There's been a lot of comment on the internal workings of the RSGB of late, this time on Twitter.
Of particular interest in recent days is the process of filling seats vacated, sometimes under rather peculiar and not always explained circumstances, at Board and Regional Representative level.
A bit of digging around amongst the labyrinthine and often broken pages of the RSGB web site revealed that the application pack for those, brave enough to consider standing for these positions, didn't include any equal opportunities monitoring statement or questionnaire.
Such monitoring forms for applicants are not legal requirements. But they do provide significant benefits to any organisation concerned with equality and its own future liability in law. Consequently, it is extremely unusual to find recruiters not including such monitoring questionnaires in application packs in the UK today.
First, they allow an organisation, if operated with an open mind and the right motivation, to evaluate how well its workforce (or volunteers) represent society at large, and thus whether there may be a problem of prejudice, intentional or otherwise, that needs correcting in how it selects people.
Secondly, montioring data on equality will help an organisation defend itself in the event that some claim of unequal selection is made against it. Discrimination against protected characteristics, where proven, is unlawful.
For the effort involved, equal opportunities monitoring forms are clearly valuable and of essentially no effort in their issue, completion and recording. That the RSGB doesn't seem to want to bother with, or perhaps not even know about equalities monitoring, could add weight to those who claim the average age for directors - now standing at 70 years - means that the Board may have lost touch with the modern world.
Then came the observation by Twitter-based, constructive critic of the RSGB, Ham Radio Gossip (@HamGoss), that a head-and-shoulders photograph of all applicants is required by the society. This is not entirely unheard of, but it is a little troubling.
Extract from RSGB application form (page 4), accessed 31/01/2021, 10:59UT.
@HamGoss, quite rightly, mocks the requirement with the following tweet:
For one thing, demanding a photo with an application gives the appearance, even if it isn't true, that the RSGB only wants the 'right kind' of people. Given the severe age, ethnicity and gender bias that is obvious amongst the current Board members, it's very disheartening to see that they fall for this avoidable trap.
Secondly, demanding a photo has the clear and obvious risk of allowing the RSGB selectors to be, consciously or otherwise, biased in their choices. That is why equal opportunities forms - where they are actually provided to applicants - are never disclosed to those involved in the selection process. A photo of someone reveals a multitide of information that, likewise, ought not to be revealed in the selection process.
Personal appearance is entirely irrelevant to a position at the RSGB, so why demand a photo?
Yesterday, I was picked-up on Twitter by last year's candidate for RSGB president, Simone Wilson, G0BOX.
Now, I've heard of Ms. Wilson in the past, but that was my sum knowledge. I was genuinely interested to find that her previous callsign, assigned to a Simon Wilson at the same address, was G6BOX.
So, as Simone herself explains on her blog, we have someone who has changed gender identity, about which I make no comment or judgment whatsoever, other than to say it's a very good thing that we have diversity like this within the RSGB.
Extract of a longer exchange on Twitter, 21/01/2022.
Simone made her case in an open and honest way, and without any of the nastiness that so often emanates from the mouths and typing fingers of others.
But in the end, all we did was go around in circles.
Simone began with the view that yes, the RSGB is saddled with retired people running the show, but that, to slightly paraphrase, 'with age comes experience', and 'only the retired can afford to work for free.'
The trouble is, this began to sound like a justification for why the RSGB has Board members with ages between 66 and 74 years.
Yes, of course it's the case that being at work all day and maybe looking after kids in the evening makes being active in running a society like the RSGB difficult. But it's nowhere near impossible. I studied for a degree in the evenings after working all day, brought up a family and was very active almost nightly in writing environmental campaign letters.
It's not true, therefore, that working people can't make time to run something they have a passion for. This is especially true if meetings are scheduled to accommodate them.
Simone's other contention, to which she stuck to the end of the exchange, that 'with age comes experience', is true only so far. Working-age people are, by their very definition, the people who make the system work. They run banks, governments, businesses, schools, universities.
It's ludicrous to suggest that one could only do these things properly when you've reached retirement age. Listening to her stumbled responses about what makes radio interesting (we all struggle with this one), I think I would gently suggest some media training for Simone and anyone else from the RSGB, so that the answers are immediate, polished and convincing.
Simone regretted that making an appearance on DXCommander's Youtube channel had not engaged the RSGB membership. To be honest, and although this was a form of pre-election campaigning, it's not so much the membership she should be aiming for, but the entire population of people who are yet to think about radio, all the way through to those who have been in the hobby for decades.
I don't wish to be unkind to Simone, but it's not difficult to see from viewing the video that, nearly a year on, only 2800 people viewed it. There are 23,000 members of the RSGB and about 3 times that many licencees in the UK. DXCommander has 42,000 subscribers.
All did their best. But the fact is that those invovled with the RSGB are not only of retired age, but also of a disposition to find committees and positions on them somehow interesting or desirable. To the rest of us, talk of 'presidents', 'boards' and 'committees' is, self-evidently, from the numbers who have not watched the video, utterly irrelevant.
Which brings me to the conclusion: the RSGB has a structure that is unsuitable for the role it ought to have. It's decided to be a limited company, which forces some degree of formal structure that others may find irrelevant. But a number of us think that committees and structures have long taken hold at the RSGB as 'the way they like it'. Obscure and dull, with people showing little interest in the detail, could be said to allow the ruling elite to conduct business on their, and not members' terms. That is not to say they are doing anything improper, just that their priorities may be all wrong.
For the younger folk, these priorities certainly are wrong.
The reality of being an operator today is one of, typically, living in fairly restricted physical space, with little room for antennas. Neighbours have easy and quick ways to complain, rightly or wrongly, about anything they perceive as 'shouldn't be allowed'. Even if you have a mansion and grounds, it's still an uphill, long and bureaucratic struggle to gain permission for a mast. Radio is not like a new TV, where you plug it in and everything works without a hitch or fuzzy lines across the image.
But the RSGB doesn't lobby for change. It regularly advertises and reviews £10,000 transceivers, but what's the point, when OFCOM allows RFI to render them simply a better receiver of interference?
We need effective, confident campaigning to change planning laws to improve the lot of the amateur operator. We need to change the relationship with OFCOM, who are certainly not remotely interested in our hobby. We need to reach out to the young and not-so-young who may be thinking of joining us, and do so not by talk of committees, but by what it will give them if they do join.
None of these things are easy. But I am very sure that the RSGB has some form of internal problem with younger folk gaining a foothold within its structure. We have to accept, as Simone honestly does, that when we get older, we tend to slow down and become more fixed in our way of thinking. That can be a stabilising, wise force for good. But not when everyone displays the same characteristics.
Society is getting older. But it's not the case that society consists only of older people, nor that working-age people can't run the world before the age of 67.
A report back around 2010 for the RSGB said that "it's difficult not to conclude that, in the past ten years, the membership has aged by the same amount". That's pretty much true of the Board's makeup, too.
The simple message for the RSGB as a society, then, is that, no matter how glitzy you want to try and make the web site and RadCom (and those are really not very good at all), maintaining this exclusion of the younger groups - however, precisely, it comes about - is wholly unsustainable and will - not may - see the demise of the society. I don't think anyone wants that.
UPDATE: after many exchanges on Twitter, I didn't find continued contact with Simone Wilson worthwhile.
Following a new resignation from the RSGB Board of Directors, this time from M0MUX, a new, online amateur radio society that sprang-up last year, is being promoted again.
It's not the first time that people have become so irritated by what they see as the RSGB's failings that they have started a new society. But the pandemic has woken all of us up to the connecting power of Zoom and similar apps that allow us, with little fuss, to meet-up, wherever we happen to be.
So this new society, which will attract younger members more willing to try a modern format, stands a reasonable chance of success, notably if, as is to be hoped, it branches out into representation in the physical world. Planning matters and representation to the regulator are just two areas where the RSGB has long been considered by some to be inadequate, with real consequences for operators.
And good luck to it, I say! The days of physical clubs meetings have been dying for some time. The last time I took a deep breath and tried attending my local club, I left before getting in the door. I heard only CB-esque, idiotic talk about ATUs being used to match ridiculous antenna ideas, and a lot of slagging-off of people who were, it was claimed, causing trouble for someone who wanted to be Chairman instead.
Add to that the fact of some 80-year old giving a talk at the rate of 10 words a minute about some valve everybody forgot about 50 years ago, and you have the perfect recipe for wishing you weren't there.
So the lack of physical meetings is not going to be a weak point for this new society. Even some people, like me, who are a little reluctant to appear on a screen, have now become used to it; we kind-of had to, due to those lockdowns.
Indeed, an online-based society is a great way to break down geographical barriers, allowing people, no matter where they live and how remote, to provide their input into proceedings. With the RSGB showing little change in its lack of age, gender and ethnic diversity, an online society stands to finally break through this wall of exclusivity.
We'll see. It's very early days, and it seems to have tried to get going last year, only to see activity dwindle. I'm not persuaded the Discord-based presentation is very good, and it feels just a little like it won't last beyond next week.
But there's no doubt the RSGB has, overall, failed to keep up with the times and developments that interest modern hams, and it is now, very much, time for it to be swept away rather than tinkered with, only to redevelop into the same thing it always was.
If this particular effort to turn things around doesn't succeed, another, eventually, will. It's no longer 1955, few of us are career engineers, and we're in an era where the question is not just how to afford a transceiver, but whether we can afford - or even find - a home to put that transceiver in. The old guard, comfortable in their 5-bed houses and new, polished car outside, can only keep their control on things for so long, and their time is rapidly coming to an end.
The only odd things is the title of one of the meetings scheduled for coming days: "How do we better enagage with the RSGB?" I think it needs to just cut loose from the whole thing, personally...
Events of the past few days at the RSGB remind us that things are not at all as they should be at this society, and haven't been especially good for some time. Whilst the person resigning has explained in some detail why he was leaving the RSGB to its own devices, the society itself seems to have made absolutely no comment at all, although Len Paget, in his 'private capacity', has sent side-swipes over the resignation in a very personal and rather ugly way.
Only as recently as 2013 did the RSGB resolve the financial scandal that hit it a couple of years previously. Whilst it is said to have recovered the money, the lack of oversight that allowed £41,000 to be spent with apparently no real challenge was clearly a serious cause for concern - and change.
At much the same time, we had the Luso tower at Bletchley Park debacle, leading to what was presumably a large financial loss - it was advertised for £13,500 some years ago, but the price paid by the RSGB for it from Luso might have been as high as £31,000.
But we moved on. Or, at least, some of us did. Many of the faces at the top of the RSGB today remain the ones that we've seen milling around for years. They're all getting on in age now, as this screengrab (RSGB web site, accessed today) shows - and some of those pictures are themselves years old:
Mostly old photos of now much older retired, white men.
I'm not sure that the RSGB might have found itself with Board members - who hold a total liability in the event of failure, of a whopping £1 - who can't detach themselves from committee chairs. Some of us worry that the society has become perceived as 'theirs', rather than 'ours'.
My views on the RSGB, as a non-member who won't consider joining until there is fundamental change, are as follows:
(1) There is poor ethnic, age and gender balance within the society. This has existed for a long time, and been reported many times on this blog. The imbalance is also true of the hobby in general. It's no good relying on the latter to somehow explain the former; we need the circle to be broken. Having diversity at the top is the best place to set the example and show we are inclusive, not exclusive.
(2) There is a feeling that those at the top have overstayed their welcome. I'm sure they've tried their best, but there comes a time when we should carefully reflect and be humble, and wonder whether someone else should now have a go, and might even be more capable of making this a society fit for the present, and for the future.
(3) The society's failings are often assisted by a mostly elderly membership who 'just want the magazine', and no longer have the energy or interest to worry about society politics. That's fair enough, but because we have so few younger members, there's nobody much to pick up the slack.
(4) The company status has permitted the society to be more opaque that I would like. It sometimes will respond to enquiries of what might be 'contentious' in nature, but it doesn't have to. For example, I pointed out to the present and former GMs of the RSGB that they could, if they wanted, waive their right to privacy and publish exactly how much they are paid. Both declined to do so. Is that right, in a member-subscription society? I don't think so, at all.
In the end, the society is a society of members, and should be fully accountable at all times to that membership. There are AGMs and accounts, of course, but these don't seem to have brought about change - not least because those who attend meetings are probably from a very niche subpopulation of the community - the radio version of political 'wonks'.
(5) The society looks and feels tired and irrelevant. Although the pandemic saw many more people take up the hobby, those will now be able to spend a lot more time outdoors than when they got bored and signed-up for an exam course. So I think we'll see this as merely a blip that will soon return us to the slowly-declining curve of interest and membership.
Unless the society wakes up and makes itself look relevant to newcomers in an age of smartphones, then it will quickly fade into obscurity. Some might say this would be a good thing, if replaced with something better.
(6) The society doesn't seem to offer anything much in return for membership. I joined EURAO because it offered, in return for the normal 10 Euro membership, free multi-million pound public liability insurance. Critics would say that the elderly membership of the RSGB are unlikely to want that, because they are much less likely to be out /P. But for EURAO, it was an overnight, spectacular success in attracting a large number of new members.
(7) OFCOM and general representation. Many believe that the relationship between the RSGB and OFCOM has not resulted in improvements to the hobby. By its own admission, the RSGB has also stopped lobbying - if it ever did - for improvements in planning law that benefit our ability to actually install the antennas that allow us to enjoy the hobby in the first place.
Similarly, there has been no progress in challenging OFCOM's refusal to deal with RFI from telecomms equipment, now blighting endless numbers of operators. RadCom continues to review and advertise expensive radio equipment whilst it stands at the sidelines, watching the environment for operators become ever-more difficult.
Well, that's enough for today. I'd be the first to say that real, meaningful and fundamental change isn't going to be easy. But it's not that hard, either - if we accept there are real problems that stand to harm the future of our hobby. In that respect, I hope that something more than a 'you asked, we ignored' exercise emerges - and soon!
Oh dear! The RSGB, never a favourite organisation of this blog, has just found itself losing a young, capable and experienced Board member.
Young, professional and capable: precisely the kind of person the RSGB - and all of us - cannot afford to lose. It's a real f**k-up. Image: M0MUX
And the RSGB can't hide what's going on. I'll let Andy Mace, M0MUX - no less a figure than a senior engineer with Sky UK - speak for himself, through a text screen grab that was made public via Twitter:
I think these very regrattable and long-standing aspects of the RSGB are something we will all recognise. Quite what the RSGB will do, beyond try to pretend it didn't happen, is anybody's guess. But I remain a non-member, and will continue to be so for as long as this anachronistic, out-of-touch bunch of people run the show.
Note also Andy's principled approach to representation - he recognises he was voted-in by the members, and explains to them - fully - why he's stepped down.
That's very much the kind of accountability you won't find from the RSGB, not least because, as a private company, it isn't covered by the UK Freedom of Information Act. Its MDs have, in the past at least, also refused to disclose how much, exactly, they were paid. Then, all they would say was what the accounting laws dictated - 'over £60k' (I understand it has fallen below this now, but by how much, nobody knows).
An organisation partly funded by members, but not fully accountable to those members. I wonder why things keep going wrong?
UPDATE: Inevitably, it has now started to turn ugly. Len Paget (an RSGB Board member at the time of writing) may be
able to rely on the 'it's my personal account, not the RSGB's' defence,
but this kind of thing really doesn't look good, and is an
astronishingly childish thing to do in response to M0MUX's departure:
Screen grab from Amateur Radio UK group Facebook thread 9th Jan 22.
I couldn't sleep early this morning, so I took the car-portable set-up off to the west coast of Anglesey. I wasn't on the coast itself or within sight of water, but about 1km inland.
I was intent on some 40m work, but was curious what I might hear with the 40m Ampro on 80m. Boy, was I amazed - and very much encouraged to try an 80m Ampro, or even maybe a low wire dipole next time. No doubt that, in the late evening, Japanese stations would be all over the waterfall, too!
A few minutes' listening at 80m - with a 40m antenna!
...you get wonderful greyline spots like this (10MHz, FT8 (25W)). There are actually two stations receiving me - W1YY and N7XR - on such a precisely the same path that they are only distinguishable on a very close zoom-in:
