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Letter From The ACA Chairman


Alan Roe

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"The Association needs your continued support to bring about these changes and I ask that you give the new Committee your continued support. The proof will be in next year’s annual report and also in the accounts. Please let us have your views and please can you can use email (to guy@a-c-a.org) if possible, as communication by e-mail is a very cost effective way for the Association to keep in touch with you. Our website is www.a-c-a.org

 

With my very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Dr Stephen Marsh-Smith

 

Chairman"

 

I am now in the process of rejoining as an individual. I am not happy with what went on concerning both sides of ACA management. However, I have always believed very strongly in the need for the ACA. There is still a great deal to do but I know that the steps being taken at this time should aid the healing process. It is hoped that one of these steps will be to provide a more democratic organisation.

 

There is no real excuse for any angler to not support the ACA, if they can financially afford the £15 subscription. Without clean, unpolluted waters, our sport is finished. I think that aim is worth £15 of any angler's money and you do not need to work or attend meetings to achieve this, if you do not want to. The ACA will do it for you. Just give them enough money to continue being the number one pollution fighter for the sake of all our waterways.

 

Brian Crawford

 

P.S. £75K is peanuts to the alternative.

Please help conserve the European Freshwater eel

- return all eels alive to the water.

- Join the European Eel Anglers Association

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Here in New Zealand we have been following the Jameses saga with their suspension from the renowned ACA with great interest.

Surely the fact that Bob James is a world famous personality and that if his name is attatched to any appeal, information or press release has immediate responce has been overlooked by the ACA committee. By their actions in the suspension they have lost a great deal of good will and support from those of us not in the UK.(possibly of those in the UK also)

Just what finantial value should be placed on the services of a celebrity is not for us to say but I would suggest that the looser in this case is without doubt the ACA.

It is whowever gratifying to learn that the Jameses are not involved in any illegal or unethical charges.

All that remains is to wish the Jameses and the ACA a more positive and successful future.

Tony Stevens (ed Keeping Afloat)

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I think, Vidar, that the new Chairman is critiscising his peers, or atleast some of them. You are right, what has happened should never have been allowed to happen, but it did.

 

That the James appear, in my honest opinion, to have taken advantage of the ACA by accepting overgenereous expenses and payments is possibly a breach of trust by the James. It appears that an advantage has been taken of trusting employers.

 

Now it has come to a head, now that the ACA has a new Chairman, one who appears to have his finger on the pulse of the ACA, perhaps we can allow them to do the job in hand. We need them.

 

Was Bob James the personality that is claimed? Well, he featured in Passion for Angling. Beyond that perhaps we might never have heard of him. So perhaps he will now be seen in a true perspective, in a new light, in his true colours.

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Peter Waller:

I think, Vidar, that the new Chairman is critiscising his peers, or atleast some of them. You are right, what has happened should never have been allowed to happen, but it did.

 

That the James appear, in my honest opinion, to have taken advantage of the ACA by accepting overgenereous expenses and payments is possibly a breach of trust by the James. It appears that an advantage has been taken of trusting employers.

 

Now it has come to a head, now that the ACA has a new Chairman, one who appears to have his finger on the pulse of the ACA, perhaps we can allow them to do the job in hand. We need them.

 

Was Bob James the personality that is claimed? Well, he featured in Passion for Angling. Beyond that perhaps we might never have heard of him. So perhaps he will now be seen in a true perspective, in a new light, in his true colours.

Not many people would say no to the salary that was offered them, so when it comes to it I suppose many of us can be described as greedy :):):)

 

Anyhow, it is all water under the bridge now and let us just hope that ACA soon are getting back at doing what they appear to do well, namely fighting polluters of British water ways

 

 

Vidar

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The Chairman's letter is surprisingly frank - sufficiently so to mitigate some of the damage that this saga has done.

 

I withdrew my support for the ACA when I became unhappy at the way senior appointments were made. In view of the Chairman's letter I shall now review the situation.

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That letter reads as a damning indictment of the James's. However....

 

Against that, the letter fails to address the culpability of those responsible for overseeing senior officers for allowing the situation to develop. In that light, it reads as one person's vendetta against another, and of dubious integrity - unless the James's were very badly advised and allowed Dr marsh-Smith to be able to make the report as he did.

 

Should Dr Marsh-Smith have written about the past at all? - after all, the past is highly relevant to the reasons for the James's parting company and taken at face value would suggest that they are highly damaging to the James's chances fo future employment.

 

I have seen too much of this stuff in the past to be surprised. Saddened, definitely, surprised - definitely not.

This is a signature, there are many signatures like it but this one is mine

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nzangler:

 

Surely the fact that Bob James is a world famous personality and that if his name is attatched to any appeal, information or press release has immediate responce has been overlooked by the ACA committee. By their actions in the suspension they have lost a great deal of good will

I think you'll find that in the case predator anglers (like Mark Barrett and myself) the ACA has gained a lot of good will now Mr James is no longer associated with them........

 

Perhaps the ACA will find itself able to have a stand at the next year's PAC convention? It's a good few years since they showed up there after being regular attenders from year one. Perhaps Mr James was afraid of being lynched?

Dave

dlstsig.png

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I resigned from the ACA for many and complex reasons, I won't go into now or possibly never.

I am impressed with the Chairman's letter and will be rejoining the ACA, as an individual and a trade member.

WE must now get behind the ACA with total support and make sure it succeeds.

DCB

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I received a letter from Neil Leaver, ex director of the ACA. Here is an extract that might add some balance to these discussions -

 

'ACA accounts were sent directly each year to the committee members by the auditors (Duncan & Topliss) and three weeks after these were sent the auditors met with the committee members, each year, to go through the accounts. The ones in the filing cabinet were the copies, for the office records!

 

Each quarter the committee were given the full figures on expenditure and income. At the beginning of each year the committee were given a cashflow forecast for the year. This was the targets for the year. Then each quarter the committee compared the targets set against the actual figures. At the same quarterly meetings the committee received a full report on everything the ACA had attended and achieved since the last meeting. This included the recruitment of new members and the exact membership numbers at that time. This information was printed from the database. These figures against income were checked by the auditors each year.

 

The auditors were the same auditors the association employed since the time Ken Sutton was director, Ken was the director before Allen Edwards. Each AGM day the auditors were present and the council and committee and members decide who will be the auditors for the following year.

 

The previous treasurer made the decision that the auditors should also handle the monthly salary work because no member of staff was qualified to do this work. Other than that the work remained pretty much in line with the work which was undertaken in Allen Edwards day. All staff salaries and any other perks were decided by the Treasurer and Chairman, not the director or any other member of staff.

 

A vice Chairman resigned because the current in-house lawyer identified that he had a possible conflict of interest, not because he couldn't see the accounts as he now states. All committee members present at that time are aware of this as they were at the meeting.

 

The directors work was carried out by the director, as committee members and members who have witnessed the hard work over the years know. The members can have access to the minutes of the Association where they will see what was achieved and due praise was recorded to all the staff.

 

ACA members can look at the 2003 Review and the article 'Peter's parting' which was written by Peter. Judge for yourselves how happy the team was. Anyone who has met the team at the shows knows what a happy ship it all was. All very sad that someone is trying to damage that now.'

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PeterK:

I received a letter from Neil Leaver, ex director of the ACA. Here is an extract that might add some balance to these discussions -

 

'ACA accounts were sent directly each year to the committee members by the auditors (Duncan & Topliss) and three weeks after these were sent the auditors met with the committee members, each year, to go through the accounts.  The ones in the filing cabinet were the copies, for the office records!

 

Each quarter the committee were given the full figures on expenditure and income.  At the beginning of each year the committee were given a cashflow forecast for the year.  This was the targets for the year.  Then each quarter the committee compared the targets set against the actual figures.  At the same quarterly meetings the committee received a full report on everything the ACA had attended and achieved since the last meeting.  This included the recruitment of new members and the exact membership numbers at that time.  This information was printed from the database.  These figures against income were checked by the auditors each year.

 

The auditors were the same auditors the association employed since the time Ken Sutton was director, Ken was the director before Allen Edwards.  Each AGM day the auditors were present and the council and committee and members decide who will be the auditors for the following year.

 

The previous treasurer made the decision that the auditors should also handle the monthly salary work because no member of staff was qualified to do this work.  Other than that the work remained pretty much in line with the work which was undertaken in Allen Edwards day.  All staff salaries and any other perks were decided by the Treasurer and Chairman, not the director or any other member of staff.

 

A vice Chairman resigned because the current in-house lawyer identified that he had a possible conflict of interest, not because he couldn't see the accounts as he now states.  All committee members present at that time are aware of this as they were at the meeting.

 

The directors work was carried out by the director, as committee members and members who have witnessed the hard work over the years know.  The members can have access to the minutes of the Association where they will see what was achieved and due praise was recorded to all the staff.

 

ACA members can look at the 2003 Review and the article 'Peter's parting' which was written by Peter.  Judge for yourselves how happy the team was.  Anyone who has met the team at the shows knows what a happy ship it all was.  All very sad that someone is trying to damage that now.'

The situations described in Neil Leaver’s letter are in line with what I personally would have expected, and comes as no surprise.

 

Look here all of you, ACA is organised as a limited company and must as such forward their audited accounts to Companies House every year. Failure to do so results in fines and can ultimately lead to the “company” being dissolved.

 

In my personal opinion it is not a long-term viable solution trying to improve ACA's image, among current and potential new members, simply by putting someone who is already out the door in a bad light. However, if the current ACA leadership wants to use that particular line of attack they should do so without serving their members sheer nonsense, as they did in the Chairman’s letter :(:(:(

 

Unfortunately, I suspect we have not seen the end of this, and that ACA committee chairman’s letter easily can end up in the courts.

 

Vidar

 

[ 13. December 2004, 05:36 PM: Message edited by: Vidar6 ]

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