Deleted Member
A “new beginning” has been hinted at for the BMF.
Roger Ellis, the BMF chairman, admitted at the organisation’s AGM at Rugby, Warwickshire in October that 2014 had “not been without issues - from staffing to the BMF shows”.
He added, “With the appointment of our new Government Relations Executive Graeme Hay, and the positive reaction to proposed changes to the BMF show format, we look forward to 2015.”
Graham himself said, “…the BMF has become re-energised and has been transformed into a financially-sustainable organisation that’s better informed, better connected and more capable of representing rides’ views in all the places that they really matter.”
The BMF is Britain’s largest motorcycling group.
(Sourced from “Old Bike Mart“, Issue 353, November 2014.)
Cataraptor
Actually it's British Motorcyclists Federation. Calling it a motorcycle federation gives the impression it's a Brit bike organisation.
I was a volunteer with them for many years and worked for them as the Government Relations Executive from 1992 to 2007 and have seen it go from being a serious riders' rights organisation to a shadow of its former self that fails to adequately represent anyone. Ever since I joined it in 1983, it had been subject to factional power struggles trying to tear it apart. I even gave up on membership a couple of years ago. My successor as GRE was made a better offer by the Motorcycle Industry Association earlier this year and I do wonder how the new guy can say the BMF has become re-energised. But there the AGM always produces these sort of messages repeated verbatim in affiliated club magazines and publications like Old Bike Mart. I'm afraid that the only way that the BMF will get out of the toilet in which it finds itself is if someone pulls the chain.
Sadly after an internal power struggle, MAG seems to be going the same way. So tragically, the UK has lost any effective rider representation in the process.
Wills
I saw the advertisement for the GRE and momentarily considered applying. But the salary on offer was way, way below the going rate for this kind of work, and that taken with the BMF's internal politics, was enough to make me walk on by.
No slight implied against the current holder of the position, but the principle applies that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.