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Hello and welcome
Well it’s good to see some good weather after a long and wet Spring. I trust you’re all finding time to enjoy the sun and let’s hope that it continues over the next few weeks.
Since the last edition of The Link we have had our AGM which was an enjoyable and important event. Important given the Committee were seeking your approval for a change in our Constitution which would enable us to make some changes to our Membership criteria. I have mentioned the issues we face as a club given the changes in Barclays’ pension arrangements over the past 20 years or so which are likely to impact our ability to take on new members. Without the flow of new members, we will struggle to provide you with the range of events that are currently on offer. That is not what we want and I’m sure not what you expect. Your support at the AGM to allow us to proceed with a new Constitution was much appreciated – thank you all.
The team have worked diligently and quickly to add a new class of Associate Membership, the full details of all our Membership categories are shown on the last page in this Link. We announced the news that we are now open to new members recently through the Facebook page and have had an excellent response. Our internet site will also be amended soon to provide the relevant details for others who might want to join but the key way to get our message out to interested colleagues is through word of mouth. If you know of anyone who is interested in joining now, please ask them to contact one of the Committee members.
The new class of Membership will not be eligible for the Grant we receive from the Bank. We use that Grant to subsidise most of our events such as the lunches, trips and sports’ tickets. Consequently, you will see from future application forms for events that the cost to Associate members will reflect the lack of a subsidy. Our research has shown that this is not seen as a deterrent for potential Associate members who understand and empathise with the decision.
If you have any questions on these changes please don’t hesitate to get in touch with myself, Sandra or Christine. Details are shown later in this Link.
On another important subject, I am pleased to say we had a great response from Members following our request for volunteers to join the Committee. I’ll give an update on this in the next edition of The Link.
My best wishes to you all for a lovely summer.
We have changed the joining criteria to enable those who have transferred their pension out of Barclays to join, see below for details:
Please be aware that charges for any event will be greater for Associate members as we do not receive a Bank Subsidy.
The standard joining fee of £10 as a one-off is the same for all wishing to join.
We publish a regular, quarterly newsletter, THE LINK. It is sent to all registered members. However, sending it by post is a very labour-intensive process. So we are making every effort to persuade members to take it by email instead. We have managed to increase the number of people who receive their copies this way to c. 300. This, however, is still likely to be far fewer than the total number of members who have email accounts.
When you receive it this way it arrives as an attachment to an email message. The attachment is a PDF (Portable Document Format) which opens with Adobe Reader. Almost all computers already have this FREE software installed. If not you can download Adobe Reader from here. Beware and make sure you "uncheck" the optional offers as these may cause conflicts on your PC.
If you can receive your copy this way we urge you to get in touch by using the Newsletter option on the Contact Us form. Let’s face it, if you are reading this message, you probably have an email account and can swap to this version. We’ll help you with the painless conversion.
Christine Graham
To find something from an old newsletter check out the Newsletter Archive by clicking here.
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