Report on the Club's Council meeting and AGM held on 14th October 2006
Al Barnett (V8 Chairman) and Mike Russell (V8 Committee member) attended the Club's Council meeting and AGM as the representatives of the V8 Register. Here Al provides a detailed report on the meetings. (15.10.06)

On Saturday morning Mike Russell and I drove up to Gaydon for the Council meeting and AGM. We had the hood down in my RV8, pity about the fog Mike! We were the two V8 Register representatives.

Background
For those of you not familiar with the way the Club does business you may like to know that the Council is made up of representatives from all the UK Centres, Registers and Branches (CRBs). Each CRB has two representatives but only one of them has a vote. The Council represents all the Club's activities both regionally and functionally, from Vintage to modern, from Racing and Track Days to Concours and Naviscats and geographically from the Ulster Centre to the South East Centre. The result is that about 60 people attend the Council meetings and 30 of those can vote. The Council meets twice a year, normally in March and October, when it receives reports and proposals from the Club's Directors and votes on policy matters. Council representatives may table motions in advance of the meeting and these too will be debated and voted upon. The Chairman and other Directors, who meet monthly, sit at a table in the front of the room and are there to keep the Council up to date and to answer questions. All directors and Council members are volunteers who fit in their Club work with their other activities.

Seminar on the Club Website Review
We arrived at Gaydon just before 09.00 ready for the first part of the day which was a seminar, led by our own Victor Smith, aimed at helping the club Website Review Group understand what members want from a future Club website. There was a lively discussion particularly on open or password access. I am an open access fan but there were plenty of others with the opposite view. Hopefully the eventual outcome will be password only entry for a specific part of the site dealing with financial and commercial in confidence matters, and the rest open access. We also discussed the need for advertising, future events listings, technical matters etc and of course an Club forum. The hour passed very quickly and then we moved on to the Council meeting proper.

Council meeting
The Council meeting continued until 17.30 when the janitorial staff asked us to leave as they wanted to go home. You will understand and probably be grateful that I can't cover all the detail in this report, so will just restrict myself to the more important or contentious issues.

After the usual Apologies, Approval of minutes and Matters arising, we had a statement from Peter Best, our Chairman, saying that although we have had a difficult year he feels things are now improving and that working relationships at director level are better than they were a year ago. In the coming year we would have to address financial questions, the future of racing and the Club magazine question. He was encouraged that all these matters were being closely looked at and a way ahead mapped.

Club's finances
The next report came from John Dutton our Club Treasurer. John was only appointed in March and took over at a time when the uncertainties over the future of Kimber House in 2005 had made planning for 2006 difficult. John gave one of the clearest and most easily understood financial presentations that I have listened to. In essence he said that whilst we have over £400,000 in cash and realizable assets, we need to cut costs if we are to balance the books now and in the future. Here I would add that there are plans as to how to remedy the situation. This, however, is not the time or place to list them as they involve commercial arrangements with outside bodies and disclosure could compromise our negotiating position. John will no doubt publish a further financial commentary in Safety Fast! just as he did a couple of months ago.

Club Office accommodation
Many of you will know that, following the sensible decision not to go ahead with the proposal for a New Kimber House in October 2005, a limited building operation has been started which will provide much needed storage and archive facilities at Club Office. Basically it is a garage block, but a fully insulated one suitable for our needs. Construction is well underway and should be completed by the end of the year. Two Council members, Maurice Standish and Ron Gammons, have done much to manage the project and have reduced the estimated costs by getting on for 50%. Once the work is completed the building subcommittee (formed by Council in October 2005 to review the Club's accommodation needs and options) will look at possible internal reorganization of the current Kimber House.

Future of Safety Fast! and the arrangements with Octane Media
Next we came to the question of the Club magazine. This of course is a contentious issue where many people have expressed strong views. Two directors, Malcolm Eades and John Dutton, presented a report about the options for the future and asked for a mandate to renegotiate the contract with Octane media, the parent group of MG Enthusiast.

Before debating that motion the Chairman invited John James of the T Register to present another relevant motion. The T Register motion basically proposed that we should give notice of termination of the agreement with Octane and that the Club should restart an independent magazine from July 2007, the effective termination date of the agreement.

The Chairman then invited comments from the floor on the two proposals. Both proposals clearly had their merits and they had been put forward eloquently and passionately by the spokesmen. Almost every CRB spoke and it showed there was

a wide divergence of opinion on the way ahead. After more than an hour of discussion and only after everyone had had the chance to speak, did the Chairman call for a vote. I thought it would be a close result, but that was not the case, as 28 voting members supported the Board proposal to instruct our two directors to try and negotiate a better deal for the Club and only 2 votes supported the T Register motion. I voted for the Board proposal because it seemed to me that John Dutton and Malcolm Eades had put in a lot of detailed work in preparing their comprehensive report and that it was reasonable to give them the chance to continue that work. They will report to the next Council meeting in March 2007.

New Articles of Association
After the lively debate on 'Safety Fast!' the meeting turned to the Articles of Association. These are the rules under which we run the Club and it is an essential legal document that has to be lodged at Companies House. Chris Hunt Cooke and Dick Morbey had done a splendid job of dealing with the legal minutiae and after some discussion on points of detail, we were able to agree that the document should be put to the AGM for ratification later in the day.

Future of the Club's motor sport activities - options and programme for 2007
Ron Gammons presented Club motor racing subcommittee report on competitions matters. He reported falling grids for many race meetings, with the exception of the Club's annual Silverstone International event and reported that most of the motor sport events were losing money. A full race season was expensive and demanded a lot of time away from home. His subcommittee were recommending fewer events next year but urging that those events should attract more support from the Club's championships. He also suggested that CRBs might like to hold their own gatherings at one or other of the race venues to show support and to give their members a good day out. The proposals will be discussed by the Board at a future date. An interesting aside was the evidence that Track Days are increasingly popular with members and that MGs on Track (a branch of the Club) seem to be doing well at attracting members out on to the circuits. I must say the idea of a V8 gathering (not competing) at Castle Combe or Snetterton perhaps sounds interesting and I would welcome members' views.

Future of the Club
The next item was an interim report into the future of the club. This seemed to boil down to the reasonable ideas that we need more new members and preferably younger ones. It did however seem a bit woolly to me, but was only an interim view.

Overseas activities
Brian Woodhams, the director responsible for overseas matters, told us about his liaison work and commented very favourably, and I couldn't agree more, on the French organized European Event of the Year which attracted well over a hundred entries from UK. Next years event will be based on Heidelberg and organized by the MG Club of Germany. Brian urged early entry for this event as it is likely to be very popular.

Club's AGM
At this point we had to stop the Council meeting as it was 16.00 and time for the AGM. The Club members waiting to attend the AGM were invited in, although by now the coffee was cold! The AGM went quickly, perhaps a bit too quickly to make members feel the trip had been worthwhile. The Articles of Association were presented to the meeting and approved, Peter Best was re-elected unopposed for a second year as Club chairman and the election of directors took place. Once again only Council voting members took part in the ballot which resulted in the election of four new directors. The two existing directors from our Register, Victor Smith and Howard Gosling, did not have to stand for re-election this year and so continue on the Board for another year. Victor has already commented on the elections and I agree that the new men look a good bunch. The AGM was then closed as time was pressing and there were still a couple of CRB motions to discuss.
See details of the new directors

Motions from the CRBs
The first motion was from the Lincolnshire Centre requesting more toilets and better camping control at the annual Silverstone meeting. This was passed unanimously. The final motion provided the only jarring note of the day. It was from the Anglia Centre and in essence demanded that if Victor Smith would not accept 'Cabinet Responsibility' at directors' meetings, then he should resign. This criticism of a man whose actions alerted the rest of us to the folly of the New Kimber House project, thus saving the Club from potential bankruptcy, was not popular with the meeting. No one would second the motion and several people spoke about the need to allow freedom of speech and director's responsibilities under the Companies Act. A note prepared by Victor was circulated setting out his position and since no one would second the motion it did not go to a vote. The motion left a nasty taste with many of us but it was the only negative aspect in what had been a long and quite successful day.

Conclusion
Overall a good day for the club with a much better atmosphere than at the last meeting I attended. I have tried to compress 8 hours of discussion into as short a space as I can, whilst giving you the essential decisions and flavour of the meeting. Do remember though these are not the official minutes and do contain some of my own views. My aim has been to give Register members an insight into how the Council works and what it discussed on Saturday 14th of October. If you have any comments then do please send them to me. It is quite likely that my use of capitals and punctuation may be a bit odd but my normal grammar checker, my wife, is out at present.

Initial report available
You can see an initial report on the Council meeting and AGM from Victor Smith based on his V8BB posting late on 14th October 2006.
Initial report