RSGB President pontificates...

On page 6 of this month's 'RadCom' - quite possibly the most dull magazine you'll ever not see on your newsstand (because it isn't actually sold anywhere) - the RSGB's president (bow, curtsy), gives us a bit of a telling-off.

He says that the RSGB has "only 16 members of HQ staff" (not bad for a limited company concerning a hobby), and that he has to "admire" their "stoic make-up - even after being lambasted by those who sit on the sidelines and criticise, often without offering any solutions or even contemplating offering their time to put right what they see as being wrong".

Well!  That's us put to rights!

Now, it's all very well for a chain-wearing, white, middle-class, ageing man to puff out his chest and waggle his finger at the naughty membership that won't shut up.  The other reality, of course, is that the RSGB is often accused of 'bunker mentality' when under criticism.  Certainly, in most of my dealings with them in the past (I long ago stopped being a member), responses were often aggressive (e.g. exchanges about planning permission), evasive (e.g. pay), or ignorant (e.g. WSPR QRM).

Ask RSGB members about the society, and they often shrug their shoulders and say they are only members "for the magazine".  The imputation is that they don't really see the RSGB as representing their interests and achieving change.

Sure, there are many people who just want to complain and find fault.  No doubt the RSGB staff do receive a lot of that kind of thing.  But there is, actually, plenty to complain about, and plenty of scope to point out the RSGB isn't responding as we would wish quite often.

Take, for example, the RSGB's generous pay packet to its General Manager.

In the past (not involving the current incumbent), the RSGB paid "more than" £60,000 to its GM.  It didn't, by accounting law, have to declare how much above £60,000 it was.

When I repeatedly made the point to the RSGB that law was one thing, but how it obtained that money - mostly from member subscriptions - was quite another.

That members were paying a good proportion of that salary should have led the RSGB and its GM to waive its right to secrecy, and declare the salary in full.  That way, the membership could have decided whether or not the substantial pay (at least 2.5 times that of a fully time-served NHS nurse), was a good use of society money.

But the society and the GM chose to keep it secret.  In more recent years, the salary has gone below £60,000 if we are to believe the RSGB.  But by how much, is still undisclosed so far as I know.

And, month after dull month, all I see in the pages of RadCom are rows and rows of pictures of old men, hardly any women, thinking that, because they are doing all very well thank you and looking forward to their next ocean cruise, they need not worry about the hopeless age profile of the hobby, the lack of planning freedoms for antenna installations, or much of anything else, really.

The RSGB has surveyed the membership about age and many other aspects, and been handed some nice statistics on which to base their decisions and strategies.  They have addressed some issues.  But quite what they have done to address others - the ones that are really tough to crack - like rapidly ageing membership, is a mystery.