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

Well, the past few months have also been quite busy as far as stuff related to Esperanto is concerned.

I've been the treasurer of JEB ever since it had been 'revived' in 2003, mainly because there was no other fool around to volunteer to do it! I'd opened a bank account for JEB with NatWest that year and after about a year's reasonable level of activity, there was a period of about 18 months when JEB didn't seem to do very much - not necessarily any single person's fault, but the key people needed to keep JEB running had been far too occupied to actually do that (due to work or university or somesuch). In the meantime, sadly NatWest had decided to introduce a Maintenance Charge to our account - which meant we had to pay a fee for the privilege of just having an account with them.

However, in late 2005/early 2006 a group of young Esperanto speakers who were younger than the then-committee decided to try and revive it - initially by trying to take JEB over, but then an accord was reached where both "sections" would work together. In spite of minor incidents (mainly involving a certain ginger Scouser who was originally involved in the "takeover"), this seems to have worked so far. So when we had our AGM in 2006, my major task was to get our bank account moved to a bank that didn't charge each month - I'd selected the Co-operative Bank, so I'd brought the application form with me for people to sign and fill in. However, getting everything together for the application was virtually impossible - particularly since one of the prospective signatories was not especially forthcoming with proofs of ID or address. So after about six months of trying, I decided to start over and choose a different set of Committee Members to become signatories. However, even with these people it was still very difficult to get all the relevant documents together ... although I finally managed to hand the application in by mid-January. That wasn't the end of my problems, though - understandably the Co-op wanted more information, but again it took a while to get things like personal bank statements together.

So while I'd managed to get those things together and posted before the next AGM in May this year, the account still wasn't open ... because of that, I got a lot of flak from the Ginger Ninja because he felt I hadn't done enough to sort out the bank accounts. He tried to make my re-election as Treasurer dependent on my getting the accounts sorted within a couple of months after the AGM, which I felt was unfair given that I'd felt that I'd done my best to sort things out and that the delay was due to other people not getting documents to me quickly enough. Fortunately, everyone else at the AGM seemed to be confident enough in my ability to deliver and decided to vote down his time limit. As it happened, the new account was opened and the old one closed within the time limit he wanted to impose, so I can now say to him! Now it's just a question of getting the printing and delivery costs for our magazine (Saluton!) covered ... there are various options, although perhaps finding some way to reduce printing costs would be helpful.

Apart from JEB stuff, I've also been continuing with my cataloguing task at the Butler Library. While I've not been able to get there especially often, I have still made some progress over the past 9 months or so ... some 550 extra books have gone into the catalogue and I'm hoping to get even more than that in over the next month. I'm sort of aiming to get the task finished before or when I submit my thesis, and while there's still a way to go, the end is in sight now.

I've also been asked to write an article for La Brita Esperantisto on the last British Congress of Esperanto in Letchworth, which was held in May this year (and where JEB had its AGM). Sounds good? Well, unfortunately, the event itself wasn't an especially happy occasion - mainly because one of its organisers has had major issues with the Esperanto Association of Britain (EAB) and its Management Committee in particular. However, the stuff this guy's coming out with is unbelievable - he actually believes that (1) when EAB's headquarters moved from London to near Stoke-on-Trent, one of the current ManCom gained financially from the move (possibly illegally), and (2) there are a number of member of EAB's Management Committee that are also moles for MI5 with the aim of discrediting the Esperanto movement in Britain. How this guy has been behaving, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's actually caused much more damage to the cause of Esperanto than the people he's accused of doing just that. I won't go into the whole history about him here, mainly because it is complicated and also rather pointless, but he has become impossible to work with and does not take criticism about himself or his actions at all well ... so I'm guessing my forthcoming article in the magazine will make him think I'm working for MI5. Ah well ...