Dear all, I'm forwarding a reply from Mike that failed to
make it through the system.
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Keith
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Mark
That's a fascinating and telling analysis, and some of your conclusions are
pretty powerful.? Thank you very much for sharing them.? A couple of thoughts:
1.? The film Convoy was a huge boost because it showed CB radio as the
hero,? a point reinforced by its use to thwart overweening authority.? The
illegitimacy of CB here was a huge draw.? I was at the Home Office during CB's
heyday, and handled all the public communication for radio regulation at the
time - and when we brought in MPT 1321 and legalised CB, six magazines and a
great number of equipment suppliers went out of business almost overnight.?
Never underestimate the power of romantic unlawfulness.? Conclusion: we'll
probably always be able to attract technophiles, but if we want real growth, we
need to be able to sell fun in the broad philosophical sense you suggest.?
Raynet type activities, demonstrating a public good and fun to boot, are an
obvious candidate.
2.? As an Whitehall hand, I think the RSGB has pitiful influence with Ofcom.
We lost the moral standing that comes with a licence fee.? We clearly deal
with people low in the Ofcom food chain, when the real decisions are made
by the policy makers and legal people.? The paucity of our reach and importance
is well illustrated by that new guidance document with its poor
drafting,?non-sequiturs (see 2.79-2.82 for example) and dreadful proof reading.
3.? The RSGB is an organisation bonded by a website and magazine, but riven
by different competing and often arrogant interests.? It has dozens of very
good people all ploughing the field in different directions.?? It reminds me a
great deal of policing - the upper tiers dominated by people who live off the
experiences of their long-lost younger days.? (Hence my bleat for more kids,
ASAP.). As a consequence, it lacks any of the focus necessary to campaign for
the hobby.? Raynet has a variant of the disease.
4.? We need to sell amateur radio as an enabler, and a strategic good, not
just an end in itself.? But that's where we both agree.? And we have to find
better champions and partners than Ofcom.? It's a regulator, and an auctioneer,
and we are a pimple on the hindquarters of an elephant with no effect on its
head or direction at all.
This is worth some further thought.
73 Mike
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