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BMC Resolutions shout out 📣 (Read 9318 times)

teestub

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#50 Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣
May 09, 2024, 07:10:50 pm

Have you done any accounting? This seems extremely unlikely from the small exposure I've had to finance and accounting.

Helping Randall to hide the McLaren on the Lattice accounts? 😂

Offwidth

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#51 Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣
May 09, 2024, 08:28:57 pm
Also Offwidth. I find your continual attempts to shield the BMC behind the fact that it's heavily supported by volunteers extremely hard to jusify.

A small percentage of people that we meet in life are takers. That's just how it is, people realise this over time and the takers aren't widely respected as a result. The vast majority of people help or volunteer with something. Whether it's charity, clubs, schools, community, sports, politics or whatever, most of us volunteer our time in some fashion or other. The notion that volunteers should be regarded as being in anyway special or holy is nonsense. Nearly all of us are volunteers for something or other. Being a volunteer should not make you immune to criticism. It one hundred perecent should not make the organisation you are volunterring for immune to criticism. The volunteers should be as outraged as the rest of us if not more about the state of things at the BMC. If any of the organisations that I volunteer for were behaving this poorly I would be kicking up so much shit you wouldn't be able to see me for the brown cloud.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm saying staff and volunteers just got on with things, since 2017, during several real crises. The first big one was the disruption then financial fallout of the Motion of No Confidence (when grants were stopped, despite a huge majority backing the BMC leadership). The second was covid and furlough. The third was during a cost of living crisis which was unlucky to correspond with: some seriously poor financial planning , control and oversight; and also serious stakeholder problems in GB Climbing. Six of us wrote to say this last March, got Council to back us  and have been pressuring for improvement ever since. After a year of struggle, and some senior departures, at last there is light at the end of the tunnel. However, since budgets are still tight, members leaving now because they are angry with BMC mismanagement (and encouraging others to leave) will hurt staff and key volunteers' ability to work at maximum efficiency. So since things are looking much better I'd just ask them to think carefully before doing so.

If you don't believe the 2022 statement ask questions at the open forum in a couple of weeks. Or have a quiet chat with David, Tarquin or Bill who have been Council Finance and Audit reps in the last few years... I trust all three. David was the first to warn the FAC about over ambitious membership growth targets (who then dropped put of Council for a few months) and Tarquin and Bill were part of our letter writing 6.

remus

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#52 Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣
May 09, 2024, 08:43:20 pm

Have you done any accounting? This seems extremely unlikely from the small exposure I've had to finance and accounting.

Helping Randall to hide the McLaren on the Lattice accounts? 😂

That's a legitimate business expense right?

Oldmanmatt

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#53 Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣
May 10, 2024, 02:58:01 am

Have you done any accounting? This seems extremely unlikely from the small exposure I've had to finance and accounting.

Helping Randall to hide the McLaren on the Lattice accounts? 😂

That's a legitimate business expense right?

If you plaster it with huge Lattice logos, probably.

Squirrel!👉

shark

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#54 Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣
Yesterday at 10:23:50 pm
Thanks everyone picking up on the finance issue in my absence. The inability to provide a breakdown for 2022 should have prompted bigger questions by Members Council rather than meek acceptance.

I’m afraid further very bad news about the 2023 outturn is on its way that beggars belief. I understand releases from the Board, MC and the CEO are expected over the next couple of days.

This will lay bare the extent of the Board’s complete lack of financial control over the organisation and members money they are custodians of and responsible for.

It is an absolute disgrace.


« Last Edit: Today at 07:54:49 am by shark »

El Mocho

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For context, I have spent €2.5M on paint alone over the last 12 months.

Farrow and Ball has gone up a bit in the last 12 months yeh. Think it cost that much to do our front room.

Shark, thanks for keeping on with this. I suffer from a rose tinted view of the BMC in the past and view of how it could be in the future, combined with a little Offwidthitis where every BMC employee I've met seems like a great, hard working person (except Niall  ;)) means I'd be likely to stick my head in the sand and assume everything would end up fine in the end... To keep kicking the ants nest (or whatever you want to call it) must be becoming unpleasant and tedious.


shark

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Thanks Ben

Being kicked in the nuts by MC currently feels like the last straw from a personal perspective.

Some say it’s too fucked to fix. I can see how it can be rescued in terms of drastic actions to take to stop the cash burn and rebuild from there but the politics of having competent leadership in place with experience of business recovery and being given that sort of mandate still appears a long way off when the Board are still quibbling over trivia.

Oldmanmatt

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Thanks Ben

Being kicked in the nuts by MC currently feels like the last straw from a personal perspective.

Some say it’s too fucked to fix. I can see how it can be rescued in terms of drastic actions to take to stop the cash burn and rebuild from there but the politics of having competent leadership in place with experience of business recovery and being given that sort of mandate still appears a long way off when the Board are still quibbling over trivia.

In one respect, Offwidth is right. The past is the past and there (at the moment, pending further revelations) is no reason to believe the organisation is beyond salvage.
End the BS and platitudes, come clean, investigate properly (external audit?), publish the action plan and remedials and watch the support grow. Does anybody want to see the BMC die? I don’t (never did cancel my membership, decided you can’t argue for reform and leave).

 

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