RSGB - the fight not taken

I had my regular, but very infrequent look around the RSGB's affairs on the Companies House (private company information) web site this morning.

It's always interesting to see how things are going at the RSGB, and I was pleased to see the membership grew quite healthily in the past year or two, although that was almost entirely down to the boredom brought on by the lockdowns.  Overall, the society has a lot of work to do to make sure this blip in the system doesn't just remain as one, once we drag ourselves out of Covid-19.

The RSGB mentions its ongoing relations and meetings with OFCOM, the UK regulator.  But it remains loathe to tell us about the content of those contacts.  

So, once again, I've had to make a Freedom of Information Act request to OFCOM for records of these meetings.  

In the past, FoIA has been useful, notably in relation to the 'K' for Cornwall regional secondary locator debacle; information released by OFCOM showed the RSGB had not been supportive of the idea since the very beginning, but had tended to suggest otherwise to those who were promoting it as a permanent RSL.

It remains to be seen what will come out of the FoIA request this time.  

Wisely, the RSGB chose some time ago not to pursue a legal challenge to the failure of OFCOM to enforce RFI laws in respect of VDSL, which has caused a lot of trouble across the UK.  But options were available - and remain so - to it.

Where the RSGB has failed, in my opinion, is in adapting to the RFI situation in the UK, which is worsening significantly and to the point where hardly anyone living outside of the countryside will not find operating significantly affected by avoidable noise.

For example, The Good Law Project, which successfully challenges government on matters of policy and procedure regularly, show us how things can be done.  GLP may not necessarily be interested in fighting our niche radio corner, perhaps, but they are only one outfit using crowd funding to progress legal challenges that otherwise would not be affordable.

So I would certainly suggest that OFCOM's refusal to tackle what seems an obvious and clear breach of RFI control measures should be revisited.  

If one in ten of the ~21,500 members of the RSGB paid £5 each, then a legal challenge fund would be worth nearly £11,000 - enough to at least get a couple of good legal opinions on the merits of any potential case.  If everyone paid only £1 each (or that the RSGB hypothecated funds for legal action in the same way from subscriptions), then there would be enough money in one year alone to bring, for example, a Judicial Review of OFCOM's decision not to enforce the rules.

This isn't as novel and ridiculous an idea as it might seem to some.  The RSGB already has specific funds ring-fenced for purposes such as 'spectrum defence' (currently worth £9,000, but without expenditure for some time), and prizes based on donations.

The RSGB's accounts seem to be fairly healthy, but are very likely to see a sudden slip as we ease out of the pandemic.  Lockdowns are now politically seen as undesirable and to be avoided in the UK.  The days where we saw a lockdown as a novel 'holiday', shrugged our shoulders and decided to learn something new are over; everyone now wants to be out as much as possible, not locked-up indoors, as they were, for so long.

But I wish the RSGB well, of course.  It is nowhere near persuading me that it is worth joining, however!