What has TB unleashed?

TB thought there would be a response to that last letter, but not this quickly... Luckily still up waiting for darling Sarah to begin her speech so caught this one early and can get this next letter up straight away:

Once again this has been reproduced at the request of the author:

Dear Christian/Tory Bear,

I felt it was about time to give my views on the proposed plans to change CF. I am emailing Tory Bear, as I believe we need to have an open debate and am happy to have my views made public.

I feel at best, the suggestions you have made would be counter-productive.

Firstly, however, I must echo the sentiments of Alex Agius. The manner in
which I first became aware of this plans was simply unacceptable. For such
drastic reforms to have been announced through a  series of blog posts on
third party sites, rather than direct attempts to communicate with the
Branch and Area chairs, is disgraceful. Although everyone accepts that CF
needs to change, the lack of communication in establishing change merely
reflects a continuation of the culture which created the present dire
state CF is in.

You, as a guest author on Tory Bear, described the replacement of area
chairs with regional coordinators, as being intended to make CF “more
effective at a local level and to increase its accountability.” This
simply will not work. A Regional Chairman would inevitably become
detached, due to simple geographical reasons, from much of their region;
focusing their attention on their locality or on a few big CF groups which
are easy to visit. How much attention would a regional chair for the East
of England, who combines a job with his CF duties, have to spend helping
out the Great Yarmouth CF? This already occurs within the current area
system. It is in practice impossible to be a good area chair for both
Norfolk and Suffolk. What is needed is a breaking up of the area; not
further centralisation. In the context of Student life regions make sense
simply due to the fact that we are dealing with a small number of
institutions, it does not make sense when one considers that in Norfolk
alone there are around 25 CF groups.

With this in mind regional elections would rapidly become polarising
events, with each county having their own candidate and the results having
everything to do with location not ability. In the East of England region,
a UEA/Norfolk candidate would fight an Essex, and possibly a Cambridge
one. Each election would become a messy and bloody affair with the
effective regional support being the prize. Communication and cooperation
would become increasingly difficult, with tribalism becoming even more
prevalent. As we are nearing a general election, the idea that we should
unleash the hounds of war upon ourselves rather than labour is pure
madness. CF is already too focused on internal politicking rather than
winning elections, (real ones that is, a lot of work goes into internal
elections.)

I will concede that a regional organiser supporting the efforts of a
larger team of area chairs could possibly work. As would the creation of
them as a professional paid position. Having only a regional chairman
however, would leave the majority of branches on their own. If you wanted
to destroy CF as nation wide institution, leaving only localised fiefdoms
around the CF groups big enough to survive without regional support, then
this policy would achieve your aim.


CF needs reform, but rather than grand structural reforms what we need
first is genuine effectiveness in communication, a centralised resource
website, regular events held across the nation and crucially the injection
of funding required allowing us to professionalise. I am not in favour of
the status quo, but I fail to see how this would improve the situation.

Yours
Paul Wells
University of East Anglia CF Chairman
CF Student Life Elections Officer

And so it begins...

TB has been looking at the survey results that are coming in and it is  no surprise that the much talked about reforms play a big role in shaping members' opinions of those in charge of Conservative Future. TB will do the number crunching tomorrow and release the results over the next few days, but in the mean time this letter could well be the beginning of an onslaught of opposition to not necessarily the reforms, but they way in which they are being put through...

This was received late last night and is reproduced in full with the authors permission:

Dear Christian/Tory Bear,

I am writing to you about the blog post you wrote/published on the tory bear blog on the 22^nd of August 2008.

You started your article by saying that the NME have been watching lots of comments and conjecture from Conservative Future members flying around recently about big changes to the structure of our organisation. Changes you acknowledge are in your plans later in your article i.e. the introduction of Regional Coordinators and the abolition of the NME and Area Chairmen. You go on to ask members to provide feedback on these ideas to the NME (a request fellow NME member Patrick Sullivan repeats in the same blog post in the comments section).

I am interested to hear your full proposals and would like to ask when you intend to publish them so that the members you represent and are requesting feedback from can see all the plans in full and gain a true understanding of what you are proposing? You appear to criticise those who are speculating about the full details of your plans but you do not seem to appreciate that you have greatly added to this speculation by your blog post and failing to publish your proposals in full. Publishing your proposals in full would very quickly kill off this speculation you seem to find unwelcome. Not only would this end the speculation you talk about but it is necessary if you are to carry the majority of the membership. It has been a little while (13 days) since you began this speculation and brought your proposed changes  to a wider audience by your blog post but yet the members are still waiting to see your full plans. When do you intend to publish them? My understanding is that you do not have long (a few days) to do this if you are to do so and allow time for the members to digest and provide the feedback you requested before the next NME meeting.

After reading your blog post and despite the fact that it is the NME who are making these proposals I felt it unfair to expect the NME to do all the work to communicate these changes and reach out to every member to explain your plans. So to do my bit and make it as easy as possible to allow this flow of information I contacted another NME member who I will not name (the NME member who I felt most comfortable with discussing these plans). She refused point blank to discuss the matter with me when I raised the topic and told me that this was due to the NME making a group decision not to discuss the matter or talk to the members they profess to represent about these changes. As I am sure you will agree this is unacceptable, the NME are there to represent the organisations members who elected them, in fact many of the current NME members promised to do just that while seeking election to the NME not that long ago. However now it would appear (if my friend on the NME is correct) they are now involved in actively withholding information and are not interested in representing the members who elected them while trying to bring about large organisational changes. It also seems a crazy position that my friend on the NME cannot talk to me about this matter but you can publicly write blog posts contributing to the speculation.

As for the substance to your proposals I have not yet come to form an opinion (How can I? You have yet to publish your proposals) but the way this matter has been handled has already put me off before I have even seen the details. I will be interested to see your thought on my criticisms of how this matter has been handled, the behaviour of the NME in actively and deliberately withholding information from its members & refusing to discuss this matter with them and look forward to seeing your proposals in full.

Many thanks,

Alex Agius.

Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire Conservative Future Area Chairman.