HOME PAGE | FACTFILES | QUOTES | COMMENT FORM |

And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another.
Matthew, Ch.24 v.10.

Some of you will have seen a paper circulated recently by the Scorers' Board, who decided to write to fellow scorers because of "problems within ACU&S" and complaints about "lack of communication." It outlines the pros and cons for scorers staying with ACU&S, joining ICUS or ECB OA, or going it alone. Generously, the Scorers' Board divvied up to pay for it themselves. The ACU&S Chairman and the EBGC "are aware of the action being taken" but that may or may not mean that they actually approved.

Mind you, it is not unusual for our glorious leaders to go off on whatever tangent they feel like. The ACU&S website has minutes of the 28th January 2006 meeting of the Examinations Board Select (sic!) Committee which revealed firstly that these clever chaps - Birch, Farnfield, Bennett, McGee, Seguss, Ratcliffe etal - recommended "cascading" news of the Apostles/ICUS website to as many ACU&S members as possible. Why would that have been? Silly me! Obviously so that everyone would be aware of the "fallback" position they were in the course of establishing. Just in case. Not in competition. Just in case there might be problems. After all, they know what is in the books. And secondly, having looked closely at what (then) Acting Chairman, Geoff Lowden, was doing and had done, they voted to call for his immediate resignation! After second thoughts which continued via e-mail after the meeting, they thought better of it - perhaps realising for once that their remit as a rather minor committee had more modest limits - and withdrew the motion.

Anyway, back to the fragrant Mrs Rawson. (In the "Apostles" document, she was named as Deputy Director, Education & Development [Scorer] being one of two deputies to Anthony Farnfield. Presumably, they still want her?). Helpfully, she adds her "personal" comment on the Scorers' paper, mentioning that ECB wish her to get lost, or as she puts it - "I have been given to understand that if ACU&S is subsumed by ECB their preference would be that I did not continue as chairman of Scorers' Board" - and goes on to say that, having started out thinking ACU&S was the way forward, she now believes the independent body "may" be the better option, despite the supposed financials she cites looking even more dubious than ACU&S's did under Freeman and Stuart-King. That couldn't be because her ego needs the boost provided by a title - any title - and she will be without one unless the independent body gets going? Perish the thought!

We should not leave out the paper's co-author, Mr Jim Danks. What has been his contribution to ACU&S? For some time he was chairman of the grandiosely titled Media & Marketing Board, whose most memorable achievement - maybe its only achievement - was the commissioning of ACU&S Jubilee souvenirs, most of which were so ghastly they had to be given away. Not much profit for ACU&S there!

The day after Stuart-King was shown the door at the 2005 AGM, the accommodating Jim resigned forthwith, pleading that he no longer had the time to devote to getting press coverage - what press coverage? - or raising sponsorship - what sponsorship? - for ACU&S. (Remember, by the way, that it was Basil Larkins who devised and secured the Post Office sponsorship although, typically, Stuart-King claimed the credit for it later. You forgot? It is all there in How's That? no.275 for June 2001). Stuart-King was then appointed as chairman of the M & M Board - unconstitutionally - following a quick 'phone-round to Board members which conveniently ignored those who might have voted against. This enabled BS-K and the Cuckoo Cabinet to stifle any attempts made by Dave Burden to explain the dire situation of ACU&S to the membership. He got nothing in How's That? and nothing on the website. Well done, Jim!

Strangely, when Stuart-King resigned in October 2005 to avoid answering embarrassing questions like "what happened to the money?" Jim found that he was free to take the job on again. In no time, his picture was on the front cover of How's That? for Winter 2005 with his article, symbolically titled "All out at Sea" on page thirteen. Unlucky for some. Certainly, he was either all at sea or out to lunch as he sat mute and uncomprehending through the whole of the catastrophic BS-K reign, moving only when he heard the words, "All those in favour, please signify."

At roughly the same time as the Scorer paper came out, the Merseyside Cricket Umpires Association website announced that its Executive Committee decided on 24th August that "from this year, the MCUA will cease to be affiliated to the ACU&S. Members of any umpires association, or none, will be welcome as members. In this way, the MCUA intends to stay apart from any strife between different representative bodies." How very moral of them! Although, of course, the loss of their affiliation fees will be a further stab in the back for ACU&S as it struggles to survive. Whose idea would this have been?

Well, who is on the MCUA Executive Committee? There is a president and five vice-presidents and whilst they may perhaps attend, they would not all usually do so. It looks more like the president, the chairman, the secretary and the treasurer with, possibly, the Saturday and Sunday appointments secretaries. In order, they are: Dave Jones, Chris Bell, Tom Graham, Peter Freeman, Mike Dixon and Ray Rigby. Which ones might have prompted this? Perhaps Dave Jones........he was formerly listed as part of the "Home Team" - as Deputy Liaison Officer (Overseas) - and his was the tenth name on the circulation list for the "Apostles" document. And let us not forget Peter Freeman, now a director of ICUS....none other than that wonderful guy who put his name to the purely fictional-£100K false accounts for 2004, as ACU&S Treasurer. Just too bad he couldn't make it to the AGM in March this year.

We hear, too, that as part of their "staying apart from strife" this lovely pair are now urging their membership to look at ICUS membership because....hold on to your seats and do not dare laugh...sponsors are lining up to give their money to them. Rather as they were just a short while ago with ACU&S, or so Peter Freeman was quite convinced. We should not joke about it. What do we know? As the AGM Minutes reveal, he spoke about it at Durham on 19th March 2005. "36. The Treasurer opined that unless anyone had been involved in negotiating high-level long-term funding - particularly sponsorship funding - they could have no idea of how difficult and complex it was." He spent his working life with Liverpool City Council, so he would know. That time, of course, it was so difficult and complex that nothing at all happened and everyone ended up with egg on their faces, including our auditors who feature elsewhere, following an eventual judgement by the ICA. It will not be the same with an Institute, obviously. Different matter, entirely. Just that one word was all that was holding Stuart-King back. Indeed, the North West Region was told on 27th March this year that sponsorship was already in place but that the sponsor's name was being....oh,dear me...withheld for the moment. As we said before. It is a different matter entirely and any resemblance to the previous situation is completely coincidental.

Well done, thou good and faithful servants!