Pigeon Network

General Managers Annual Report February 2012

2011 undoubtedly saw change within the RPRA – sadly some of which was brought about through the untimely loss of many individuals who had given so much to the sport of Pigeon Racing – they will be missed!

The work undertaken by the literally hundreds of volunteers throughout the land that make the sport of Pigeon Racing work must be applauded as without these tireless people the club, region and council organisations would simply not exist. All too quickly we criticise this superb group of willing individuals who at the end of the day are simply doing what they do because they “love the sport” – invariably with little or no reward!

They know who they are – on behalf of all Pigeon Fanciers – “Thank You!”

General Manager Report

If you will forgive me a different style of report from previous years! Rather than just commenting on the year past I’d like to make more reference to the challenges facing us as an organisation and look forward.

So having joined in May seeking a “different” job I can safely say I’ve found one! It’s been great fun, always a challenge and my rusty knowledge of Pigeons is being knocked into shape rapidly!

Thankfully I’ve been extremely well supported by the teams at both the Reddings and the BHW – without whom I’d have sunk without trace. The President (David Higgins), three Vice Presidents (Les Blacklock, Richard Carlton and Brian Walsh) and Regional Secretaries have also provided much needed guidance and assistance when requested.

So to the substance of my report –

Our sport is currently slowly dying with its ever aging membership and no real ability to attract young fanciers or even “silver surfers” in any great numbers.

This need not be the case!

Press and Publicity.

Almost every member of the public knows very little about Pigeon Racing. When you take time to explain things to them they are invariably interested. There is a huge untapped interest in our sport as we have an historical legacy second to none with Pigeon Racing being deeply ingrained as one of the “traditional” British hobbies and sports. What is missing however is the future vision for the RPRA along with a plan to achieve it accompanied by re-awakening the public’s awareness – if we do this we start the transformation of our sport!

Looking through past General Managers reports – they are right we do get an amount of Press interest and coverage – but it is ALL reactive in that the Press come to us!

Proactive Publicity is almost non-existent and we have no real facility to develop, create or support it!

We are in the same place that the chap managing the darts organisation was in at the end of the 1990’s – little press little publicity = dying sport. Look at it now – filling major arena’s – creating multimillionaires of its stars and young kids playing the game AT HOME in their thousands.

What happened?

Someone had the vision to raise the profile from “fat blokes swigging beer smoking fags in pubs” to becoming something modern televised and fun! Along with a press campaign and clear plan to back it up! – Mistakes were made along the way – formats were tried and failed before winning variations came along.

A major change for the RPRA must be to go on the front foot and start professionally publicising our sport and its benefits. Change people’s perceptions!

I note from previous reports that a list of press activity has been included – unfortunately that is simply missing the point – however long the list was it was not long enough! The amount of publicity our sport gets must be increased by a factor of at least 10 or 20 before we start to see any benefits. We should use external professionals – expensive Yes but if they don’t perform – sorry but we try someone else until we find the winning partnership. A commercial arrangement with clear targets and goals also keeps both parties on their toes!

It will take a few years and money (we have both) but our challenge must be to raise the profile of our sport sufficiently so that everyone understands it.
If people understand it they will take part!

A small scale example – traditionally we have sent written (boring) press releases out ahead of the Blackpool show – this year we sent a visual one with pictures of “Pigeons in Racing shoes” getting ready to “Race to Blackpool”. The result on Friday and Saturday was that we simply could not cope with the press related activity and enquiries!

It’s not difficult – it simply needs a plan, funding and wholehearted support!

This crucial element will be a key part of the business plan that will be presented in March without adequate press and proactive publicity we will be wasting our time!

Publicising our Sport – Mobile Display Unit.

From May I towed the MDU to all the normal shows we normally attend and a few others that with the fantastic help of local clubs resulting in our message being seen by a greater number of people.

I’m often asked how many new members does the MDU attract to the RPRA each year – to which I can honestly answer probably none!

The MDU is and never was going to be a method at which someone walks up and is persuaded to join on the day – we are not the AA!! It is a real benefit is getting the “Pigeon Message” out to as many people and different age groups as possible. So to answer the underlying questions “is it value for money” the answer must be Yes! Last year it will have been seen be over 1 Million people at the respective shows!

This year it’s going to hopefully be seen be more as we have been “persuading” various other county fairs to give us free space – with some success I might add. We will need local clubs and regions to help man the MDU at the show – along with a release or two of Pigeons so people can see the real thing first hand!

Can we improve things – of course! The presentation materials are being updated and we will need to work on the whole “experience” to entice more general public to come and have a look. The key thing is to have Pigeons on display each day it is out on show – please help to do this!

In future years I foresee the MDU out every day of every week from April through to October – when it’s not at a show at weekends it should be at a different school each day providing curriculum based learning activity and fun for the kids. To do this will require more expense – maybe even a drivable MDU staffed by a part time member of staff (a trainee teacher on gap year?) for the MDU season each year!

A good target would be to get the MDU seen by 2Million people year and develop a real schools programme.

Bletchley Park.

Our Pigeons in War exhibit should be a constituent part of this world class museum within 2-3 years.

Our historic legacy is really second to none and it needs to be preserved and told in a proper manner. We are holding regular talks with the Management team at Bletchley and should have the preliminary costed proposals available for October Council meeting. The overview is as follows – the current PIW exhibit is in an old hut and we have been offered a permanent long term position where original Bletchley Pigeon loft was based.

Bletchley’s input into the project will be the provision of the building – expert advice on how the display should be made up and displayed and on-going maintenance and care of the exhibit on a day to day basis. Our input will be paying for the necessary building work to create a museum space in an old building and providing the exhibits that are chosen.

Once again a project that will raise the profile of our Sport, preserve its superb legacy and will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people each year.

One Loft Racing.

A superb and memorable season last year especially so as it was filmed by the BBC Natural History Unit making a programme eventually called “Super smart animals” that was shown on prime time BBC1 TV on Wednesday 8tH February.

More than a few raised eyebrows in the Pigeon fraternity I bet when the pigeons were clearly seen to be going around the roundabout on the M5 before swinging home!

We had a great attendance on what turned out to be a lovely sunny August bank holiday for the final race and Jeremy Davis must be congratulated for another very successful season.

Another set of potentially controversial comments from me here!

One loft racing can be a major part of the way in which we bring people into the sport! Once the basics are explained to members of the public the level of interest goes sky high as all of a sudden they realise they can participate without needing a loft (at least to start with!). It will also provide a small but reasonable revenue stream for the RPRA Future of sport fund in future years.

We need to publicise one loft racing – even to the stage where we gift entries (and birds) to celebrities on behalf of their charities with a suitable prize at the last race – who knows we may just get a few coming along to support their causes!

School entries must be totally transformed – we should simply “piggy back” schools entries onto existing entries. Pick 250 schools at random and draw by lot 2 pigeons from the current entry that become there school birds (if lost simply draw out replacements from the unallocated remainder to ensure each school has two birds in the final race). We should have web cams within the loft, on the transporter and inside the loft so the kids can watch the birds in the loft as well as liberations and homecomings! 250 primary schools with an average of 100 pupils each means we could have 25,000 kids watching our racing next year.

In addition to the school entries we should offer school based learning days at the Loft – get the kids into the countryside so they can see first-hand what Pigeons are all about – great publicity as well as maybe creating fanciers of the future!

Therefore we must look growing the one loft opportunities especially now the Tewkesbury loft is at its increased capacity for 2012 with enough to allow a further increase in 2013 to 1500 birds. We filled all 1000 places within 10 days this year and were vastly oversubscribed so we extended the loft by 50% – all done quickly!

With the increasing interest in one loft racing, coupled with some suitable publicity, filling our loft should not be difficult especially as the RPRA race is seen as a well-run and safe event – unlike many of the alternatives I may add if the anecdotal evidence is anything to go by!

So expansion - we need to start planning the next RPRA loft! Rather than “all our eggs in one basket” why not another one loft located up north flying south? Another one loft race means more entrants = more publicity = more school entries pigging backing = more school visits = more publicity = healthy sport!

I know this will upset some traditionalists but when my Dad (a fancier for over 60 years and as old fashioned as they come!) enters two birds in this year’s event – it must be a sign that this is the right thing to do in the future!

New technology.

Again I may be controversial here!

We need to not only embrace new technology but totally change the way the RPRA operates with regard to this. We need to move from grudgingly investigating what the other countries and unions have adopted some years ahead of us – to a position where we are looking ahead and start to lead the introduction of new technologies. If we lead things we can influence the way forward – if you follow its too late! Ask Nokia!

Stray reports by text – the Belgians are already doing it – we are looking at it!

Race results by text; live results on line – can be done now!

Work with universities to develop a “one chip fits all” for ETS systems – a chip licensed by the RPRA?

Work with suppliers to develop a lower cost ETS system.

What’s coming after ETS?

Embedded Microchip identification of pigeons – include the ETS element!

And so on!

Let’s get our suppliers and importantly our members working on this!
Then the really big bang!

The development of a durable and permanent miniature tracking device which will allow the real time positional tracking of a Pigeon over the internet.

Once this becomes deliverable and cost effective we then open up the real possibility of being able to watch liberations via web cam and track the position of our birds via the web.

More importantly other people can watch and it transforms our sport into a spectator sport and opens up gambling opportunities.

Watch the sport take off then!

Far from managing a decline we really could be managing a complete transformation!

The Reddings (building)

Simply put we will not be realising the “millions” by selling the Reddings to a developer in the short term so we now get on with planning our next three to five years here at least. The house layout is not conducive to bringing people together in work and we have far too many small offices.

Over the coming months we will start to improve the overall working conditions by making some simple but important changes.

All of the “member facing” functions will be moved to the ground floor with the exception of the finance team – we will sort out the office layout, the phone system and clear and reorganise the stock room. Throughout we will clear the years of accumulated rubbish, whilst upstairs attempt to improve the staff rest room whilst also creating a general meeting room in which we will be able to hold meetings for up to 10 people thus saving some money!

The cellar area is still a problem despite a pump emptying the sump it flooded regularly during the autumn and winter causing damp and widespread mould. The radiators all need replacing with modern more efficient units as in most offices expensive electric ones are used to raise the temperature.

Our aim is to make the Reddings a suitably professional place of work reflect a modern professional organisation.

The subsidence works have been assessed by our insurers at both the Reddings House and Selby House – repair work is in hand and should be completed by the Summer.

The Reddings (Staff)

More than a few changes here!

Gill and Sheila will both retire at the end of March after more than 60 years combined service - the knowledge and experience they take with them is irreplaceable so please be patient if a few “hiccups” happen along the way!

I was amazed to find that after this length of service neither had ever been to the BHW! – so when Suzie and I went up to the BHW at the beginning of February we took Gill and Sheila along! Needless to say we may be doing more reciprocal visits between the BHW and The Reddings as it is important that we understand and appreciate what our colleagues do and where they do it!

We wish them both well and hope they have long and happy retirements – although I’m sure they will be popping around to keep an eye on us!!(Plus we’d miss Sheila’s cakes!)

Annabelle leaves us for pastures new at the end of February – more money and no travelling were simply too good to turn down – once again Annabelle has been a real star here and we wish her well for the future!

All of this has meant a big change around!

Julia will be in charge of all administration staff at the Reddings except Finance (Suzie, Tracey, Tracy and Lyna) and Dorothy (my secretary) from 2nd April.

This will be a larger team than she is currently managing so to assist Julia - Donna will be the supervisor looking after the Racing Support area (Racing Programmes; Distances) and Karen will be the supervisor looking after Strays, Rings, Sales and Membership. Jonathan has moved from the Strays office and will replace Annabelle.

So we will lose three people by the end of March and by moving one member of staff (and increasing the working hours of two personnel) we will be heading into 2012 racing season with a much reduced team at the Reddings. With this reduced team it means that a real focus on cross training and sharing of skills is vitally important – we will also have to learn to prioritise as the days of one person one job have passed us by and we must all learn to cope with new skills and challenges. It will be scary at times, we will make the odd mistake or two but we will come out of it with more rewarding and hopefully interesting jobs at the end of it!

Looking further ahead we can see even more change as whilst Suzie reduces her working week down to 3 days a week from June onwards ahead of retirement in November so we will have Tracey (G) increasingly stepping into the Accounts Manager role. In good time prior to Suzie’s retirement we will be moving both Tracey and Lyna to full 5 day working instead of the current 4 days.

The above is only an overview of what’s happening and I’m sure the plan will change and evolve as we go forward.

BHW

Steve and the team continue to deliver a great effort week in week out to produce the “book”!

Because of its location and the sheer volume of work we have at the Reddings I only visit about once a month and then only for a few hours. The business plan background work has not really started and will not be finished until the October Council meeting. It is vital that that is done during the summer as the BHW constitutes such a vital element of the RPRA we must have this in place so it to can start changing ahead of the challenges rather than attempting to do things afterwards when they are too late!

Council and committees.

Anyone who has witnessed its operation can only deduce that in its current form Council is far too big, unwieldy, slow and with dubious (cost) effectiveness.

The Appeals process takes far too long – with an appeal not being heard for up to 8 months in the worst case. Surely a smaller grouping of elected “peers” meeting four to six times a year can accomplish a suitable end result?

Committees in the current format are only marginally more successful with the Future of the Sport being the by far and away the most productive as it is able to make and take its own decisions.

The key changes on committees must surely be to move involvement in a committee from passive listening to active participation. By doing this the level of constructive input will increase greatly. This accompanied by appointing people with the necessary and appropriate skills to serve the committees will also enhance the effectiveness.

(The most successful and hard working committee is the Show of the year one where it is not directly managed by the RPRA!)

But the RPRA constitution is “what it is” with the makeup and size of Council, Appeals and committees being dictated by the membership.

The members get what the members vote and mandate for – therefore my comments will end there!

Raptors.

Some success to report!

It’s been very quiet for a deliberate reason as we needed to tread very carefully with regards to moving a “united” Pigeon position forward.

On this one issue ALL the homing unions are actually working together – how about that – maybe a sign of things to come!

We have held numerous meetings, collected data and research information from all the unions so we have a united voice.

Last year we had a meeting with a government MP – he has facilitated a meeting with the Governmental Ministers DEFRA advisors which took place on the 22nd February. At this meeting the united Homing union position will be presented to the ministerial advisors. Following this meeting a summary will be forwarded to the Environmental Minister ahead of our group meeting with him at a later date.

Our aim is simply to say that the predation by Sparrowhawks has grown out of control in certain geographic areas and in these areas we will conduct the necessary investigation work to enable the submission of licences to remove Sparrowhawks. We believe we could submit the first test license applications towards the end of this year. We plan separate meetings with the licensing bodies within England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Eire.

In addition to this we are looking to the Government to seriously consider some controls on the current reckless introduction of Raptors into non natural habitats.

It is proposed that through a simple levy of £1 per union member and additional fund raising events we would be able to fund the licence preparation work at the test sites along with looking at starting to fund a proactive press and publicity campaign to raise the public’s awareness of the issues facing Pigeon Racing.

We do need some common sense here though as hopefully you are aware that the RSPB spent a great deal of public money recently with a series of raids on four Pigeon Fanciers up and down the country resulting in one arrest and a small amount of material being confiscated for investigation.

Can I just plead that such negative publicity sets our case back each time it occurs and whilst understanding pigeon fanciers frustration the law of the land must prevail at all times.

It will be a marathon not a sprint to rectify something that’s been decades in the making and you will all need to play a part in it!

Other Unions.

Try explaining to a member of the public how a sport that has seen its membership halve in the last 20 years still maintains numerous separate and distinct unions – all purportedly trying to pursue the same aims!

I understand the sensitivity and the historical nature of these arrangements however we need to shift focus from the past to the future – we can do nothing but learn lessons from the past – we can however work together to shape the future!

Thankfully it looks like common sense is breaking out and on the Raptor issue maybe we are seeing the start of things to come.

VOSA.

(a). Vehicle Licensing

Success!

Week commencing 19th February 2012 ALL VOSA inspectors will have been briefed as follows and we quote -

"The common scenario which has been long been a source of dubiety with regard to the application of operator licensing, concerns racing pigeon clubs. Pigeon clubs typically run small goods vehicles or goods vehicle combinations over 3.5 tonnes gross weight. These vehicles are generally used to transport racing pigeons belonging to club members. The members contribute towards the running costs of the vehicles through contributions made through their very modest annual membership subscriptions. As the clubs are run by members for members, and on a not-for-profit basis, there is no question of these vehicles being used commercially.

Where it is evident that vehicles are being operated by pigeon racing clubs in a way consistent with that outlined above, they should not be construed to be vehicles used for “hire or reward” or “in connection with a trade or business”, and therefore not in scope of operator licensing."

We will be briefing our clubs via the BHW next week!

(b). Tachographs.

In addition to the above we are seeking similar clarification with regard to Tachograph’s and our understanding (although we await for official confirmation) that the same will apply namely - No tacho’s required!

When we get official confirmation we will again publish it in the BHW.

Show of the Year

With a great deal of effort and the usual brilliant work by the Show of the Year committee we delivered the 40th Show of the Year.

Press coverage increased - copies of some the written articles will be reproduced in the BHW – highlights of which must have been the performances of Maisie Day Jordan (aged just 9) and Arthur Goacher (aged well over 9) in front of the many cameras – both absolute naturals! A film was made at the show highlighting and promoting the sport of Pigeon Racing against the superb backdrop of the Winter Gardens which will be added to the new website when launched.

Visitor numbers were up slightly (3%) on 2011 and this year we asked for feedback from the trade stand holders via a questionnaire. We will be reviewing these responses along with the feedback from the Reddings staff debrief which alone ran to 4 pages of suggested improvements.

A Show of the year committee meeting is being held on the 29th February to review all the feedback collected so far and most importantly the feedback from the committee members themselves. Next year we will ask the visiting members for feedback as to how they think it can be improved further – sorry but we missed the opportunity this year – my fault!

Website

We are nearly there! The February council meeting are being given an overview of the design layout and construction. It has a very different look – it is suitably modern, practical and useful. It will be kept so by the team at the Reddings once tested and should be launched live in late March/early April.

It will have twitter and facebook feeds along with youtube links – crucially attractive enough to make young and old people want to explore its contents whilst providing more of a searchable service to our members.

However once this stage is completed and launched we move onto the next one – payment on line for goods and services – more of which in a later bulletin once we get close to launching the facility.

Beyond this we can expand as required and funded by the RPRA – we are already looking at adding a link page for the one loft web cams so everyone can watch the birds in the loft, liberations and homecomings live via the internet. The website is constructed in such a manner that additional pages and facilities can be added as required. Advertising both paid and unpaid; Regional pages; special features and a whole new squeakers section may follow in time.

As we all know the internet remains the major tool to publicise our sport and our move to update and modernise our website is a good step to keeping up with the times.

“Sport maintenance issues” – or “things for you to do!”

These can simply be summed up as -

1/. Vaccination – do it!
2/. Wing stamping/address marking – do it!
3/. Transfers – do them!
4/. Strays – report them and more importantly help repatriate Pigeons with owners.

Item 1/. has the real potential to stop us racing – through an epidemic affecting our birds resulting in DEFRA grounding us! Just a few fanciers taking short cuts or risks really will place our season at risk!

Items 2/. 3/. And 4/. These matter over a longer period of time as without this the public perception of Pigeon fanciers will gradually become one of “they don’t care” withy extremely dire consequences.

Finance.

From the published accounts you can see that the organisation is currently solvent with very strong reserves. In my notes following the October Council meeting I outlined the financial situations facing us. Council decisions in February 2012 will therefore clearly decide the financial performance of the RPRA and BHW for 2012 and greatly influence 2013.

In March I will present to Council a business plan for the RPRA to be followed in October with a plan for the BHW – this will enable Council to fully consider the impacts, effects and conclusions before making the necessary propositions for changes ahead of the February 2013 AGM.

Fun.

We just need to remember we keep and Race Pigeons because we enjoy it – it should be fun! We run clubs, feds and regions because we enjoy helping fellow members, want to ensure fair play and hopefully ensure all voices are fairly heard!

If our sport is not fun – why participate?

Everyone in our sport needs to seriously look at whether what they are doing is constructive, helpful, supportive or developing. It’s all too easy to moan about things especially when change starts to happen or things that are being trialled fail or someone becomes too successful or you don’t like a particular aspect of something. We all have opinions and whinge and groan about things but a little of this negative activity turned positively will make a world of difference.

Take it from me the most fun you can get is with working with or for an organisation that is growing – or when you are learning new things – you are never too old to learn (even my Dad has a mobile phone now!)

We need to embrace the change – remember it should be fun!

The Last 8 months.

I’ve had a great past 8 months or so – many more successes than failures as a result of the hard work of the teams at both the Reddings and BHW. I’ve learnt a lot and far from being downbeat I’m even more enthusiastic than ever about the prospects for our sport!

Put it this way – I’m going to give it a go!

Special mention however must go to David Higgins, our President, the RPRA are very lucky to have this chap doing the job he is doing as President – in addition to doing two regional secretary roles! He must put in 70-80 hours a week on work supporting the RPRA activities. On a personal note he has been a superb colleague to work with – funnily enough we do always seem to have discussions and meetings with grins on our faces – obviously we both enjoy the jobs we do!

In Summary.

The RPRA and the other Homing Unions are all facing the same dilemma – declining aging membership coupled with little or no public perception or understanding of our sport – resulting in few new or young members to renew or revitalise the organisations.

That the RPRA needs to change quickly must be beyond doubt to every one of its members and officials.

It doesn’t need to be like this!

The solutions are in front of us!

Stewart Wardrop
General Manager
February 2012.