I don't necessarily think size is an indication of whether an organisation is pursuing its original goals.
Well of course you don't, although it's amazing how much you can do with volunteer labour. . But I am not looking forward to the time when CAMRA becomes CAMRA plc or CAMRA International, with an obsession with 'the bottom line' and shareholders who demand dividends.
As JK Galbraith once said "small is beautiful"
Have a good time.
I think that's the reason everyone has ignored him! What a plonker!
So as in any organisation a proportion of its members don't like the way certain things are run?
If you want to change something in that organisation, you need to get off your bottom?
That's life!
Stop changing the goalposts!
Not only are you changing the goalposts you've replaced them with a dartboard!
In the past there have been a lot of rumor & fallacies about how you get beers in CBOB... CAMRA is addressing that issue by being more open with the procedure so I thought that I'd put the record straight about beer pricing too.
As a GBBF volunteer of 28 years standing, and who has been past beer orderer & current stock controller along with Sarah D for the last 12 years I feel I am qualified to comment on the price of beer at GBBF. It is done on site by 3 volunteers, once all prices have been received and beers delivered - This year it was 1 NE member, who has links to but not necessarily Finance Exec and one "ordinary" member (me) & one employee of CAMRA. I have been involved with the prices sheet since John Cryne stepped down from the organising committee and it is a model which is used successfully at many local festivals as well. It has not changed significantly in this time because the format works... and... apart from a few (I stress FEW) complaints which are received via the feedback forms and on forums like this, it generally seems to please the majority of people (as much as anyone can be "pleased" at having to pay for beer anyway!)
We have a standard mark up on all the beers which is applied across the board... if it costs us... then its gonna cost the punters I'm afraid. However - as drinkers and CAMRA members we too draw the line at having to pay £3.60 for Pedigree or £3.50 for a 4.9% mild... so we have a method of smoothing out some of the more ridiculous pricing we get.
Also bear in mind for change requirements we price in 20p bands.
We first look at ABV groupings one by one and see that there is a general consensus of beers at for example 3.5% & 3.6% and if something stands out as too high then we drop it a bit... and if something is too low we say "bless you" to the brewer and up it a little. We have an extra column at the end of the sheet that shows us ups and downs in pence.
Once we have done all 420 odd beers this way we then go through then AGAIN, but this time by Bar and see if something stands out as an "odd" price. This is especially true on the brewery bars when in the past (as an example) we had Youngs and Fullers side by side and one of the Sales execs came up chuntering to the office wanting to know why his beer was 20p more expensive than the other brewery... we showed him what we were being charged and the mathematics behind the pricing and said that if he wanted us to drop his prices he would have to do something about his.... he did... we did and the punters got the benefit of a lower price too.... everyones a winner!
Finally we go through it AGAIN... looking at the actual prices and what beers are within these prices. "Can we REALLY have a mild in the same price band with a load of strong bitters..... "... " How many beers have we got at £2.00".... "Whats the average price of a pint" and so on....
It takes us between 3 & 4 hours to do.
For the record this year we had
9 beers at £2.00 10 beers at £2.20 53 beers at £2.40 75 beers at £2.60 130 beers at £2.80 76 beers at £3.00 39 beers at £3.20 24 beers at £3.40 9 beers at £3.60 1 beer at £3.80 8 beers at more than £4.00 which had an AVERAGE strength of 7.6% and 2 of these were 9%!!The EXACT unrounded average price of a pint was £2.83 which we rounded down to £2.80 The up or downs list at the end of all this shenanigans was just
0.01p! The average strength of beer was 4.4% The average kil COST price plus VAT to us went up £15.33 to us this year and is £38.55 more than 2006... adding a good 30p on the price of a pint (we generally work on 130 pints per kil to allow for wastage)On the Sunday prior to the festival I was drinking at 3.0% mild in a pub in London at £2.80 per pint... that same beer at the festival was £2.60
Oh and I'm from Keighley, Yorkshire... and my local pint price is about £2.20 for Landlord these days... but I bet most Londoners don't balk at paying £3.00 a pint for it do they!
Denny Stock Control
Sorry I forgot....
See above....
Bar Nouveau is only a bar name... and whilst it is "sponsored" by Wetherspoons, they do not buy the beer for it... we do so the pricing strategy applies there too.
Sussex Stationers/British Bookshops can be even cheaper, if there is one near you.
Have you got one of those Unser Bier ( Basel) T-Shirts, Laurent?
I want one, but I'm told they stopped distributing them :-(
It already is CAMRA Ltd., and I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why.
Thanks, that's the plan. It will be more than six years since I was last over. I was supposed to head over this May, but four people quit at my best friend's work, so he couldn't go. I'm really primed for a good range of cask ale.
Well back in the early 80s the Campaign went through a difficult time financially, and it was decided by the membership at an AGM to become a company limited by guarantee. This is a common legal structure in the UK for not-for-profit organisations, and it is popular because the financial liability of the individual members is limited to the amount stated in the Memorandum and Articles of Association, which from memory is £1. If we didn't have this important safeguard in place, if the worst happened and the Campaign went bust, each individual member (not to mention the committee members) would be liable for an unlimited amount - and I'm sure you wouldn't want that!
Because we created a "legal personality" when we incorporated, Camra became able to take legal actions in its own name, such as take on leases, buy or sell property, sue or be sued. Before we incorporated, only individual committee members were able to act in these ways: now Camra itself can take action, for which the individual directors are responsible. It has its drawbacks, however, which I usually see as positives: the main one being that our affairs are regulated by company law, which imposes quite onerous responsibilities on the directors of the company. For a small organisation (like the charitable company I worked with last week) this is quite a consideration, but for a large organisation such as Camra, it is a necessity. It means that the law of the land is much closer to hand than it is for an unincorporated association, which is what Camra used to be before we incorporated.
It makes it much harder for elements within an organisation to take it over, and it also makes it much harder for an outside company to take it over, as there are no shareholders to buy out, only 90 odd thousand members to win over.
Being a membership organisation has its drawbacks, you know. You've got all these members who want perks. At least with shareholders you know they only want your money: our members want money off this, free entry to that, free books everywhere... they are indeed a very demanding constituency! (gdr)
Hope that explains, Mike: happy to go into more depth by email with you if you'd like.
Chris Ramsbottom Pandora's Box Training Business consultancy for charities and not-for-profit groups
snip
Thanks, Christine. No need to follow up by e-mail. That's a good explanation of the situation.
Mike Roebuck a écrit :
Couldn't get hold of one of them either. The "Basel - Mehr als nur Calrsbreg" T-Shirts" were distributed just before Euro'08, and there was just the one batch made, which sold like hot cakes, with no reprint. :o(
Amazon are now quoting £7.49 for the GAG.
GAG?
In the past there have been a lot of rumor & fallacies about how you get beers in CBOB... CAMRA is addressing that issue by being more open with the procedure so I thought that I'd put the record straight about beer pricing too.
As a GBBF volunteer of 28 years standing, and who has been past beer orderer & current stock controller along with Sarah D for the last 12 years I feel I am qualified to comment on the price of beer at GBBF. It is done on site by 3 volunteers, once all prices have been received and beers delivered - This year it was 1 NE member, who has links to but not necessarily Finance Exec and one "ordinary" member (me) & one employee of CAMRA. I have been involved with the prices sheet since John Cryne stepped down from the organising committee and it is a model which is used successfully at many local festivals as well. It has not changed significantly in this time because the format works... and... apart from a few (I stress FEW) complaints which are received via the feedback forms and on forums like this, it generally seems to please the majority of people (as much as anyone can be "pleased" at having to pay for beer anyway!)
We have a standard mark up on all the beers which is applied across the board... if it costs us... then its gonna cost the punters I'm afraid. However - as drinkers and CAMRA members we too draw the line at having to pay £3.60 for Pedigree or £3.50 for a 4.9% mild... so we have a method of smoothing out some of the more ridiculous pricing we get.
Also bear in mind for change requirements we price in 20p bands.
We first look at ABV groupings one by one and see that there is a general consensus of beers at for example 3.5% & 3.6% and if something stands out as too high then we drop it a bit... and if something is too low we say "bless you" to the brewer and up it a little. We have an extra column at the end of the sheet that shows us ups and downs in pence.
Once we have done all 420 odd beers this way we then go through then AGAIN, but this time by Bar and see if something stands out as an "odd" price. This is especially true on the brewery bars when in the past (as an example) we had Youngs and Fullers side by side and one of the Sales execs came up chuntering to the office wanting to know why his beer was 20p more expensive than the other brewery... we showed him what we were being charged and the mathematics behind the pricing and said that if he wanted us to drop his prices he would have to do something about his.... he did... we did and the punters got the benefit of a lower price too.... everyones a winner!
Finally we go through it AGAIN... looking at the actual prices and what beers are within these prices. "Can we REALLY have a mild in the same price band with a load of strong bitters..... "... " How many beers have we got at £2.00".... "Whats the average price of a pint" and so on....
It takes us between 3 & 4 hours to do.
For the record this year we had
9 beers at £2.00 10 beers at £2.20 53 beers at £2.40 75 beers at £2.60 130 beers at £2.80 76 beers at £3.00 39 beers at £3.20 24 beers at £3.40 9 beers at £3.60 1 beer at £3.80 8 beers at more than £4.00 which had an AVERAGE strength of 7.6% and 2 of these were 9%!!The EXACT unrounded average price of a pint was £2.83 which we rounded down to £2.80 The up or downs list at the end of all this shenanigans was just
0.01p! The average strength of beer was 4.4% The average kil COST price plus VAT to us went up £15.33 to us this year and is £38.55 more than 2006... adding a good 30p on the price of a pint (we generally work on 130 pints per kil to allow for wastage)On the Sunday prior to the festival I was drinking at 3.0% mild in a pub in London at £2.80 per pint... that same beer at the festival was £2.60
Oh and I'm from Keighley, Yorkshire... and my local pint price is about £2.20 for Landlord these days... but I bet most Londoners don't balk at paying £3.00 a pint for it do they!
Denny Stock Control
That's kindof the rub; it's London Prices. Are the prices at the Winter Ale Festival in Manchester similar? i.e. is it that the cost of the hiring the hall overrides the fact of free labour?
I haven't been to either, though I'm a CAMRA member.
In message , The Courtfield Cracksman wrote
To which you have to add perhaps £1 to £2 per pint for the admission charge - or an average price of at least £4/pint.
I have been to quite a few pub festivals this year where entry is completely free and the prices have been between £2.40 and £3.20 (SE.Essex). In general, the beers have been priced at the same level as the pubs normally charge.
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