I’ve signed. Number 1 is easy, transparency is essential after recent wrong footedness. They can’t carry on with late information and post hoc justification.
Point 2 more a warning shot, ‘this can’t carry on’. Nobody is happy with GBC except possibly people on the payroll. If athletes aren’t happy, that says plenty. Listening isn’t the same as fixing.
I do feel sorry for the people trying to reform the BMC in their spare time.
How many warning shots that force fomal action have no cost, especially when money is tight and morale low ? Why is Simon not pushing for resolution of what parents, athletes and other stakeholders asked for through CCPG and instead using the problems to back his wishes for a structure with claimed benefits that are unevidenced and backed by misrepresentation in his background information.
I've copied my response from the other channel below:
>Resolution 1 is long overdue 'apple pie'. I hope the Board sees sense and publishes more transparent member costs of GB Climbing soon (as Paul Davis promised back in the autumn).... before the organisation has to spend time and energy dealing with motions asking for something they should already have done.
>I strongly urge members not to support resolution 2. It is based on misinformation in the background Simon wrote and is unclear to an extent in the motion itself.
>Misinformation was the main reason I was so opposed to the way the motion of no confidence was presented a number of years back.... democratic disagreement is a right of BMC members but misrepresentation to garner support isn't.
>There really is no evidence whatsoever the governance problems that led to the letter from parents and athletes (nor the misunderstanding of complex UKS contracts, that led to a genuine overspend) would have been avoided by GB Climbing being an independent structure. How many organisational scandals like the Post Office and Maturnity units do we need to demonstrate structure isn't the key issue in preventing governance failures?.... important people in reasonable structures should have done their job properly but didn't !?! A separate GB Climbing unit would be more expensive due to having to seperate and duplicate admin and some new governance (and other factors) to give independent budgets etc. The change to such a structure now would take over a year (it requires a BMC Articles change, being democratically contentious, despite Simon repeatedly claiming otherwise), it would be expensive and very disruptive... at a time when money is really tight. Any liability for failure of such a unit would still be the responsibility of the BMC to resolve, worst case using significant BMC expenditure, including income from members subs (whilst having reduced governance control to prevent problems arising). The parents and athletes reps are not the ones asking for this resolution and it will almost certainly distract from resolving the issuse they raised through CCPG. We have no clear idea how the grant awarding bodies would react to such a structure. I also see it as disrespectful and dismissive to our members who compete and our small army of volunteers who give up so much time to make the youth comp system work (I know as I've volunteered to help several times).
>The CCPG oversight committee for GB Climbing is formed from volunteers (including athletes and parents) who worked hard to raise stakeholder concerns respectfully to the Board in a difficult situation. The new incoming CEO of the BMC is the chair of CCPG. Simon says "The CCPG has failed in every respect in meeting its responsibilities" yet fails to consider why a review position (that he misrepresents) came about or how on earth such a failure would lead to a promotion for its chair.
>Prior to the misunderstanding of complex UKS contracts (sometime after autumn 2021) GB Climbing wasn't running at a loss for years, as Simon claims. Jonathan White posted the 2021 situation which was agreed democratically and was on budget.
>How would a (proposed new) reserved matter have helped, given reserved matters give power to Council, yet Council formally approved the Ratho spend by a large majority (to be fair: at a time when the seriousness of BMC finances wasn't obvious, nor were most of the GB Climbing stakeholder concerns)? Aside from CCPG, Council members have been the ones most strongly supporting action on behalf of GB Climbing stakeholders in BMC governance structures; Jonathan White in particular.
>The BMC is in the middle of a financial crisis with other major issues unresolved....and staff and volunteer morale is hardly great... and the last thing the BMC needs now is more manipulation by members using a crisis to push their line on single issues. Simon (Shark) was always strongly opposed to the ODG agreed GB Climbing structure from the beginning.... a valid democratic view .... but please let's not see manipulation of information to help back a resolution based on unproved (ie unevidenced) assertions that as a minimum will cause even more cost and disruption to the organisation with no guaranteed improvements.
