Thursday, November 26, 2015

Myopia

Just a little side-note relating to the Stephen Moss piece. On the English Chess Forum thread devoted to the article, one John Foley informs us:


John links to here rather than to the page which actually advertises Stephen's talk, a page he will be aware of since he wrote it himself. It contains this passage:
It might also be surprising to the general public that the author of these lines was also a candidate in the elections referred to, where he was an ally of the "ousted" Chief Executive and Marketing Director, and in which contest he was defeated by an enormous margin.

For some reason John decided to leave this out, as if he were a disinterested critic.

It may be that he didn't wish to draw attention to his role because one of the major reasons why Phil Ehr and chums got booted out was that they were considered responsible for bullying a number of long-term servants of English chess, both on the ECF board and outside it. (You won't have read a word of this in Stephen Moss's article, of course, though you'll find a link to a piece by John Foley.) John was, and continues to be, part of that effort.

Guilt? Hypocrisy?

Probably not. Probably just myopia.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's entirely right that organising the next event takes priority over deciding what events should be organised. The CEO's long screed about how the ECF was doing it all wrong contained some howlers where he wasn't aware of the history of events that he wanted the ECF to organise differently.

Whilst in a large organisation, it may be an advantage for the CEO and directors not to have a clue what's going on, a small organisation such as the ECF cannot afford passengers, particularly those in a position to waste the time of those who do know the whys and wherefores.

RdC

Unknown said...

"It may be that [John Foley] didn't wish to draw attention to his role because one of the major reasons why Phil Ehr and chums got booted out was that they were considered responsible for bullying a number of long-term servants of English chess, both on the ECF board and outside it."

Thank you for saying that, ejh, although in my case "bullying" is a bit strong.

I'm pleased to report that life does seem to have got easier since 17th October.

David Sedgwick