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Amnesia rules!

Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Remember, Christina Rossetti (1862)

There is little sadness in the Rawson household ever, for neither Chris nor his wife Cathy are able to remember anything for long. Both have totally forgotten that barely two years ago a document named them as key members of what was then the Institute of Cricket Officials, Chris being the Institute Secretary and Cathy the Deputy Director Education and Development. The document was dated 22nd October 2005 and it was a "position paper following second Apostles Group Meeting" of 16th October which, presumably, they attended. Indeed, Chris was a founding director when Community Cricket Holdings Limited was registered a long time back on 2nd February 2006.

Chris cannot recall all this now. On the new ACU&S message board he wrote on 12th November (2007) - ironically the day after Remembrance Sunday - "Going back a few years there was just one body - the ACU&S. Then the ECB set up the ECB OA. Then the ICUS group split from ACU&S...." as if neither he nor Cathy ever had anything to do with it.

He goes on to say that the group split "because they were frustrated with the lack of progress in updating both the organisation and the training/exams." Very odd indeed, that. If Chris would cast his mind back he might just remember that the ICUS group were a majority on General Council and and a major part also of the body responsible for training and exams. So were they frustrated by their own incompetence? Some may think they quit fearing that they might be called to account for the part they played in backing unquestioningly the even more incompetent Barrie Stuart-King. Remember him? He, with the treasurer Peter Freeman and his assistant - oh, that was Chris Rawson again - formed the team that produced the bogus set of accounts for 2004 which caused the auditors to be severely reprimanded and fined by the ICA. (That's the Institute of Chartered Accountants, a genuine institute).

Is any of this coming back, Chris? Remember the 3.11.2004 e-mail to Barrie - "I thought you ought to know that we are showing a loss on the year of about £51,500"? Followed by a bogus £117.5K invoice to NACLCC? You wrote "Issuing this invoice has had a beneficial effect on our end-of-year accounts - if you don't look too closely at the debtors." And surely you remember sending a credit note on 6th April 2005 to cancel out the invoice just 18 days after the AGM, making a complete mockery of the accounts the faithful had voted through? You must remember that? You were in it up to your neck! One more question - don't you think you had a duty then either to tell the membership that there was a loss of £59K and not a surplus of £40K, or to resign, or both?

Chris Rawson ends his 12th November submission wondering about ECB's designs on ACU&S's subscription revenue, forgetting perhaps that ECB OA's subs are only £20, against £32 for ACU&S, and concludes with "Please excuse my cynicism." Why should it be excused? It almost destroyed ACU&S. When ACU&S was struggling, his wife Cathy was proposing that the scorers should leave and set up on their own. Now she affects to be a great ACU&S supporter. If cynicism were electricity, the pair of them could light up most of the South-East region they pretend to represent.

Should ACU&S members pay any attention to this disastrous pair? Are their opinions worth anything? Do they ever deal in verifiable facts? Does their advice carry any weight at all? We suggest that you examine their claims very carefully, consider their motivation, think a little if they can be trusted or not, and speculate also about whether they may not scuttle back to join their real chums in ICUS when the chips are down.

(As always, we have documentary evidence confirming all dates and figures).