h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This shouldn't turn into a rant, but let's face it this is me talking here, so it probably will.

Last night, for those that don't know, was the local branch of CAMRA's Annual General Meeting. Part of that was the election of the new committee.
The branch have been having a lot of trouble recently, and pretty much all of it down to one person: the secretary. Well it was agreed by the committee beforehand (including him) that he would not stand for the committee role again, but rather take a more back-seat role of Pubs Officer, with my missus taking over the secretary's role. Everything seemed to be going to plan, with the rest of us going straight in unopposed to our positions. But, when it came to the secretary role... someone asked him if he'd stand, he said he would if people wanted him to, he was nominated and seconded and then there had to be a vote. Him and the missus went out of the room while discussion of the candidates took place (not sure why but it was a good thing) and twenty minutes of pointing out the previous secretary's weaknesses took place. Interspersed with reminding people how he has, in hte past, almost caused this branch to be shut down, and how recently we came very close to being sued for liable and slander. The guy's main problem is that he can't detach his personal views from those of CAMRA, and this means that he has been seen stood at a bar, while representing the branch to a visiting branch, and having a go at one of the barmaids. Telling her quite bluntly that they didn't deserve to win a recent award. The only defence that anyone could come up with for him was that he was doing more than one role, and therefore only doing the secretarys role he'd be fine. Thing is, even if he was only doing the secretary's role he was still wanting to split it up, having a "minutes secretary". Some poor mug who's job it was was to take, write up and distribute the minutes of meetings. Leaving him all the nice parts of the prestigous title, the chatting with HQ and er, no that's it really.
Well, after twenty minutes it was put to a vote. Only the people who nominated and seconded him actually voted for him. Fifteen voted for the missus and nine absteined. More people abstained that voted for him.

Still, he's in as pubs officer, and it took him a whole five minutes from being voted in to make his first serious breach of conduct/protocol.

Each year CAMRA release a book, The Good Beer Guide. The pubs that go into this are voted on by the branches, who put forward the best pubs in their region. The committee then share the pubs out amongst themselves or nominate someone, they then go around and survey these pubs, making sure that all the details are right, the address, telephone number, opening hours, beer sold etc and write a little paragraph describing the pub. These are then collected back in, approved by the committee and passed on to the regional director who collects all the ones for the region, and passes them on to HQ.
So what happened this time? Well he failed to tell anyone when the forms had to be back. Also, he was a little slow in letting anyone have the forms, one committee member *still* hasn't got the ones for hte pubs she was supposed to survey. The forms that did go out weren't original forms. Not too much of a problem there as survey forms get messed up and you can rewrite them neatly later, but they didn't even look anything like the survey forms, and didn't collect the same data, as we found out last night. So what did he do? He surveyed all the pubs himself, wrote up all the forms and handed them to the regional director without anyone in the committee even seeing them. I only knew that he was going to give the regional director the forms last night because I got in touch with him and asked him when he needed the forms back! I had mine on me last night and when I found out what he'd done, I was a little more than furious. I got hold of the regional director and gave him the proper forms, and explained what had happened. The chairman knows and this should now be either the first of three offences needed to kick this chap off the committee for good, or we should just just him off.
I think that's a record though, five minutes from taking the position to serious breach of conduct.

That rant's over, the chairman (cliff) is still the chairman, and a very good one he is. The secretary is now my missus, she's done it before and knows what to do. I'm the vice chairman, a "non-job" to quote the person we have problems with. Media & publicity (amy) is being done by someone who's been doing that role without the title, and works at a local newspaper. Treasurer (allie) is the same, someone who doesn't give money out easily, but now knows she can get funding from HQ. Membership (sharon) is a new comer, poor lass got rail-roaded into it a bit last night, but she's more than capable and the role is quite easy. Young members (martin h) is being done by a chap who couldn't be there because he was taking sixty students from the college real ale society on a pub crawl around the city. He also runs one of the student bars on campus. The only position that didn't get filled was the social secretary, but sharon's blokey (derick) says that he'll give it a go in an unofficial capacity to see how it goes, and if it goes well he'll take in on officially. The only problem is the pubs officer (martin s) who is the problem person. Although the rate he's going he won't last the week.
But, we've got a full committee now. A first for this branch. We've got a record number of members, a whole 194. And we should now have access to cash.

Time to put my money where my mouth is and turn this branch around.