RSGB - skinflints.

'Skinflint' is defined, by example sentence, at Merriam-Webster Online as:

// the team's owner is a skinflint whose penny-pinching ways keeps the team from acquiring any real talent.

Well, that's a really appropriate definition for the RSGB's RadCom Basics digital publication, which is a really good idea in principle.  It's all about encouraging newcomers and maybe putting some different ideas out there, to get people doing something different. 

It was in that latter vein that I recently submitted a draft text based on my many 2019 outings to the coast with a mobile whip.  Having written for various magazines since 1989, I didn't find it very difficult to churn out a happy-sounding article.

You want how much?  RSGB RadCom Basics: real Scrooges.

Imagine my delight, then, to find the editor of Basics found my work "refreshing".  Well, delighted until...he offered me the going rate, stipulated by the RSGB High Command, of £50 per article!

To put that into context, I might expect something like £300 for a feature article in most other niche-market magazines.  

Or, put another way, the General Manager at the RSGB was, until recently, when they changed the amount and thus avoided having to declare it at all, earning 'more than £60,000 per annum!' 

I would have thought, given I really do want people to go out and that it is more about the hobby than money, that at least £100 would have been appropriate.  If for nothing else, it would keep good writers writing, and show the RSGB is serious about its early-career operators and those just curious about the hobby.  Well, I'm not producing another word for them again, thanks!

No surprise then that, whilst my writing's not too bad, the other offerings in Basics can often be pretty dire.  Pinch the pennies, and acquire no talent, indeed!

(Update: I decided this was just another RSGB piss-take, and have withdrawn the article from publication by them.  Practical Wireless accepted the article at £60 per page, or a total of nearly 300% more than the RSGB were offering).