Author: paragon

Summarised report of the General Council Meeting held on Thursday 19^th August 2021

One councillor absent due to family illness.

Articles by GC members – GC Members will be writing a series of articles on budgerigar related subjects for publication.

Website – The website service had been continuous with no issues raised and the site is being kept up to date. An average of 5 password resets are being received daily from members logging on to the site for the first time. There are still a few issues with the shop which are being dealt with – this has not affected members.

Preparation is being made to put back issues of The Budgerigar in a “Flip Book” format onto the website.

The claims letter to the previous website companies that failed to meet their contractual obligations is now with the office to deal with.

Convention 2025 – The Chairman advised that while the Convention to celebrate our 100^th year is 4 years away it made business sense to start the preparations. The committee selected will need to look at venues and dates before going into the details, but he suggested it would be good to take the Convention back to Harrogate, which was the venue for the first Society Convention in 1954. He asked members of the GC who had other venue suggestions to submit them to the Administrator. After discussion it was agreed unanimously that the 2025 Convention sub-committee will comprise of M Roberts, G Findlay, G Al-Nasser, J Cosby, A Richards and A Terheege.

Sub-Group updates

Engage sub-group – Country Wide seed has offered 10 vouchers (one per Area) for a bag of Society Blend for a Members’ Survey in The Budgerigar.

Process sub-group – The group had met recently, and the Metrics / Objectives Paper should help with decision making and timescales. This will be discussed at the next GC meeting.

Shows Sub-group – The Judges Handbook is nearing completion with just a few final additions before being submitted to the sub-group and then the GC for approval.

Bronze Shows – A suggestion from the sub-group on upgrading Bronze shows to make them more attractive to our membership was met with unanimous approval. At present Bronze shows receive 6 rosettes and 26 CC’s pre-graded at 1 point. It was proposed that from the 2022 show season the rosettes be increased to 14 (the same as for Silver shows) with the CC value remaining unchanged.

Club Show Director’s verbal update – the Chairman welcomed Dave Hislop to the meeting and added that he and his team had been busy, and two sets of Club Show Committee minutes had been presented.

Dave Hislop brought the GC up to date with matters following these meetings as follows.

Minutes of 24 June 2021 – Club Show Committee – The Spring Event 2022 – The Raffle prizes for the event have increased and now consist of birds from the R&M Miller and the Ackers & Bird partnerships; financial donations of £100 from R Simpson and £50 from D Hislop; 3 new plastic show cages from BS President Phil Reaney and a Trolley Cage donated by C Edmondson.

Dave requested a budget for the Spring Event to cover costs including the purchase of trophies. This would be considered at the next GC meeting. G Al-Nasser agreed to help sponsor the trophies with the sum of £100.

The Club Show Committee propose to stage the Spring Event show by colour rather than by sections. Following discussion, the GC voted to accept the Club Show Committee recommendation of staging the Spring event by colour and judging on the show floor, with three against and two abstaining.

The Minutes were unanimously approved.

Minutes of 27 July 2021 – Club Show Committee – the main item of note was the replacement of the existing Trophy Stand.

The requirement is for a collapsible lightweight stand to replace the existing heavy wooden stand which had served the Society well over many years. It was proposed to contact a potential manufacturer, who is a member, and if this fails to place a notice in the “Budgerigar” to see if another member can do the work or has any contact with a company that can manufacture a stand for us. This was unanimously agreed.

Dave Hislop also confirmed that the 2022 Club Show would be his final event as Show Director.

The Minutes were unanimously approved.

Patronage update – The Patronage Administrator advised that five shows have been held so far this season. Benched entries range from 98 to 498. He reported that a further 16 societies had applied for patronage and there were three 2020 Area Shows planned, which the BS are sponsoring for £250 per show.

Judges return – D Cairns – a question from D Cairns asking if the annual judges return would be required for 2021 following the lack of shows. It was confirmed that the GC had already agreed that this return would not be required this year.

Date of next meeting –Thursday, 9^th September 2021 at 7.15pm via Zoom.

Summarised report of the Budgerigar Society General Council Meeting held on Thursday, 15th July 2021, via Zoom.

There was one absentee due to a family commitment.

Chairman’s Welcome
The Vice-chairman (VC) chaired the meeting due to zoom connection issues. All attendees were welcomed including the new President Philip Reaney. On behalf of the GC, Phil was congratulated on becoming BS President and it was a shame that he did not have a proper induction in front of the membership. He also thanked Janice and Ghalib Al-Nasser, who together with Ronnie Simpson and Bev Hutt met to present the President’s chain to Phil. The VC also said how he and the rest of the GC are looking forward to working with Phil during his Presidency.

Phil thanked everyone for the warm welcome and said how privileged he felt being part of a great hobby and looked forward to uniting BS members moving forward into the future.

The GC were informed that there had been a number of deaths of members in recent weeks. These included Merv Viner of Bristol, Brian Poole of Basingstoke, Colin Gilbert and Chris Whaley both from Plymouth, Craig Binks son of Gerald Binks who died abroad with Covid and Brian Newton former bird partner of Gary Shepherdson in Yorkshire. Our thoughts are with the loved ones of each of these members.

Website update
The revised site went live on 15^th July 2021. Pages and navigation have been tidied up and a news banner added for important messages, this will appear on all pages and can be cancelled once read. A feedback form has also been added to the Contact Us page. The database has been rationalised to remove all old data prior to 2016, which complies with GDPR rules and is now fully integrated.

BS Email Address
During the early part of July, the BS email address was unavailable. This was as a direct result of BT transferring the account to the new administrator’s location.

BS Facebook Monitoring
The BS Facebook is being administered and monitored by the BS Administrator and inappropriate comments are being removed.

Sub-groups

Engage sub-group – The group met via zoom and have developed an outline plan of activities. These were unanimously accepted.

Process sub-group – This group has yet to meet, and an update will be provided at the next meeting.

Tech/Society sub-group – This group has yet to meet, and an update will be provided at the next meeting.

Shows sub-group – The Judges Handbook – Work is complete and is being reviewed by the sub-group before being circulated to the GC for approval.

Pathway sub-group – Former Chair Bev Hutt has expressed her wishes not to chair this sub-group as she was no longer a member of the GC, although she still wishes to be a part of the group. Grant Findlay agreed to take over this role.

Implementing Metrics
Adrian Terheege provided a brief description of how gathering data on some basic key metrics would benefit the Society and how they could be used to measure success rates across implemented initiatives. This was met with approval by the GC and Adrian is to give a more detailed explanation at a future GC meeting.

2022 Ring Reports
The GC had been furnished with two excellent reports by Jim Muir, the Society’s Ring Inspector, on the sample of 2022 rings for standard and colour budgies recently provided to all GC members from Avian ID the Society’s ring maker. This report will be published in The Budgerigar

A discussion followed about ways in which we can advise those breeders who are not BS or Area Society members of the excellent quality of rings on offer via the BS. It was suggested that Avian ID may be willing to include a BS leaflet to those purchasing rings who are not a member of the Society. The Administrator will follow up with Avian ID.

Patronage
The Patronage Administrator advised that as the 2020 show season was cancelled, he had changed all Patronage Applications to cover the 2021 season, he stated that show promoting societies are not required to apply by 28^th February as in normal years but could apply anytime up to six weeks prior to the show date. The rosette makers had agreed to work to these timescales.

All Patronage rosettes are to be two tier and will cost £1.20 each. Tail prints are 25p each if we had a sponsor this would cost 50p each rosette (two printed tails). As Avi-Smart have not committed to sponsorship there is no rosette sponsor for 2021. As suggested by our members, patronage packages at bronze and silver shows now include 26 ribbons for best young bird of colour, and the platinum patronage has been added.

Cage Labels sponsored by “Moor Pets” and Platinum Colour Certificates have been received.

Patronage Applications 2021
There were 38 show patronage applications which reduced to 23. Of these, 14 shows have confirmed the show will be going ahead – mainly in the Midlands and Wales and the patronage packs have been sent.

Details have been maintained on the Society web site in two areas in the Showing link – one for exhibitors and another for officials. Most of the patronage information is available to show promoting societies and exhibitors. The confirmed show list is up to date.

The National
Following a proposal and discussion, it was pointed out that it was custom and practice to grant the National a higher grade patronage than their figures warrant. Consequently, it was agreed 12 to 1 to give the National show BS National Patronage, which is equivalent to Platinum Patronage.

Area Show Selling Class
President Phil Reaney suggested that we have a charity sales class of birds. He thought this would be an outlet for members to dispose of surplus stock and do something for various charities. He proposed that the recipient organisation on this occasion could be Children in Need, and this could be changed every year to a different benefactor. Phil will feature details of his idea in his article in The Budgerigar to get feedback from members before being discussed further by the GC.

The concept was agreed unanimously.

Club Show Committee
The Club Show Committee met for their first meeting since lockdown on 24th June 2021, to discuss both the Spring Event and the 2022 Club Show. The meeting had lasted around 2.5 hours and the time only allowed the Spring Event to be discussed. Several subjects were covered but require further debate. The next meeting is being held on 27 July 2021 and the Show Director will present to the GC at their next meeting.

Area Society/BS Joint Membership
It was unanimously agreed to defer any future discussions until the Society sub-group had reviewed the subject and their feedback could be used to inform a face to face meeting.

Judges Training Scheme
The Judges Training Scheme Officer had issued a report and spoke of the challenges of finding suitable shows for Trainee Judges to attend given the limited show season. A discussion followed with various suggestions of shows where candidates could attend.

Privacy Policy Update
Following the EGM situation and then requests for the return of GC Ballot Papers the GDPR specialist Solicitor has been reviewing the Society’s Privacy Policy, which is on the website and the inside back cover of the 2019 Rule/Membership List.

The Solicitor is advising additional information is added which will better inform members how their personal data is used for administering voting, who the votes are shared with, and what happens to their personal data after a vote is reported.

The Solicitor will review the remainder of the policy and once complete the final review document will be sent to the GC for approval

Disciplinary Panel
The Society Administrator has received nominations for the Disciplinary Panel in accordance with the recent rule change as follows:

Midland BA – Rod Clarke & Brian Taylor

Lincs and East Anglia BS – Phillip Dye & Michael Kiff

Northern BS – Dennis Cairns & Don Rowell

Welsh BS – David Game & Domonic Avo

Western Counties B&FBS – Brian Reese & Mark Gulley

London & Southern Counties BS – Jim Lawrie & Paul Tiller

Yorkshire BS – Dave Critchlow & Kev Brockwell

South Midland BS – Alan Haynes & Connor Hickman

Lancs, Cheshire & North Wales BS – TBA

Scottish BS – TBA

Date of the next meeting –19th August 2021 via Zoom