Voted.What happens if neither 9a or 9b get 75% of the vote?Thanks for posting updates on this.
Access is the number one priority. If the BMC fell apart tomorrow - which it won't, because the core of what they do has the support of most climbers - then a climber's access group would spring up out of the wreckage.
No one who deem any one of the factors access, crag maintenance, competition climbing, gear safety, guidebooks, or youth development important would conclude that it is better to organise according to the US model than the French, the Japanese, or indeed the British model. All those factors are more or less catastrophic [in the US] compared to most of the rest of the advanced climbing nations.
Quote from: jwi on May 28, 2018, 01:49:09 pmNo one who deem any one of the factors access, crag maintenance, competition climbing, gear safety, guidebooks, or youth development important would conclude that it is better to organise according to the US model than the French, the Japanese, or indeed the British model. All those factors are more or less catastrophic [in the US] compared to most of the rest of the advanced climbing nations. I am surprised by this conclusion. In the US, the Access Fund is a large and well funded group. If they have not always won their battles, I would say that reflects the wider spread of political ideologies in the US compared to Europe. There are significant portions of the Republican party who have the same disdain for recreational land protection as they do for, say, a publicly-funded health system. [...]
Baffled by your comment on carabiners JWI. This has nothing to do with the BMC?! In short it has everything to do with EN standards.Also baffled by your use of the US as a poor example. We're lucky in the UK to have ancient access rights to large parts of the countryside. This doesn't exist in the US. Or for a closer example look to Ireland or NI - where public rights of access to countryside isn't an ancient right as it is in the UK. Can be much trickier dealing with landowners there. So I'd say that access for recreation has far more to do with public access laws then whether or not there exists one large overseeing representative body for all things climbing.
Will. I'm not arguing for 'getting rid of the BMC' (I'm saying I no longer care what happens in the vote), so I didn't read the rest. And I'm simply pointing out that other ways exist to defend access for recreation which are just as valid.
If you'd spent much time trying to access across any farmland in Northern Ireland you'd quickly appreciate how public friendly the rest of the UK's ancient public rights of way are. NI has access laws about as progressive as its abortion laws; not one long distance path and a dearth of public rights of way.
Also baffled by your use of the US as a poor example. We're lucky in the UK to have ancient access rights to large parts of the countryside. This doesn't exist in the US.
Baffled by your comment on carabiners JWI. This has nothing to do with the BMC?! In short it has everything to do with EN standards.
Quote from: petejh on May 29, 2018, 12:03:42 pmAlso baffled by your use of the US as a poor example. We're lucky in the UK to have ancient access rights to large parts of the countryside. This doesn't exist in the US.Where there are local issues and climbing is on private land (RRG) then the local access group seems to have been successful in raising funds, but I can help thinking that a US wide body would have raised a lot more money and had more clout.
Where there are local issues and climbing is on private land (RRG) then the local access group seems to have been successful in raising funds, but I can help thinking that a US wide body would have raised a lot more money and had more clout.