Behind 'Enemy' Lines

Roy Keane once said, in reply to something Jaap Stam had written, that 'self praise is no praise,' well tonight Matthew I am going to be Jaap Stam.

Last night I gave a brief talk to a 150 members of a local Conservative club on the 'economic viability of clubs in a recession and how best they can utilise the clubs assets'. Yes I know it's a damn catchy title but the alternative: Make More Money, didn't seem appropriate under the circumstances. I was asked by the Treasurer if I would attend the club's AGM, we are the auditors and he said that he thought it would be a good idea if I could give a little talk, after the accounts had been read and approved, on how clubs in the area are doing and what this club could do to ensure that it survived a little bit longer.

I won't go into details of what I said, except to say that the Treasurer actually stole my thunder be mentioning some of my bullet points in his report. Anyway I got two rounds of applause which made me feel good and many mutterings along the lines of, 'good point.' and 'that's what I think as well.'

Clubs are generally having a hard time of it, membership numbers aren't actually decreasing (apart from by death) but the number of members actually attending the club and club functions is, in a club of say 1,000 members there are a 'hardcore' support of maybe 250 at most who keep it all going by continuing their patronage. Two Conservative clubs and one CIU club have closed during the past six months within ten miles of where I live, another is considering whether or not to continue, there are as many reasons for this, almost as many as why people become members in the first place.

People might think it doesn't matter if these clubs close but it does, members of the club often serve on regional and national party committee's - I've mentioned on the 5Live board before that the Conservative party relies on these committee's for feedback, the Labour party does as well via it's regional committee system. If the club's go, the representation goes and politicians will be left even more remote from the electorate than they do at the moment. That would be wrong as I know that the grass roots are responsible for changing one party's leadership's views on the recruitment of members and the fact that he listened and membership numbers increased shows that the clubs are neither a hotbed of anarchy or somewhere for people to go for a subsidised pint and a game of snooker.

Anyway, I walked away from the stage with the sound of applause ringing in my ears which were seperated from each other by a huge stupid grin. Self praise may well be no praise, but the praise of a group of strangers was magic.