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updated 20.4.14
ECF NEWS
ECF FINANCE COUNCIL MEETING
12.4.14 in London (1.30 pm)
We only counted once, but we made the attendance 53 including a handful of non-voters. Other accounts have it slightly lower, but only slightly. It's big. Another 42, we think, attended by proxy. Votes theoretically available, on a card vote: 314 plus some announced late and not counted. Not by us, anyway. We say "theoretically" because many had no one present to cast them.
     Mike Gunn took the chair, in what capacity we're not sure. Very possibly on the strength of having done a good job last time.
(1) ECF President. (We're in Matters Arising, presumably from the AGM elections.) Someone proposed that the Board be asked to appoint a new President within a month to replace the departed Andrew Paulson; and that Roger Edwards, his runner-up in October, be considered. Some thought a pause might be a better idea. The proposal failed by 11 votes to 20. But the Board will look to make good the shortfall in Non-Executive Directors as soon as may be.
(2) Sussex Archive. Arising again, from item 14 at the AGM (see below). The Sussex rep said that Phil Ehr (more helpful, we gather, than earlier contacts) had visited the Office and secured access to the overflow storage area, which turned out to be on the premises of Hastings Borough Council. But the Archive was not to be found. The rep accepted that that seemed to be that, and expressed Sussex's disappointment. We didn't notice that anyone responded from the top table.
(3) Online Registration of Events. Another Matter Arising, but his time doubly so. It first came up at the April 2013 meeting - see item 12 - which approved the Home Director's plan to introduce it. There had already been wide discussion and consultation. It next appeared under Matters Arising at the 2013 AGM (item 4) when someone asked why the scheme had gone off the radar. Answer: "We're working on it, and it will be ready during the season." Still no sign of it six months later, and the same someone (you've guessed who) asked again. Answer this time: "There are only 24 hours in a day, and we've dropped it." Those who were consulted more than a year ago will be interested to know.
(4) Delegate to European Chess Union. The Board proposed Andrew Paulson (instead of FIDE Delegate Nigel Short, whose job it would normally be) to represent the ECF at the ECU General Assembly in August. It was part of the Paulson-resignation thing you'll have heard more than enough of (though plenty more was said at the meeting). Council skipped the show of hands and went straight to a card vote, defeating the motion by 153 votes to 79 with 30 abstentions.
(5) Accounts 2012-13. The Accounts, showing a surplus of £11,000, were approved subject to "any fine tuning arising from the audit", as John Philpott has it. The Accounts occasioned a rather aggressive and, perhaps fortunately, one-sided dialogue between someone demanding explanations and someone else, present but not identified, who remained silent.
(6) Projected Accounts 2013-14. There was a projected surplus of £21,000, due (entirely and a bit more, we fancy) to the fact that the Office Manager's post has been vacant since the end of September and John Philpott has been filling in, for this year, on a voluntary basis. John received a vote of thanks.
(7) Funding for Olympiad 2014. The International Director asked Council to allow him up to £5500 from the projected surplus to make good his budgeted deficit for the Olympiad. Council did so by 28 votes to 8.
(8) Budget 2014-15 and beyond. The Finance Director has budgeted for a 2014-15 surplus of £21,000 again. (We're rounding. This is a slightly smaller £21,000 than the other one.) The budget assumed a paid Office Manager again, but International events, and hence expenses, would be much reduced. The budget was approved when we came back to it after item 11.
     We said "and beyond", and the Director's papers included figures up to 2016-17. In alternative versions, if we got it right. But if Council discussed the longer-term parts it passed us by.
(9) Membership Fees 2014-15. The Board's proposal for no change was upheld heavily.
(10) Minimum Membership Fee for Member Organisations. Ditto (so £58).
(11) Game Fee
     (a) Proposed by Hastings CC and other organisations: that Game Fee for club internal games be reduced to 50p Standardplay, 25p Rapidplay (or ¼ of the regular rate if less). This would be an important concession for people who play the odd club internal game and nothing else. It was observed, and Hastings CC did not deny, that most people who play the odd club internal game and nothing else are from Hastings CC. The motion was defeated by 29 votes to 9.
     (b) Proposed by the Board: that Game Fee (other than the £6/£4 congress variety) be increased by 12½ per cent. The Finance Director, speaking to the proposal, acknowledged straight away that it was politically directed. (Let's work towards an all-Membership system.) Its effect on the budget would not be large. Another supporter, less honest perhaps, presented it as a safeguard against rising costs. Other people saw it as not only unnecessary but bad public relations. It was noteworthy that one rep, generally seen as sympathetic to moving towards all-Membership, reported overwhelming opposition to the Board's proposal among his own constituents. The proposal was defeated, on a show of hands, by 27 votes to 15. The Chairman seemed inclined to leave it at that, but someone wanted and was accorded a card vote. It was held in the old median-vote way, and the result was:

£1
£2
£2.25
£2.40
£2.50

9
167
74
6
1

It's not hard to find the median. Game Fee remains unchanged.
(12) Charitable Organisation. We had not read all through the Finance Director's paper, but felt less bad about it when substantial amendments to it emerged. Proposed: that the ECF set up a charitable trust, but transfer no funds to it pending further consultation. The ECF itself to remain unchanged. Put it like that, it seemed hard to vote against it. One person did, but he said: "Well, half a vote really."
     It was now 4.47 and the tea break, which traditionally rubs shoulders with the BCF meeting, was 50 minutes gone. But, better late than never:
__________

BCF EGM
We will be as comprehensive as our understanding allows. There were three years' worth of BCF Accounts to approve in a catch-up exercise, and Council approved them. They were avowedly, or the first two years were, a reverse-engineering job by John Philpott. It is expected that Accounts will be done properly from here on.
     Now 5.02 pm and back to the ECF meeting.
__________

But it was nearly over. The CEO had prepared a
(13) "Transformation White Paper" which was pretty well passed over in silence, together with a
(14) Business Plan which didn't even seem to be on the agenda.
There were also some changes to Regulations and Articles to note and approve, and some brief Other Business we'll pass over, and one other item which deserves more than a line or two:
(15) Report of Membership Director. We report his paper: it was the last thing on the agenda, and Council spent no time on it. We make no apology for covering the Director's points, even if we do expand on them a bit.
     Numbers. Membership reached about 9500 at the end of last season, and is currently slightly ahead of last April's levels. (Yesterday's figure as we write is 9434. The Membership spreadsheet on the ECF website says 9499, but that includes some lapsed Members and 18 duplicates.)
     A thing we didn't know. Well, we used to. We had always supposed that Game Fee invoices for early-season congresses were held back till 1st November to allow for MOs' Membership returns still in the pipeline. Then, fairly recently, another Director told us it wasn't true: you have to be a Member at the start of the event, and invoices may be issued any time. So we unlearnt it, and we've now got to relearn it because the Council paper says we were right all along. We have decided to believe the Director of Membership.
     The Membership and Grading databases are now talking to each other as much as you could reasonably expect. New and renewing Members, and upgrading ones, will have their updated Membership details in the online grading database within 48 hours. 24 if they've told the Membership database their grading code. It works (in 48 hours) with players who have no games, no grading record, no grading code at all. A grading code will have been created for them.
     The paper includes various breakdowns (mostly as at end August 2013) by grade, activity and location. Did you know that Gold Members are strongest (mean Standard grade 159), followed by Platinum (150)? No surprise, really. Did you know that the counties with most Members (January 2014) are Surrey (619), Middx (599), Essex (466) and Warwickshire (423)? No, we don't know how multi-county Members have been treated; and yes, you'd want to compare the figures with chess activity. We've an idea that Members/Games varies a fair bit from one county to another.
     Membership is a success. The Director's paper says it, the Finance Director said it in item (5), and no one could sensibly deny it in terms of outcome. The ECF is on a sounder footing now, and people don't even argue about Membership rates in Council. They don't argue about their invoices either, beyond quibbles over the detail. As the Finance Director also said, Membership is so much simpler than Game Fee.
     Well. As he rightly added, Game Fee was never administered efficiently. It is your Webmaster's firm and heretical opinion that Game Fee is the simpler of the two if done properly, and he has some acquaintance with Membership admin. He does not presume to say which method is right.

The meeting - excluding the undiscussed item (15), obviously - closed at 5.38 pm, with a vote of thanks to the Chairman for another meeting tightly and expeditiously handled.
rjh 19.4.14, revised 20.4.14

27.12.13
Following on from the next item down:
ECF COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP RULES 2013-14
The new Controller, Andrew Zigmond, has written to the Union Controllers with the coming season's new Rules. They've inadvertently produced them while the ECF website is on holiday, so we've given them a temporary home in the SCCU's own Rules pages. They're here. (It is a Word doc and may behave best if you Save it.)
     What's changed?
(1) Non-Members. You will recall that last year's non-Members rule - they lose, with a penalty point to boot - was not universally liked. The penalty is replaced by a £10 fine. It's certainly an improvement, but one is left wondering about other offences, probably just as accidental, which still carry the old penalty.
(2) Defaults. The Home Director, noting that the £50 fine for a match default was not having the effect of preventing match defaults, has increased it to £100.
(3) Nominations not taken up. We'll quote without comment. "A Union requesting [in December] more nominations for the draw than it is able to fill at the end of the Union Stage will be fined £100 for each unfulfilled nomination."
     What's not changed?
Anything under 3(a), (4) or (5) below. As far as 3(a) is concerned, this year's draw is to be made on 16th February 2014.
     Also not the ten-point rule. If you remember, we raised its flaw at the ECF AGM. Suppose a high-graded player, out of form, plays below half a dozen people whom he outgrades by more than 10 points. Who's ineligible? The high-graded player. Now reverse the case. A low-graded player, rapidly improving, plays above half a dozen people who outgrade him by more than 10 points. Who's ineligible? The half dozen he leapfrogged. The AGM did not accept the SCCU proposal to throw out the 10-point rule, but we did hope the Home Director might attend to this lopsided nonsense.
     Who makes the Rules?
The Home Director, perhaps challenged by someone, writes:
     The rules of ECF competitions under Home Chess are the discretion of the Director responsible, and not ECF Council. This is true for the British Championships, National Club, Counties Championship, or any new events the Director may create. As the Director, there are a few mechanisms I use for changing rules:
     (1) Via ECF Council. Constituent Units of Council can propose rule changes this way. So can any other organisations qualifying as the Requisitionists.
     (2) Via consultation using other means. I chose to hold a meeting of Union representatives via Skype. I think this a better way to conduct rule change proposals, given I'm dealing with the people directly affected. [Indeed, I would encourage Unions who want to change rules to do it via one of those meetings, rather than wasting Council's time with it in the first instance.]
     It's hard to disagree with Alex's first sentence, given that there are no rules about it save that the Director has overall responsibility. (Is the ECF the only chess organisation in England that doesn't have rules saying how you change the competition rules?) It wasn't always so. Time was, rule changes went to Council.
     There is merit in Skype meetings, but you have to do them right. [Yes, this is your Webmaster talking.] The Director called this particular one at one week's notice, and would not change the date despite protests from at least one Union that he had not allowed people time to consult. This may or may not have affected the attendance, which included only three Unions out of the five.
     There has already been dissent about the new D1.2 (nominations not taken up). The Director has said all present supported this; and we have heard otherwise from a rep who was there. That's another thing about Skype meetings, in our experience.
rjh 27.12.13

30.10.13
FORTHCOMING CHANGES TO COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP?
Alex Holowczak, ECF Home Director, wrote to the Union Controllers two days ago calling a Skype meeting on 5th November 2013 to discuss possible changes to the National stage of the competition. We present his points verbatim and without comment. We'll be happy to publish readers' reactions. Open Forum hasn't had an outing since April.
Alex writes:
     (1) I'll introduce you to the new National Controller (who will be appointed by the Board on Friday)
     (2) Penalties for non-membership in the Final Stage. This rule will come into force in 2014's ECF stage of the competition. My specific proposal will be to equate the penalty for fielding a non-member and that of defaulting a board, and that the specific penalty should be £20. The decision I make is not bound by what the meeting decides, but I am prepared to listen to counter-proposals.
     (3) This is a discussion of the process of getting teams from the Union Stage to the Final Stage. There are several problems at the moment:
(a) If a team declines nomination, then the draw changes, and people get upset because they've already arranged a match based on what they saw on other Union websites. So should we publish the draw at all until the nominations have been accepted?
(b) Union Reps occasionally nominate counties despite them never wanting to accept nomination. This causes more problems, because it only comes to light after we've published a draw. What do we do about this?
(c) The £50 match default fine isn't stopping counties accepting nomination and then defaulting, and then getting irritated when the fine is enforced. Is there a way we can prevent this?
     (4) More simple: Should we lower the entry fees in 2014/15, and ask for people to pay for their own refreshments at Finals Day? I don't really mind what the answer is!
     (5) Potentially controversial: Should the Chiltern League be invited to participate as the sixth "Union"? The SCCU may or may not have strong views about this. The Chiltern League is formed of Berks, Bucks, Hants and Oxon. I don't know what their entry fees are, but if we adopt (4), then they may have absolutely no financial reason not to - of course, they can decline nomination if they like.

ECF AGM
12.10.13 in London (12.30 pm)
Attendance, at our highest count, was 48 including a handful of non-voters. That's about as high as it gets, and the room was pretty full.
     They started it an hour earlier than usual, understandably considering the business on the agenda. Chairman Mike Gunn announced his intention of keeping speakers under a tight rein, and more or less did. See end of report.
     The total number of card votes available, as announced at the start of the meeting, was 312. We think the greatest number actually cast, on any particular motion, was something like 276. But we give the figures as we go along.
(1) County Championship Rules
     (a) "NCCU" Proposals. The rather vague NCCU proposals left over from a year ago were defeated by a landslide, as everyone seemed to expect. It wasn't very obvious, for a while, whether they were going to be voted on at all. Discussion then turned to the Home Director's alternative proposals. After some amendments (easily carried) in the direction of the status quo these turned into:
     Open 16 boards
     Minor 16 boards
     U170 16 boards
     U140 16 boards
     U120 12 boards
     U100 12 boards
Or, replace the current U180 and U160 by a single division at U170. Voting was 11 - 11 and the Chairman cast in favour of the status quo; then it went to a card vote instead and the result was almost identical: motion lost by 88 votes to 89. So no change.
     (b) The 10-point Rule. The SCCU's proposal to abolish this and return to the old "order-of-strength" rule was defeated on a show of hands by 13 votes to 16 (a call for a card vote was not favoured). This leaves the 10-point Rule's lopsided penalties in place, and we'll be interested to see how they fix them.
(2) Charity Status. The papers of the meeting included a large number of pie charts but no proposals. It appears the Federation may consider paying someone to work in this area. Discussion was mercifully (after the last meeting) brief, occupying only about five minutes.
(3) Talks with WCU. This arose from item 4 in the April meeting below. (Yes, we are still technically in Matters Arising.) Someone asked, and it appears there has been no real progress.
(4) Online Registration Scheme. This is item 12 from the April meeting. There was much consultation on the details of the scheme about that time, and things appeared on the ECF website. We confess we thought it was supposed to operate from 1st July 2013, and organisers seem to have had the same impression because every so often one of them tries to register for grading through the ECF Event Calendar. But, in fact, nothing has happened and the Federation has gone eerily quiet on the scheme. "What has happened to it?", someone asked. Answer: "We're working on it, and it will get going during the current season." Thanks, but it would have done no harm to keep us informed.
(5) Directors' (and others') Reports, selectively.
     (a) Finance Director. The Director was absent and John Philpott reported on his behalf. We hope we've got things right. There was nothing in writing and John reported orally, and you know what we are with money. The overall picture was an expected break-even over the 16-month period, and a £5000 surplus on the financial year. (This could easily be wrong.)
     Membership income was well above original guesstimates. Game Fee income, which for whatever reason was more or less on an honesty-box basis under the old régime, is now more controlled but not yet in a sufficiently robust way. John has taken on the job of monitoring invoices (all right, heading off the more obvious misidentifications before they reach the clubs) and he said he expected to finish the 2012-13 leagues in the next 48 hours. There is a two-month (or it may have been three-month) lag with congresses. "Will leagues be invoiced at the halfyear?" No.
     "Have any ungraded congresses paid £50 to appear in the ECF Calendar?" A top-table spokesman defended the charging policy at some length without actually, as far as we noticed, answering the question. We concluded the answer was no.
     (b) Home Director. To start with the things we can responsibly report:
The Director said he had people lined up to run things like the Counties Championship and National Club. The National Club would be run on different lines this year. There has been no consultation on this, that we know of.
     Online grading database. Someone asked why this has been moved to a new environment, incorporated in the main ECF website, which prevents it from working in the way it was designed to. Someone at the top table said something about commercial reasons. Make what you will of that, but the losses in functionality are real. The Director's circulated report had, in fact, alluded to them and said the problem was being addressed (though it did not say how). "Could it be addressed by moving the database back to its native environment?" Home Director: "No, the grading webmaster can't do this." He must have misunderstood the question, for his answer was simply untrue. The top table confirmed as much when prompted. The grading webmaster can do it tomorrow, and the gain in functionality would be immediate. Council was given to understand that it will not be done.
     Which brings us to two things we can't really report, at least in any detail. One related to an incident at this year's British, to which we had seen veiled allusions on the EC Forum. It turns out the incident led to the resignation of the Championship Manager. Principally involved were an Arbiter and a Director, neither of them strangers to controversy, who clashed again at this meeting after the Board had failed to resolve it. It's a pity these things have to erupt at general meetings - it's not the first time - but we don't think a Complaints Procedure would have helped. The other matter was substantially about the state of health of an ECF officer who had made allegedly defamatory statements in public. The Director concerned had considered dismissing this officer but not done so, and that's as far as we'll go.
     (c) International Director. (1¾ hours into the meeting now.) Council spent much time on the unfortunate withdrawal of our Womens team from the European Team Championships. The Director had felt reluctantly obliged to do this when fundraising fell short of what was needed. Observer: "How far short?" Director: "£3000 - £4000." Observer: "Is that all?" Comparative requirements: Open team about £24,000; Womens £10,000. We won't go into detail; there's more at http://www.chessit.co.uk/phpforum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=275. A former International Director said we should not be in a position where our ability to field teams in important events depended entirely on fundraising.
     (d) Membership & Marketing Director. The Director said PaySubsOnline were working on changes which would make it easier for the Membership database and the Grading one to talk to each other. Or something; we're very vague about it. We've also heard they're trying to improve the accuracy of grading information in the Membership database, which may or may not be the same job. The work, whatever it is, might be completed by the middle of next month. On a related theme someone asked, "When will Membership information appear in the online grading list?" We're not sure what the answer was. Membership information did appear briefly, a while back, but was suppressed on the instructions of (we think) the then Director of Membership on the ground that new Memberships and renewals were not being tracked in real time. Any more than game results are. The online database, at the moment, is only updated once a month.
     The Director also mentioned an intermittent (they're the worst) glitch in online subscribing, now isolated and hopefully fixed. It had caused a 300-Member backlog.
     "How are Memberships holding up compared with last year?" Figures had to be tentative till all the MO lists were in, but Memberships so far (at 6000-odd) were 1000 ahead of last year's at this date.
     "When invoicing a congress, what date is used for Membership? Are people given (say) a month's grace?" The Director said it would be considered by the Board soon. (So they haven't sent any invoices yet?!? Presumably there has been a rule which is up for review. September congresses sound problematic.)
     Someone suggested a Membership Committee. Home Director: "I'm sure that suggestion will be considered."
     (e) Chairman, Governance Committee. We'll quote one exchange. Troublemaker: "How do you get onto the Governance Committee?" Chairman of Governance Committee: "Would you be interested, then?" Troublemaker: "If you'd asked in May I might have said yes, but not now."
     It was now 3.20 and time for the tea break and
__________

BCF AGM.
We understood about as much of the financial stuff as usual, but here's an item we enjoyed. "Do the PIF trustees maintain the funds in nominal or inflation-adjusted terms, and if the latter, which index do they use? I'll appreciate an answer in a year's time." We believe someone gave a part-answer at once. The latter.
     The BCF Accounts were nearly ready. Company Secretary: "I almost lost the will to live the other day, when a whole new set of figures turned up which I'd been totally unaware of." The meeting could not approve incomplete Accounts, so didn't.
     John Philpott was appointed as a John Robinson trustee, replacing (we think) Cynthia Gurney who has just retired.
     The BCF meeting closed at 3.32 pm, leaving 13 minutes for coffee and croissants before the resumption of the ECF one.
__________

(6) Elections
We won't report the election addresses, but you'll find something in the Bristol & District report we linked to above. Results:
President. Andrew Paulson 169, Roger Edwards 106, None of the Above 1
CEO. Phil Ehr 257, Andrew Moore 18, None of the Above 0. Not a surprise.
Finance Director. David Eustace elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 0
Non-Executive Directors. Sean Hewitt 150, Julian Clissold 145, Angus French 133, Jack Rudd 111. None of the Above: not known, but we imagine 0. Hewitt and Clissold elected.
Home Director. Alex Holowczak re-elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: uncertain, but in single figures. Update: 7
Junior Director. Lawrence Cooper elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 2, surprisingly
International Director. David Openshaw re-elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 10
Membership Director. Dave Thomas (re-)elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 0, we think. Update: 0 it was.
FIDE Delegate. Nigel Short re-elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 34. Update: 37
Chairman, Finance Committee. Mike Truran re-elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 1. Update: 2
    Members, Finance Committee. Ray Clark, Ian Edwards re-elected unopposed, with the odd vote against.
Chairman, Governance Committee. Chris Majer re-elected unopposed. Not this Candidate: 1. Update: 8
    Members, Governance Committee. Mike Gunn, Richard Haddrell, Andrew Leadbetter re-elected unopposed, with the odd vote against. (rjh: no, someone got more than me!)
(7) Awards. We won't detail the winners. You'll find them in the ECF site's Council Papers page. But one oddity was remarked on. Why are there no awards for Club / Congress / Website of the Year? Because there were no nominations, and the reason seems to be that nominations weren't invited. A signal omission, and Dave Thomas (newly responsible for the ECF website) said he would ensure it was not repeated.
     It was reported that Player of the Year (with 70-odd respondents from a voting constituency 100 times that size) had had some pretty funny responses. Notably from a brother and sister, aged something like 6 and 8, who voted for each other.
(8) Code of Conduct / Complaints Procedure. The previous version had been abandoned as unworkable, and the Board now presented another attempt. It left the Code of Conduct unchanged and restricted the Complaints Procedure to officers, Directors being now exempt. It turns out that David Sedgwick, who complained vigorously about the unworkability of the Code of Conduct before ever it was abandoned, had approached the Board to such effect before today's meeting that they didn't present their new version at all. Motion withdrawn. We understand that Mr Sedgwick is likely to be co-opted to the Governance Committee (Troublemaker take note) with a view to working on another new version.
(9) A new definition of Requisitionists. (5.10 pm now.) Sean Hewitt's proposal was likewise withdrawn, somewhat to the relief of one person who didn't understand it.
(10) OMOV. We apologise for that heading, but we couldn't think of a better one. This was also from Sean Hewitt. His proposal was "that the board investigate the viability with a view to bringing proposals before Council in April 2014 to allow Directors to be elected directly by individual members of the Federation". People disliked this, not so much for its tortured English as for its restricted scope. An amendment was accepted to the effect that the Board would investigate the appropriate balance of voting powers and authority between Direct Members and affiliated organisations. No one objected to this, so motion carried.
(11) SCCU Proposal on Cheating. Accepted by the Board, and we moved on. It was now 5.40 pm.
(12) SCCU Proposal on Membership and ECF School Team Events. The proposal was carried overwhelmingly on a show of hands, after considerable discussion. The Chairman then allowed a card vote because a lot of card votes were known to reside with No-voters. There are interesting things to be said about card votes, but this isn't the place. The outcome was still a convincing, if less overwhelming, vote for the proposal by 143 to 96.
(13) Manager of Seniors. The meeting accepted a proposal to appoint a Manager of Seniors. Responsible to whom? There seemed to be no agreed answer, and we were briefly in fear of another card vote. But the obvious answer prevailed. The Board to decide, and if they decide one thing one year and another the next, why not?
(14) Any Other Business. Any other what? This is an ECF Council meeting! But it is true. A few minutes to six, and we'd finished the agenda items. Luckily Sussex had an Other Business to raise. Well, we say luckily. We're not sure how far back this goes, but it won't be less than a couple of years or so. The (substantial) Sussex archives lived in someone's house, as we guess is the case in a lot of counties; until one day they decided to entrust them for safekeeping to the ECF Office in Battle. Some time after this it transpired that the Office had moved various things to another location, and the Sussex Archive could not be found. Repeated correspondence with the ECF has had no effect, and in Sussex's place we'd have been publicly ballistic before now. We very much hope the missing items will come to light.

The meeting closed with two minutes still to go before 6 pm, and so confident was the Chairman that he had not even invoked the 30-minute extension.
Please tell us of errors. Omissions may be deliberate.
rjh 19.10.13, amended 30.10.13 to reflect some corrected figures that have emerged for votes-against in the elections. We think the tellers told noses instead of votes sometimes.

Earlier material is in the Archive.