why was his appointment not announced for ages and then only in response to something on the EC Forum?" We don't recall that this question was answered. "Why was the post not advertised?" CEO: The Board preferred to go for speed. "There were two other defeated candidates for Directorships. Were they considered?" CEO: The Board did what it thought best.
     Perhaps there was some connection between this and what went before. In fairness to the Board (well, why not?) their intention was fairly obvious at the AGM.
(2) Gerry Walsh. Gerry Walsh was (unanimously, we think) elected an Honorary Life Vice-President of the ECF. A delegate, while fully supporting this honour, wished to revert to a point he had made in a similar context at the Finance meeting of 2008. To quote the minutes of that meeting: "*****, while fully supporting [a similar] honour, said that the list of HVPs included relatively few people from more than about 15 years ago. He thought this might be worth attention. His point was sympathetically received." Unfortunately the question did not seem to have received much attention from the Board in the intervening two years. He was told it would do so.
(3) Cynthia Gurney. A vote of thanks went to Cynthia Gurney, the Office Manager, who has finally decided it is time to retire. We will lose her in September.
(4) Chess for Schools. Please read this in conjunction with the CEO's report (warning: it's a doc) on the ECF website. Predictable things were said at the meeting. It was time to walk away. The project was a shambles. Targets had been missed, promises broken, schools let down, MPs made to look ridiculous. And it wasn't getting any better. At current rates of production it would take 100 years to make and distribute all the sets. Excuses like business commitments on the ECF CEO's part rang hollow. On top of this, the project will have cost the ECF maybe £7500 in Office time in 2009-10 with a further £6000 forecast for 2010-11. That is only a forecast and may not all be spent, but the Office person is in place.
     It was countered that Holloid had spent much money on the project (including tens of thousands of pounds on boards); that we would look foolish if we walked away and Holloid went on delivering; and that we wouldn't be able to go on using the CfS contact list (8000-odd schools) if we walked. And that the DCMS favoured the project. Besides, Holloid were on the hook of the Memorandum of Understanding.
     What hook? The answer wasn't clear, to your Webmaster at least. But the current MoU expires at the end of July. A sceptic said, How about getting Council's permission before renewing it? CEO: But that would mean an EGM. Sceptic: Why not wait till October? It would hardly delay things more seriously than they've been delayed already. CEO: I won't commit myself to that without thinking it through.
     The CEO's report was accepted by a large majority. Walking away from the project was never on the agenda, for all the SCCU's fierce noises. You don't kill a project by rejecting its Report. Someone suggested, but not in so many words, that maybe both sides were stuck in a situation they'd like to get out of if only the other side would speak first. And, as someone else said, we must let the schools know what is going on.
(5) Online Grading List. The Board proposed that the right to opt out of publication should be abolished.* This was because it would interfere with plans to publish players' detailed game results. The proposal provoked two questions:
     (a) The opt-out right was originally put in place on Data Protection advice. Has that advice now changed? The CEO answered a different question. Circumstances have changed, in ways your Webmaster didn't grasp. Someone with DP experience thought the opt-out was probably unnecessary, but it might depend which expert you asked.
     (b) WHY does the opt-out interfere with plans to publish players' detailed game results? It is trivial to replace an opter-out's name with a row of asterisks. Game lists would scarcely overflow with asterisks. The number of opters-out is currently five, and not all of those are active.
     "If we're only talking about five people," someone said, "let's do it and move on." Someone else thought, if we're only talking about five people, let's not do it and move on. No one else voted his way. The rule now is that players, by taking part in graded events, consent to publication of their names in the grading list. We await the ECF's promulgation of this rule.
     The Board's plan is that ECF Members should have password-protected access to their own gamelists - not anyone else's. Other people do it differently. FIDE and Yorkshire show gamelists (and more) for everyone, to everyone. Chess Scotland show gamelists for members only, to everyone. The first of those approaches is clearly best, but would not be politically possible in the ECF.
* (Note 5.9.10) with effect from July 2011. We had originally missed that.
__________

IT WAS NOW 3.30 and the meeting adjourned for tea. Refreshments were followed at 3.45 (approximately, this time) by a BCF General Meeting which we'll come to. The Finance Meeting then resumed at 4.09 with
__________

(6) Budget 2010-11. We're sort of conflating this with the Budget Report which started an hour earlier. To add to our confusion, the Budget wasn't actually approved till after the Game and Membership fees had been fixed further down the agenda.
     Gareth Caller, Finance Director since November, introduced himself. His surname has a short "a" as in Gareth. He is Audit Manager at the National Audit Office, and we'll swear he said he audits the National Debt. We won't try to summarise the papers you've already downloaded from the ECF website, but one or two adjustments were made or essayed on the day.
     Budgeted expenditure for the County & District Correspondence Championships was increased from £0 to £250. An attempt to transfer the CfS's £6000 to Contingencies was unsuccessful. Then a delegate, noting the Board's intention to look at admin expenditure, proposed an immediate £5000 cut in the Management Services budget (from £133,750) without looking first to see where the savings were going to come from. "You can't do that!" "I can, it's normal practice. It concentrates the mind wonderfully." [Sorry, that last sentence just slipped in. He didn't say it.] Clearly there can be two opinions on this, but his proposal secured only 5 votes against a lot more than 5.
     Downward adjustments to the proposed Membership fees, agreed further down the page, were more or less balanced by improvements in Junior income which came about when an overlooked sponsorship was inserted at the meeting. Another favourable item had been omitted. The Grading Administrator asked why the budgeted figure for Graders' Fees did not reflect the £2000 cut he had agreed to as his personal contribution to the economy drive. "Because the contract isn't signed yet." No, it isn't, through no fault of the Administrator's. This does him no harm, because the cut doesn't apply till it's signed.
     One person voted against adoption of the Budget. We don't actually know who.
(7) Game Fee 2010-11.The Board recommended 54p (an increase of 4p). "Is this a one-off?", someone said. Finance Director: "I wish I could tell you." But it seemed on the cards that Game Fee would continue to rise for a few years yet. On the traditional card vote the figures were:
     55p           16
     54p         101
     52p           10
     51p            2
     50p           27
The median, hence Game Fee from 1st September 2010, is 54p. The concessionary rates follow the default rule.
(8) Direct Member Subscriptions. Council fixed new rates, effective from 1st September. The three-year rates were not mentioned, so presumably remain unchanged. In three cases (noted below) Council amended the Board's proposed figures. By 71 to 69 on a card vote, in the Full and Family cases. The Basic Junior amendment was agreed heavily. Asterisks in the "old" column mark two queries over the old rates: see foot of table.

	old	new
Standard	£20	£25
Junior	£16*	£20
Full	£52	£52	(amended from £54)
Family	£58**	£58?	(amended from £62)
Vice President	£100	£120
Basic	£11	£12
Basic Junior	£7	£7.50	(amended from £8)

* The papers of the meeting gave £15 for the old Junior rate, but that is wrong.
** The papers gave £56, but that is wrong. This is rather unfortunate. Council's amendment was that the fee remain unchanged. The proposer actually said "no change", but when he was read back for clarification his proposed figure, understandably, was quoted as £56. We're not sure where this leaves us. Has Council reduced the subscription by accident?
     Someone said, but not with the Family subscription in mind, that the current Membership system is a mess. Basic Members actually get more Game Fee concessions than Standard. GC: "Feel free to make suggestions for change." - "I promise lots of suggestions in the next few months."
(9) Minimum Membership fee for Other Organisations, on the Board's recommendation, remains unchanged at £52.

The meeting closed at 5.48 pm. An extension to 6.30 had been agreed but was unexpectedly not required. Now the

BCF EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING
which we promised to come back to. It was called specifically to approve the 2008-9 Accounts which ought to have been dealt with at the BCF AGM of October 2009.
     Let us quote from our report of said meeting. "[This meeting]... might... have approved some accounts if [they] had been available. These will require a BCF meeting all to themselves, tacked on to the April [2010] ECF meeting. Do you know, we think we've said that before. Yes, there it is, at the end of last year's AGM."
     We had. So that's twice running the October BCF meeting has had no Accounts available. That's not good, but it gets worse. The 2007-8 ones did actually appear, six months late, at the Extraordinary meeting of April 2009. The 2008-9 ones, however...
     were still missing. CEO: "This is extremely embarrassing." Indeed. It appears that the Accounts are once again unsuitable for publication because the Trustees of the Permanent Invested Fund have consistently failed to provide details despite requests from the Company Secretary. So it's postponed again, and the 2010 October meeting will have two sets of Accounts to deal with, one of them a whole year late. (This isn't being optimistic, is it?)
     Sections of Council were for lynching the Trustees, but the meeting decided on a more moderate course of action. (Two voted against it.) They are to be asked again, and if they do not oblige by the end of July the ECF will invite them to replace themselves by persons more able to communicate with the Federation. Someone said, "When does the Trustees' term of office expire?" Answer: in 2013, at the end of their (surprisingly long) 21-year term. Your Webmaster does not pretend to understand the technicalities.
     This meeting, perforce unproductive, lasted more than 20 minutes. BCF meetings generally last 5 minutes or so.

rjh 22.4.10
This account, of both meetings, is a first attempt and is subject to amendment. It cannot be complete, but please inform us of errors or important omissions.

ECF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
17.10.09 in London
was chaired by Gerry Walsh. The room was rather full. 49 attended if we counted right, excluding the ladies from the Office but including two voteless observers and two likewise voteless candidates for election. We did not count the apologies for absence, and we don't think the list of proxy-holders was displayed at all. (Why not?) At any rate it was a big attendance, suitable to the importance of the occasion. Card votes cast in the elections, while well short of the possible 270-ish, exceeded anything Game Fee ever gets.
(1) Minutes of previous meeting: Appointment of Finance Director. The draft minutes somehow didn't quite manage to say that Mr White had been actually appointed. He had, with effect from the end of the meeting. This was agreed and the minutes were amended to say so. The CEO did not pretend to understand why the appointment had fallen through afterwards.
(2) The CCL affair. This is item 5 from the next meeting down, if you'd forgotten. A paper from the CEO explained why the Board now thought the money should stay where it was. We think this is the end of the matter, and we're only puzzled the explanation has been so long in coming.
(3) Manager of IT. It was announced, as part of the CEO's report, that we have a Manager of IT again: Alan C Martin. We certainly need one. The computer system in the Office is falling apart. Alan has a long history of work in the field, we think mostly in management rather than technical roles. He will call on specialist assistance when needed.
(4) Chess for Schools. You will have seen the photo on the ECF website, posted coincidentally on the day before the meeting. To flesh out the website's barebones account, it was explained that approximately 1000 sets had just been delivered to the depot of the East Sussex LEA, from where they should find their way to 100 schools in a week or so. (An observer said he had been unable to find anyone in the East Sussex authority who knew anything about it; which only goes to show how recent this is.) Some questions:
     • Are Holloid talking to other local authorities? Yes. None were specified.
     • Are they working on a geographical basis? No.
     • Is future production of sets contingent on Holloid's finding sponsorship? No. (Things were added about the cost of plastic, even recycled. We didn't catch all of this, but the "No" was unequivocal. [Later note. It sounded unequivocal to us at the back of the room. Others have reported it differently.])
     • Have Holloid committed themselves to a schedule of production and delivery? No. This won't be possible till there is practical experience of the logistics. But it is hoped that the operation will be completed in this academic year.
     Andrew Martin, Manager of Coaching, said he had negotiated some free extra video material to go with the support package. He spoke of the many thousands of pounds of potential income.
     The SCCU Executive was less than convinced about the project a couple of weeks earlier, and very prepared to vote against acceptance of the Chess for Schools report. But that was before the Photo. The report was accepted nem con, we believe, and your Webmaster will wait and see.
(5) Money. The Accounts were circulated only two or three days before the meeting. Perhaps the lack of a Finance Director had something to do with this. Anyway, as you have probably heard by now, things had turned out considerably worse than the forecast loss of £15,000 (already £12,000 worse than budget). The eventual deficit was £20,069. Why the difference? It was not due to one particular cause, rather to a number of things all going wrong together (and, if we're reading it correctly, the British at Liverpool costing even more than its previously projected deficit). At any rate reserves are down to £26,836 - far below the £50,000 target set by Council years ago. For that matter, far below the forecast of last January. Presumably no one expects such a huge deficit next year; the British at Torquay should at worst not lose anything. But even an overall break-even for next year would be disastrous in the circumstances.
     It gets worse. A letter had been received from the DCMS the day before the meeting. The Department is concerned by our three successive annual deficits, by our parlously shrinking reserves, and by our continuing lack of a Finance Director. In view of these things the letter gave notice that further payment towards our £60,000 government grant this financial year is suspended "pending re-assurance from the ECF that they are a going concern and have a robust 'recovery' plan in place to remedy the current situation". The grant is paid in four instalments of £15,000, of which the first has already been received.
     So the Board is feverishly looking for economies and a Finance Director. It will have met at the end of the AGM, and we hear it next meets on 31st October. There was talk of an Extraordinary General Meeting, but in the end the Board was asked to formulate a recovery plan and take it to the DCMS, holding the EGM in reserve for the case where the DCMS didn't buy the recovery plan. (General Meetings cost about £2000. Someone mentioned a venue we could have had for nothing, but it's not in London or Birmingham.)
     Would cash flow be a problem in the (hopefully temporary) suspension of the grant? Potentially, but it should be possible to meet it by borrowing from the Permanent Invested Fund. Obviously this is not a long-term solution.
(6) Grading. "Has further consideration been given to the method of calculating junior grades?" No, not since the 5th-September revision. The Manager of Grading felt that we should at least let things bed down for a year. (The question came from a Surrey person. Of course Surrey, had they found the requisite support, would have put a motion reversing the policy of treating all juniors as new players.)
(7) Dates of meetings 2010. Finance: Saturday 17th April in London. AGM: Saturday 16th October in Birmingham.
__________

IT WAS NOW 3.40 and the meeting adjourned for tea and fresh air (if desired). It resumed at 4.05 for a BCF meeting we'll come back to, followed at 4.10 by
__________

(8) Elections. Four were contested, as you know. Candidates for these positions spoke for a rather loose five minutes (we're sure one of them lost on time twice) and answered questions. We can't help wondering how many voters were influenced by this part of the proceedings. All the elections, perhaps unnecessarily in the uncontested cases, were done by card vote. (There was a special voting form. You listened to all the candidates for all the jobs, filling your votes in as and when or otherwise, and the forms were collected at the end.) The tellers retired at 5.45 and the meeting continued while they told. It ran out of business at 5.57, then waited for the tellers' return which occurred at 6.15.
     Sorry, you're wanting the results. President CJ de Mooi 164, John Paines 34. Home Director Adam Raoof 131, Cyril Johnson 77, None of the Above 2. Non-Executive Directors John Wickham 146, Alan Martin 112, Sean Hewitt 95 (2 elected). FIDE Delegate Nigel Short 101, Gerry Walsh 98, None of the Above 6.
     The unopposed candidates were all elected. Voting figures were not given for the unopposed, but we gather that votes against were few. For completeness: CEO Chris Majer; Junior Chess & Education Peter Purland; International Lawrence Cooper; Marketing Stewart Reuben. Finance & Governance Committees as before.
(9) The Triumvirate? This is a reference to April's straw poll which seemed to favour "CEO roughly as at present; plus a non-executive Chairman; plus a figurehead President". The Board sought permission, if that is the word, to bring proposals to this effect at the 2010 April meeting. Council was undecided whether to take this motion before or after the elections, so did both. Well, there was some discussion, then someone said "Let's just have the elections", so we did, then the Triumvirate proposal was quickly agreed in the tellers' absence.
     The election for President was messy, since no one knew what the rules were going to be in six months' time. It was made fairly clear, before the elections, that if we wanted a Triumvirate it would be possible for the Board to appoint to the spare Directorate so we'd (sort of!) have one anyway. We always knew the Chess for Schools place would come in handy one day.

The meeting closed at 6.20 pm. We must now remember the

BCF COUNCIL MEETING
which interposed itself. It did little, in truth, beyond approving minutes and noting accounts. It might also have approved some accounts if the BCF ones themselves had been available. These will require a BCF meeting all to themselves, tacked on to the April ECF meeting.
     Do you know, we think we've said that before. Yes, there it is, at the end of last year's AGM.

rjh 18.10.09, amended 19.10.09, 30.10.09
Please tell us of errors or omissions.

Earlier material is in the Archive.