What has TB unleashed?

TB thought there would be a response to that last letter, but not this quickly... Luckily still up waiting for darling Sarah to begin her speech so caught this one early and can get this next letter up straight away:

Once again this has been reproduced at the request of the author:

Dear Christian/Tory Bear,

I felt it was about time to give my views on the proposed plans to change CF. I am emailing Tory Bear, as I believe we need to have an open debate and am happy to have my views made public.

I feel at best, the suggestions you have made would be counter-productive.

Firstly, however, I must echo the sentiments of Alex Agius. The manner in
which I first became aware of this plans was simply unacceptable. For such
drastic reforms to have been announced through a  series of blog posts on
third party sites, rather than direct attempts to communicate with the
Branch and Area chairs, is disgraceful. Although everyone accepts that CF
needs to change, the lack of communication in establishing change merely
reflects a continuation of the culture which created the present dire
state CF is in.

You, as a guest author on Tory Bear, described the replacement of area
chairs with regional coordinators, as being intended to make CF “more
effective at a local level and to increase its accountability.” This
simply will not work. A Regional Chairman would inevitably become
detached, due to simple geographical reasons, from much of their region;
focusing their attention on their locality or on a few big CF groups which
are easy to visit. How much attention would a regional chair for the East
of England, who combines a job with his CF duties, have to spend helping
out the Great Yarmouth CF? This already occurs within the current area
system. It is in practice impossible to be a good area chair for both
Norfolk and Suffolk. What is needed is a breaking up of the area; not
further centralisation. In the context of Student life regions make sense
simply due to the fact that we are dealing with a small number of
institutions, it does not make sense when one considers that in Norfolk
alone there are around 25 CF groups.

With this in mind regional elections would rapidly become polarising
events, with each county having their own candidate and the results having
everything to do with location not ability. In the East of England region,
a UEA/Norfolk candidate would fight an Essex, and possibly a Cambridge
one. Each election would become a messy and bloody affair with the
effective regional support being the prize. Communication and cooperation
would become increasingly difficult, with tribalism becoming even more
prevalent. As we are nearing a general election, the idea that we should
unleash the hounds of war upon ourselves rather than labour is pure
madness. CF is already too focused on internal politicking rather than
winning elections, (real ones that is, a lot of work goes into internal
elections.)

I will concede that a regional organiser supporting the efforts of a
larger team of area chairs could possibly work. As would the creation of
them as a professional paid position. Having only a regional chairman
however, would leave the majority of branches on their own. If you wanted
to destroy CF as nation wide institution, leaving only localised fiefdoms
around the CF groups big enough to survive without regional support, then
this policy would achieve your aim.


CF needs reform, but rather than grand structural reforms what we need
first is genuine effectiveness in communication, a centralised resource
website, regular events held across the nation and crucially the injection
of funding required allowing us to professionalise. I am not in favour of
the status quo, but I fail to see how this would improve the situation.

Yours
Paul Wells
University of East Anglia CF Chairman
CF Student Life Elections Officer