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Big Brother is Watching You Two

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you.

Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you

Words from the hit single of the 1980's by (you may think, not inappropriately) The Police.

Fu Manchu, the fiendish Chinese arch-criminal created by Sax Rohmer always used to finish off with the words, "I'll be back. The world shall hear of me again some day".

Well, that day has dawned quite quickly for the late, unlamented, Chairman, Mr. Barrie S. King who apparently now works out of an email address finance4cricket@btinternet.com!

Ye Gods! The mind boggles!

What can he be up to now, we wonder? Finance for cricket? Him?

To his eternal credit, we must give him one thing: sheer determination.

Many people will attest to the fact that Peter Ray is one of the most determined men we know, but even he palls into insignificance alongside Mr. Stuart-King. He would flog a dead horse back to life again.

What a pity he has no discernable talent.

When will he get the hint that cricket wants nothing more to do with him; that he burnt more bridges and boats than Clint Eastwood and William the Conqueror combined?

"Truly those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad"

Word has reached us of another of the nosferatu who refuses to lie still in his coffin. Apparently, Cathy Rawson mounted a defence of her husband, Chris, sometime Assistant Treasurer (Accounts), who has been nominated as Deputy General Secretary and is, in any event, returned unopposed as a Regional Councillor - it is even suggested there are two lunatics at large out there because his nomination as Deputy General Secretary has been seconded!

Part of Mrs. Rawson's defence of the indefensible is that none of the facts against her husband has been proved. Not in a court of law maybe but, then again, Hitler never stood trial either but it was alleged there was a certain body of evidence against him!

This is the same Chris Rawson who issued invoice no. 0304/87 to ACU&S in the sum of £100,000, thereby allowing Stuart-King to balance the books in time for the audit (about which more anon), and subsequently, and you may be inclined think, with indecent haste, issued a credit note on 19th April cancelling out that sum and invalidating at a stroke the 2004/5 accounts.

It is has been suggested that he did not know anything prior to the 19th April and was indeed as virginal and white as the driven snow. But we have the proof that he was copied in with every email of any consequence in the build-up to the deception played upon the unsuspecting membership at large. Even if he was so stupid that he did not realise or comprehend what he was reading and went ahead regardless, he must surely have suspected his infernal master when he was ordered to raise the credit note - especially as we had raised all those very points about the viability of the finances at the AGM. Why did he do nothing?

Tempus fugit (as they say) and you may argue that is in the past and therefore best forgotten - and maybe you are right (although we don't agree with you).

But then, Chris Rawson, surfaced again as a Director of Community Cricket Holdings Ltd., the holding company which has de facto control of the Institute of Cricket Umpires and Scorers - a post from which he has subsequently resigned.

We know that members of General Council clearly view the membership at large with utter contempt but surely this is one step too far - even for them?

People came to the AGM at Lord's last year ready to ask questions of Mr. Rawson (and Peter Freeman) but were unable to because he had a cold, or had to wash his hair, or could not drag himself away from his signed photograph of Barrie S. King, or something. Consequently, many of the questions we wanted to ask remain unanswered.

Still, if he attends this year's meeting, he can be invited to furnish the Membership with the answers he has failed to give thus far.

How can anybody in full possession of their faculties allow this man loose in the Association's General Council - you may think, dear reader, that he is darned lucky still to be a member of the Association.

It really seems that the only way to deal with them is to drive a stake through their hearts, cut their heads off and bury them face down at the crossroads at midnight - garlic, anyone?