Bulletin's

Rotary Club of Hove

Founded 1933 RI No 3630 RIBI No 393

Club Bulletin

For previous years click on http://www.hoverotaryclub.name/2009.10 http://www.hoverotaryclub.name/2008.9 http://www.hoverotaryclub.name/2007 or http://www.hoverotaryclub.name/2006/7 or http://www.hoverotaryclub.name/2006/ or http://www.hoverotaryclub.name/2005

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

JUNE 2011

President Ian’s Final Report – Dateline Beaune

Chers amis, salutations!

When I became President, I never thought that I would be summing up my final month in a French hotel bedroom! But the deadline has to be met, before a brief break. For those who did not go on the trip to France, here is a brief summary:

The visit was a great success and very enjoyable. Ninety-nine were in Beaune, twenty from Hove. We were very sad that Bob and Sheila could not be with us. Sadly too, Pforzheim President Peter Rachel was absent, recovering from an eye operation. At 24 hours notice, Junior Vice Rainer Zimmerman valiantly took his place. We were very pleased to have Inner Wheel President Gill Langley with us, who of course knew so many folk through previous visits with Richard. The French had a slight problem with her name badge – for the two days she was known as "Gill Langlais"! But Frances found that "du Toit" gave her a lot of French recognition!

It was, as the Two Ronnies would have described it," a packed programme". Having visited Beaune before, albeit 40 years ago, I was amazed at how much we had missed! Certainly we had been in dark, chill cellars sipping the wine among the barrels and had enjoyed exploring the vineyards blanketing the beautiful rolling hills of the Burgundian countryside. The weather was the same – gloriously hot and sunny. But, thanks to Evreux President Bernard Roy and his team we saw so much more.

For example, barrel-making. The Camy Cooperage in the famous town of Meursault is an amazing combination of traditional hands-on craft and modern technology. These costly precision-made oak barrels are sold not only to Burgundian wine-makers, but to wine-making countries around the world. Equally the visit to the Fallot mustard-making factory was fascinating. Fallot are the last family firm to be producing an array of exotic mustards by traditional means, in the face of competition from the giants of the food industry. Of course a highlight was the visit to the Hotel Dieu (Hospices de Beaune). This old charitably-run hospital is now a museum and the place where the famous annual Burgundy wine auction takes place. All the tours were extremely well run and the guides were excellent.

In between tours there were the lunches! The downside of these large meals combined with the wine and the heat was a tendency to nod off during lectures on subjects such as the "climats" of Burgundy. Some of us became expert catnappers! But we all stayed awake for the final dinner at Caves Patriarche – boasting some five kilometres of dark, candlelit cellars, some of which we traipsed through to sample ten or so red and white burgundies. So by dinner time everyone was in good spirits to hear some close harmony from a large local choir and to do some less harmonious chorusing in German, French and English. (There are photos to prove this!) With Stratford-on-Avon now the popular choice for next year’s visit, on your behalf, I gave each club a small guide book and a large, leather-bound copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. This raised a laugh, but I am told that the Germans are going to study it carefully in preparation for their pilgrimage to the Bard’s birthplace.

During the Rotary business session each club summed up its year. It is on occasions like this that you become aware how different every Rotary Club is (irrespective of nationality) - which is as it should be. But Pforzheim (with its much more youthful make-up) and indeed Evreux, are both still involved in fairly demanding and ambitious programmes – which may make them expect more of us than we are now able to give. I put this point across to the meeting. I also tried to reflect some of the discussion going on in Rotary in the UK about the way ahead. Evreux and Pforzheim have been very much in favour of arranging exchanges of young underprivileged youngsters. Clearly this is not appropriate for us. We did approach local schools last year but there was no response. But the meeting was firmly in favour of some form of joint project. I suggested that we should not pre-empt the options of the new presidents, but wait to see what initiatives they had in mind.

Before my term is over, in the next few weeks I will try to initiate a very simple, low/no cost joint project. I would like to try to pilot a scheme whereby a Rotarian from another club comes to stay with a member and goes to a local school to talk with language students. For example, Andreas Ruf from Pforzheim comes to stay with us and has conversation sessions with A level German students in one or more Brighton & Hove schools. Then we could return the compliment. As I believe that our "International Weekends" are such a valuable and enjoyable feature of our Rotary year, I feel that the more informal contact we can maintain between visits the better. There was more contact in the past and I would be very pleased to see it revived.

On Sunday, after the official event was over, twenty of us, including seven from Hove were taken on a wonderful (if very hot) walk in the glorious countryside by Pforzheimer's Christian and Renate Kohler. They have a holiday home in Beaune and had kindly arranged a picnic for everyone. A number of people remarked that this completely informal part of the visit was so important in helping to people to get to know one another better.

There was a great deal of support in a show of hands for those wanting to join us next year. I suspect we will have another great weekend. So, that is just one of the challenges facing Ralph and the team! I know that you will give him all your support. My very best wishes to Ralph – I hope that he will enjoy his year as much as I have.

A bientot!

IAN

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR JUNE.

7^th. Today’s speaker is Graham Albon and the title of his talk is "Isambard Kingdom Brunel – Engineer Extraordinary" and the vote of thanks will be given by Ken Jones.

14^th. Today is the occasion of Club Assembly where Committee Chairmen, and indeed I/C President Ralph will be setting out their programme for the coming year under the watchful eye of DGE Neil Hills. President Ian will also be giving his Valedictory.

21^st. Michael Jayston, the well known actor and "Friend of Rotary" will be speaking to us today of "Eccentrics in the Acting Profession" No one has been nominated to perform the vote of thanks as yet.

28^th. No lunchtime meeting today because tonight is the occasion of the joint Presidents’ night at the Dyke Golf Club.

CLUB MEETINGS.

3^rd May 2011.

25 present – 23 of our own members, one Rotary Friend, Olive Hamilton and one Rotarian visitor; John Penny from Arundel, our speaker for today.

Secretary Frances reminded members that the last meeting of this month, on the 31^st, will be a fellowship meeting, with anyone attending having to order their food over the bar. There will be no one on duty to take money. This is felt necessary because many Club members will still be on the way back from Beaune after the contact visit.

President Ian mentioned the Hearing Aid Loop System that will be financed by the club for use at the St John’s Day Centre.

He also informed members that Sheila Hinton is poorly, with gallstones, and he sent good wishes to her on behalf of all club members.

Invalids -- Sheila Hinton poorly with gallstones president Ian sends best wishes.

Paul Thrasher reported that Ian Varley has not been at all well and has recently been in hospital but is now back home and sends best wishes to everyone.

President Ian then had the very pleasant, and rare, duty of inducting a new member, Philip Evans to the Club. President Ian is also Philip’s sponsor. He welcomed him to Rotary and hoped that he would take advantage of all the benefits of being in this worthy organisation. Philip replied by telling us that he is the youngest, by a very long way, member of this club. He told us that he has researched Rotary and is well aware of what his duties are as a Rotarian. He also told that he has some ideas for fundraising and is an ambitious person, but he was sure that we will "rein him in".

This was followed by induction of Philip Evans to the club. President, who was also his sponsor, welcomed him into rotary.

John Mainwood told members he is trying to arrange an informal ten pin bowling at the marina on Thursday 12^th May. He needs numbers to book a table at one of the restaurants in the marina as well as the lanes at the bowling alley.

District Foundation Committee member John Penny was our speaker today and was here to tell us all that is going on in the world of Rotary Foundation.

I will not go into too much detail about this quite complex part of Rotary but you can quite easily get the lowdown if you go on to the foundation section of the RI website.

I’m afraid that John lost me fairly early on when he quoted various sums of money for different projects. He also told us that the Bill Gates polio challenge has sidetracked the usual work of Foundation and he also explained to us how we can maximise our donation to two and half times the amount if we use Foundation correctly.

One of the big successes of Foundation, the GSE programme, is to be discontinued after being around for many years. This programme has benefited many young professionals, particularly in their knowledge of how their work is performed in other countries.

He then went on to tell us all about the "Future Vision" project that is due to commence in July 2013. This is a project with six areas of focus – Peace and Conflict Resolution, Disease, Water, Maternal and Child Health, Basic Education and Literacy and Economic Development.

100 Districts out of 529 are registered for this very worthy scheme.

A talk that has got to be given to clubs every so often but by the nature of its work it is pretty dry stuff.

Nevertheless there were questions from President Ian and Bob Hinton, our only real expert in the Foundation field.

The vote of thanks was given by Ralph Harrison.

10^th May 2011.

26 Present – 25 of our own members and one non-Rotarian guest; Father Felix Mascharenas, our speaker.

Secretary Frances asked members to put their apologies in the book as soon as possible for the meetings on 31^st May and 7^th June. She also confirmed that the AGM would be held on 24^th May. Forms were also being circulated with regard to the Sponsored Walk for St John’s Day Centre this coming Sunday

A fresh batch of jam is available, courtesy of Yveline Milner.

It was reported that Sheila Hinton is in hospital, recovering from a gall bladder removal operation. Bob hopes that she will be coming home sometime this week

Paul thrasher report that Ian Varley was not too well but Bob Mulholland reported that he seemed to be in good spirits yesterday when he telephoned.

Adrian Ball spoke of arrangements for Presidents’ evening on 28^th June and has distributed invitations. Tickets will cost £28.50 each.

Our speaker today was Father Felix Mascarenhas, the present incumbent at the Church Of The Good Shepherd in Dyke Road.

Father Mascarenhas is a most unusual Vicar because the earlier part of his life as a man of the cloth was under the umbrella of the Holy Catholic Church. It was only later in life, after much debate with himself that he decided that Catholicism had too narrow a remit that he became a Vicar in the Anglican Church.

He assured us that for the last 16 or 17 years as an Anglican president that he hadn’t lost anything but had just moved on.

He went into detail of his early life in Goa, telling us that it is just a dot on the Indian map with a population of only one and a half million inhabitants and that it was on the West coast of India and was split into 11 small districts. It was a Portuguese colony until 1961, much later than the British part of India. He said that four of the 11 districts are "absolutely flooded" with catholic churches. In fact, the capital of Goa is known as either the Rome or Lisbon of the East.

The Holy See that was founded by St. Francis Xavier eventually spread as far away as China.

With the help of slides, Father Felix showed us many of the magnificent churches in his homeland.

This was a really excellent talk by a quite charismatic person and it was a shame that the talk was quite short because of the confines of lunch time. There were questions after from Philip Evans and Paul Beaken and the vote of thanks was given by Bob Hinton.

17^th May 2011. .

28 present – 25 of our own members, one Friend of Rotary, Phyllis Howell; and two non-Rotarian guests; Cathy Bennis, who accompanied our speaker, Rabbi Hershel Rader.

Invalids – Bob Green is going on quite well and Ron Loadsman’s wife is progressing well but Ron is none too well.

Ted Bartup reported that John Eaton is looking after Ann, who is getting on quite well, but slowly. Please telephone John to brighten his day. Derek Clouting reported that he went out to a local pub in Henfield for lunch with Ian Varley who seems to be recovering and said that John Ansell, who is as "bright as nine pence" may attend club on his birthday which is in the near future.

Derek Clouting -- Ian Varley, went to lunch in local pub, John Ansell who is as bright as nine pence and may attend club on his birthday which is in the near future.

President Ian reported on the St John’s Day Centre walk when He, Scilla, Frances du Toit together with Mike and Margaret Nettell took part. President Ian also reported on a programme of visits to other clubs to spread the word about the Sussex Cancer Centre.

The religious theme this month was carried on by our speaker today, Rabbi Hershel Rader, the spiritual leader of the very large Brighton and Hove Hebrew congregation.

He started off on the right foot by saying how impressed he was by the atmosphere of friendliness and companionship of Hove Rotary.

He gave us a brief history of Jews in Britain, saying they have lived in these Isles since Roman times until they were expelled in 1290 and did not return until Oliver Cromwell was in charge in the 1640’s.

Most of these Jews came from Amsterdam but were of Spanish and Portuguese origin, they having been expelled from those two countries in about 1492.

In fact the oldest synagogue in this country is in the City of London, the Bevis Marks synagogue, founded by the self same Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Numbers were pretty stable then until the end of the 19^th century when there was a great influx of Jews from Eastern Europe, mainly Russia and Poland after pogroms in those countries Lots of these immigrants thought they were landing in the USA and received a rude shock when they realised where they were.

More developed and larger Jewish community, centres round the East End of London. Brighton Jews can be traced back to early 19^th century and first synagogue was built in middle 1870. That synagogue is now redundant because most of the Jewish community moved to the west of the town in Hove, hence five synagogues in Hove itself.

Recommends a visit to Middle St Synagogue, some of us having already done this with inner wheel a couple of months ago.

Rabbi Hershel then went on to answer the question "What is Judaism?" explaining that it was the first monotheistic religion, that is the first religion that believes in one creator. Abraham was the originator of Judaism some four thousand years ago. Since then there have been many religions formed that taken on this belief in one being. He said that you can see the main parts of the Jewish religious service in the services of other religions. What is important, he said, was that one respects the beliefs of other religions and systems.

Rabbi Hershel then explained the significance of the Jewish Sabbath, which starts at sunset every Friday evening. Friday night is very important in their religious activity, particularly in the home because home is the centre of the Jewish religion, not the synagogue, which is mainly a place to pray. Friday night is sacrosanct, starting with a short prayer to proclaim the holy day before having a meal, traditionally starting with chicken soup for starters. The mother of the house says a special prayer before lighting the candles. Members will sit around the table with their guests, singing special songs and it is a time that is set aside and dedicated to the family, interacting with each other.

Judaism started in Egypt when slaves were taken out of that country by God.

Family is the bedrock of society in general, strong families mean strong society and things tend to break down if there is any sort of family breakdown.

Went on to talk about the various Jewish festivities such as Hanika, an eight day festival, this is a festival of light.

This was another terrific talk and certainly gave us a lot more information about this particular religion.

If you want to find out more about the Rabbi I suggest you "Google" him because he has had a very interesting life in previous synagogues.

Questions were posed by President Ian and Peter Savage with the vote of thanks being performed by Frances du Toit.

24^th May 2011.

23 present – all our own members.

Secretary Frances announced that there was a fresh batch of rhubarb and ginger jam and marmalade available.

President Ian gave a reminder to members that the meeting on 7^th June will be an evening one, 6.30pm for 7.

Today was the occasion for a "40 Set" draw and the cheque for £25 was won by Joan Burchell.

The rest of the meeting was devoted to the Club AGM with all Committee Chairmen and various other Club Officers making their annual reports. I will not expand on this because all the activities have been reported on over the past 11 months or so of this year in this bulletin.

Ralph Harrison did say that next year’s Club Council will have the same personnel as last year, except that Paul Thrasher will replace the late Michael Peters.

At the conclusion of these reports it was then the turn of Treasurer Bob Hinton to set out the Club’s Financial Budget for next year. This he did in his usual efficient way and he concluded by saying that he recommended that the subscription for the year 2011/12 should be £120 and this was voted on and passed unanimously.

31^st May 2011.

This meeting was to have been one of informality, as many members were still in France, following the contact visit in Beaune.

I have no report as to how many people turned up but I am sure there will be a report at the meeting of 7^th June.

CLUB COUNCIL REPORT OF 23^RD MAY.

Matters arising – AGM 24^th May. Chairmen’s written reports have been circulated to members.

It was also stated that President Ian’s valedictory speech will be on the same day as Club Assembly on 14^th June. It was also stated that David Burchell will be bringing members of his family along on this day, to celebrate his and Joan’s 70^th wedding anniversary.

It was stated that all invitations have been sent out for the joint Presidents’ evening on 28^th June. 140 invitations have been issued but there is capacity for 96 at the Dyke Golf Club so it will all be dealt with on a first come first served basis.

President Ian welcomed new member Philip Evans to the meeting.

President Ian is to handle publicity for the donation of the loop sound system to St John’s Day Centre. Keith Upton to liaise with Nicki Freeman with regard to the specifications of said system.

All arrangements for the upcoming Contact Visit to Beaune are in hand with some members already in France and the majority travelling in the next couple of days. President Ian informed council that gifts for Presidents of Pforzheim and Evreux have been purchased. Both Presidents will be given The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, bearing in mind that next year’s Contact Visit will be based around Stratford-upon-Avon.

Treasurer’s Budget Report – Budget for 2011/12 was explained by Treasurer Bob Hinton and he gave us various deficit figures if the subscription was altered upwards. After quite lengthy discussion it was agreed that a subscription of £120 would be recommended to Members at the AGM tomorrow (24/6)

Payment of £5,000 to building fund for Sussex Cancer Centre proposed by President Ian, £2,500 from the Hove Round Table fund and £2,500 from our own charity account. This was agreed unanimously by Council.

Club Service – Social outings and walks.

John Mainwood organised a very successful Ten Pin Bowling evening at Brighton Marina recently, together with a meal at Frankie and Benny’s restaurant. John also reported that entry forms for the District Ten Pin Bowling and Bowls Competitions have been submitted.

Membership Secretary Michael Nettell reported that we now have 11 Friends of Rotary and one new member, Philip Evans, has been inducted this last month.

Socials outings and walks – Ten Pin Bowling evening at Brighton Marina very successful with a meal to conclude at Frankie and Benny’s entry forms for ten pin bowling and lawn bowls have been submitted

President Ian and Scilla, Frances du Toit, Michael and Margaret Nettell all took part in the recent St John’s Day Centre Charity Walk.

New Generations – Beth Ansell, a RYLA participant from three years ago, who is recovering from a cancer operation and is raising funds for the teenage cancer ward at Royal Marsden is a possible speaker at this club and John Mainwood is to liaise with speaker secretary David Henderson.

I/C President Ralph Harrison reported that he and a number of his officers had attended District Assembly recently.

It was reported that the floor carpet in the hotel dining room appears to be hazardous in places and this is to be reported to the hotel management.

Two raids have been mooted, in conjunction with President Ian’s publicity about the Sussex Cancer Centre to neighbouring clubs. These will be at the Shoreham and Southwick Club on 16^th June and the Brighton Club on a yet to be announced date.

Frances du Toit spoke about a fundraising scheme for schools, which would involve purchasing books for them. Various ways of raising the money were discussed and she also explained that this was an Inner Wheel initiative, to tie in with her year as President of Hove Inner Wheel from next month.

Philip Evans suggested a "Petanque" event, he being a member of the Brighton Petanque Club. Council agreed this would be an excellent idea and Philip is to go ahead with arrangements.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

MAY 2011

President Ian reports:

There are just two months left of the presidential year! During my term, Scilla and I have finally experienced both a District and an RIBI conference! We very much enjoyed our time in April in Dublin, with the fun and supportive company of Club members Ralph, Bob & Peter and their wives Eileen, Ann & Pam. But I was disappointed with elements of the Dublin conference itself. It was expensive and I can understand why attendance has dwindled in recent years. Representation by our local 1250 clubs was quite modest.

The line-up of speakers, presentations and discussion was (in my view) lack-lustre. There was no truly free-ranging speakeasy forum. Questions were asked as to whether the costly apparatus of RIBI is still a necessary layer between RI in the US and our Districts. Answers from members of the panel were repeatedly dodged or fudged! Of course, RI HQ supremo Ray Klinginsmith was predictably diplomatic and non-committal. There was some prolonged bickering over suggested re-definitions of the RIBI small print. That was enough to dent the enthusiasm of any new members present. There was of course the ever-repeated clichéd mantra: "We need more, younger members!" But the recent, much-heralded and heavily-funded national publicity campaign does not seem to have done much to remedy Rotary’s fundamental recruitment weakness.

I had found last September’s District conference rather more relevant, absorbing and engaging than the RIBI one. But I felt that there did seem to be the same frustration at both events - that everybody was being talked at - with little opportunity given for discussion or development of ideas. I believe that each club should feel free to develop their own agendas. We are the customers who pay the subs and also the people responsible for maintaining membership.

For me, the welcome counterbalance to these large scale get-togethers has been the element of simple and amiable sociable contacts over the months between Brighton & Hove and other Sussex clubs. A number of our members have said to me that they feel that there is much more to be gained through local clubs working (and playing) together. Is this something that we can expand on?

New members are far more likely to be attracted through personal contact and word-of-mouth. I repeat what I have said before - I feel that there could be a lot to be gained through more dialogue with other local community groups and organisations who can really value our fellowship and support – in the way that we have always done across our area but to a limited degree. With so many of us retired, we can no longer add to our contacts as easily as we could through work.

We should also encourage our Friends and newer members to get more directly involved. But, to do that, we need to offer more opportunities for their involvement. This is why it is very important to get a variety of attainable ventures off the ground. Equally, the success of the very well-supported monthly walks needs to be bolstered by a range of further outings, concert and theatre visits.

In all this, I am not trying to drag members into a costly or demanding run of commitments or obligations. It is a question of making membership of Hove Rotary appropriate, attractive, interesting, and sociable and still offering some welcome and valued degree of community service.

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR MAY.

3^rd. District Foundation Chairman John Penny is our speaker today and he will give us an update on the work of Rotary Foundation. John was to have spoke to us a few months ago but was stopped by a bomb incident on the Kingsway which entailed all traffic on the A259 coming to a complete halt for many hours.

The vote of thanks was to be in the hands of Foundation Chairman Yveline Milner but unfortunately she is away on holiday. A worthy substitute will undoubtedly be found.

10^th Today’s talk is entitled "Crossing the River" and the speaker is Father Felix Mascarenhas with the vote of thanks being performed by Bob Hinton.

17^th Continuing the religious theme, Rabbi Hersher Rader is our speaker today and his talk has the simple title "Judaism". Frances du Toit will be giving the vote of thanks.

24^th. Today is the occasion of the Club’s AGM when Committee Chairmen and Club Officers will be submitting their annual reports.

31^st. Because there will still be many members taking extended holidays in France after the Beaune Contact Visit it was decided that this will be a "Fellowship Lunch". There will not be the usual sit down lunch but snacks will be available, if needed, from the hotel bar.

CLUB MEETINGS.

5^th April 2011.

21 Present – 20 of our own members, including Friend of Rotary Olive Hamilton and our speaker for today, David Diplock.

5^th April 2011.

It was reported that both Bob Green and Chrissie Tiltman are making slow progress with their illnesses but the good news was that David Burchell is now back home and is expecting to be able to join us again in the near future.

Ian Varley and John Ansell appear to be both bright and cheery but no sign of them coming back yet.

Our speaker today was David Diplock, a past member of this club, and he was here today to tell us all about Real Tennis, the sport of kings.

He started off y saying that he wouldn’t try to explain the rules to us because they were far too complicated.

Lawn tennis grew from real tennis; real tennis was played in castle court yards and was played by kings and their bishops. Court standardised in 13^th century. Apogee was in 17^th century there were 1000 courts in France and when David first started playing he said there were only 39 courts in the whole wide world.

Gave us some idea of how it was played with the aid of a huge drawing of a court, showing where you receive and serve.

One interesting fact was that the service end was called that because when the game first started, the kings or bishops didn’t actually serve the ball themselves but had a servant to do this for them.

It would be absolutely hopeless for me to try to explain the very complex rules to you in this article and I suggest you go on Wikipedia and get the lowdown on this fine old sport.

He told us of the time he was in New York to run the marathon and whilst he was there he booked himself in for a game at a very swanky sports club on 5^th Avenue. James Beaumont, a very large American African, who was in charge at the front counter, refused entry to David’s wife, but as a black man he was unable to bring himself to tell David why this was so.

A very entertaining talk by an excellent speaker, thoroughly enjoyed by all those present.

The vote of thanks was given by Peter Fowle.

12^th April 2011.

I’m sorry but I was in Ireland at the time of this meeting and I have no details, only to say that the speaker was Tom Bishop, who spoke on Nuclear Reactors.

19^th April 2011.

21 present – 14 (yes! 14) members and 7 visitors comprised of a whole party from the local girl guides and brownies. They were led by Division Commissioner Diana Jones together with District Commissioner Veronica Bartup (wife of Ted). Three girl guides; Chelsea, Emily and Zoe together with two brownies; Beth and Shannon.

It was reported that the President of RIBI had made mention of the Hove Club’s Housing Society at the recent National Inner Wheel Conference.

Secretary Frances commented on the fact that she had thoroughly enjoyed her first visit to the RYLA event at Box Hill recently.

International Chairman Peter Fowle requested that people who were going to the Contact Visit in Beaune next month should make sure they have paid their final deposit.

Ken Jones gave publicity to the next walk, taking place in the Barcombe area on Thursday 28^th April/.

President Ian thanked Bob Mulholland, Ralph Harrison and Peter Fowle for their support at the recent RIBI Conference in Dublin.

President Ian to send out entry forms for the St John’s centre walk by email.

He also informed members that the joint Presidents’ night, at the Dyke Golf Club on 28^th June will be a fairly informal one, mainly to keep costs down. Further details on the way shortly.

President Ian introduced the speaker by telling us that his own father was a devoted "Scouter" but Ian himself didn’t "take up the faith".

The party of girl guides and brownies were here today to tell us about their experiences at the International Camp, held to commemorate the movement’s centenary.

Party of girl guides and brownies today -- a year or so ago we put some funding into this organisation for the centenary camp. Following the camp there was a finale, this being held at Hove Town Hall.

All the girls took turns in describing their adventures, Beth being the first and she told us there were guides from all over the world and there was a terrific atmosphere at all times.

She told us that there was a Big Top Circus tent, where lots of activities took pace including disco, bingo and G factor together with self defence classes and surfing.

A visit to Thorpe Park was also part of the activities.

All of the girls acquitted themselves very well today, particularly the two very young girl guides who seemed to have no fear at all of speaking to a room full (well a quarter full!) of people.

It was a great experience from them all and will obviously remain in their memories for a very long time.

All in all a very pleasant presentation and it was a shame that it couldn’t have been enjoyed by a few more members.

The vote of thanks was given by the President.

26^th April 2011.

24 present – 21 of our own members and three Rotary Friends; Brenda Couch, Phyllis Howell and Betty Raggett.

President Ian, and everyone present, was pleased to welcome David Burchell back after his long absence.

Ted Bartup informed members that Ann Eaton is now back home after her fairly lengthy stay in hospital but John doesn’t feel he can leave her alone just yet.

Today was the occasion of the monthly "40 Set" draw and the cheque for £25 was won by Bryan Meakin.

Ken Jones confirmed that the walk, at Barcombe, this coming Thursday will commence at 10.15am and looked forward to seeing a healthy number of people there.

Housing Society Chairman Ted Bartup informed members that the Housing Society tenants often thanked us for their birthday cards and flowers but he would also like to thank those Rotarians who carry out the task of delivering them throughout the year.

Ted Bartup informed members that the housing society tenants often thank us for the flowers and cards they get for their birthdays and he thanked Rotarians who carry out this task throughout the year.

Our speaker today was Paul Beaken, who, once again, stepped into the breach at a very late date to help speaker secretary David out.

The talk today was about a particularly gruesome Brighton murder that took place some 130 years ago.

It was a particularly difficult talk to give because the aforementioned murder was anything but straightforward. The victim was a chap called Isaac Frederick Gold and the perpetrator of the crime was Arthur Lefroy, aka Percy Lefroy Mason.

The murder itself was pretty straightforward; taking place after the murderer had booked a first class ticket on the train from London to Brighton, hoping to find himself a nice rich victim to rob. Unfortunately for him Isaac Frederick Gold was a very rich man, a retired stockbroker, who was also a bit of a miser, never carrying large sums with him at any time.

In fact he was quite paranoid and used to make multiple trips to the bank in one day, each time with a small sum to deposit, rather than one trip with a large deposit.

It was after the murder committed that it all became a bit complicated and Paul went through all the various stages of the investigation by the police, when many, many mistakes were made. In fact it was a miracle that the case ever came to trial because on numerous occasions the police failed to spot very significant clues.

Even when he finally came to trial, Arthur Lefroy was treated very badly by the Judge, who immediately took a dislike to him and almost directed the jury to find him guilty, which they did after deliberating for a very lengthy three minutes!

This talk was a tour de force by Paul, and he took us through the various twists and turns of the whole story in a most skilful way. If you want to see an account of Lefroy’s execution it can be found in the Daily Telegraph of 28^th November 1881.

The vote of thanks was given by Speaker Secretary David Henderson.

REPORT OF CLUB COUNCIL, HELD ON TUESDAY 26^TH APRIL AT BLATCHINGTON WINDMILL.

It was agreed by Council; proposed by President Ian, that we should give Inner Wheel Club of Hove £1,000 annually, subject to review.

President Ian was also keen on maintaining strong links with Inner Wheel.

Bob Hinton, in his absences, submitted accounts, saying that he would pass on details for matching grants to the appropriate person. He reported that District 1250 subscription for 2011/12 is £16.65 and RIBI subscription would be £48.25.

There will be meeting, immediately after Club meeting on 10^th May to approve/disapprove Club subscription for next Rotary year.

Club AGM is to be held on 24^th May and all Club Chairmen and officers should submit written reports for distribution to members two weeks before the AGM.

It was decided that, owing to many members still being in France, that the meeting of 31^st May, originally an evening meeting, would now be a Fellowship meeting, with no served lunch but food will be available for purchasing at the Hotel bar.

Secretary Frances has asked all those members unable to attend Club meetings to let her know by the Sunday evening prior to the meeting if they will not be coming. This is a result of the very poor numbers recently. The hotel is insisting on knowing how many people will be there every Tuesday. This is most certainly a result of the really poor turnout recently when only 14 Rotarians came to lunch, the lowest figure by a very long chalk.

Mention was made of the joint Presidents’ night, to be held on 28^th June. Talks have taken place between President Gill and President Ian and it has been decided that the dress code on the night will be Ladies; smart casual and Men; lounge suits. As the 28^th June is a Tuesday, there will not be a club meeting that day.

Neil Hills is to be the moderator at the Club Assembly on 14^th June.

Sports Officer John Mainwood told members that the District Ten Pin Bowling competition will be held at Crawley on the nights of 14^th 15^th and 16^th June and it was suggested that we should have a ‘fun’ ten pin evening at the Brighton Marina in the near future. Please let John know if you are interested. Partners and spouses welcome! Suggested date is Thursday 12^th May.

Philip Evans’ membership was approved unanimously by Council and it is hoped to induct him this coming Tuesday (3/5)

Philip Long, a guest of President Ian at the recent evening meeting, has decided not to apply for membership because of business commitments but emailed to say that he enjoyed himself immensely on the night.

Equipment – Derek clouting appalled that we are being neglectful in clearing up our equipment after the meeting, having found loudspeakers still in place the following day when attending Probus.

Derek said that Probus has had discussions with Courtland’s management in relation to this and suggested Hove Rotary should do the same.

It was stated that it has gone by the board when in the past the person on cash and the person on care of visitors set out all the equipment before a meeting and put it all away at conclusion of the meeting.

Attendance – has been appalling lately, with as mentioned before, only 14 attending earlier this month.

Frances is to contact regular non-attendees to find out why, although we realise that one or two of them are fairly poorly. Frances also says that the leave of absence book is underused, making it very hard to know how many people are coming.

There was discussion about the provision of the sound system at St John’s day centre. The purchase of this is still going ahead but unable to give the cost, as yet.

Peter Fowle reported to Council that there was still no communication from Evreux President Bernard Roy, despite many telephone calls but Peter has emailed our members details of the correct Ibis Hotel in Beaune, this is the one that is one and a half miles from Beaune town centre.

Ray Tiltman, Frances du Toit, Yveline Milner and John Mainwood were in attendance at the RYLA gala night to see the performance of our four candidates, along with forty other participants, at this most entertaining evening in the Rotary calendar.

Four couples, the Fowles, Mulhollands, Harrisons and Collingtons) attended the RIBI conference in Dublin recently and on the whole enjoyed it very much.

It was agreed that we should start approaching other club in the District with a view to one of our members, or George Deutsch to attend those Clubs to publicise the Sussex Cancer Centre. Date of next Council is the 23^rd May

Visit to RNLI Shoreham.

I have visited recently the New Lifeboat Station Boathouse at Shoreham.

Its well worth a visit, any anyone can go there, weekdays is best, between

10am and 2pm. The New Building and New state of the art Lifeboat (Enid

Collett) cost well over 6 million pounds. For full info. and times go to RNLI

website. As Hove Rotary have had several talks, by the life boatmen, and we have

made donations I think most Rotarians will be interested. -- Ted Bartup.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

APRIL 2011

President Ian reports

It was extremely heartening to see so many people at our very enjoyable evening meeting. Great thanks are due to Speaker Secretary David Henderson for lining up the anecdote-rich speaker Dr Peter Haydn-Smith! We were delighted to welcome a large number of Friends, partners and guests. In fact we were overwhelmed! There were only 22 club members present out of the total of 45 diners. Because of the unexpectedly high number of us, the hotel ran out of puddings and had to quickly rustle up some alternatives! As you will know, there have been some staff changes at Courtland’s and the new team is anxious to look after us as well as possible. In turn, we should co-operate.

Unfortunately some members do not always notify Secretary Frances if they are not able to attend, nor do they always tell her if they are bringing guests. We are lucky that (at the moment) Courtland’s are flexible and do not charge the Club for unused places and try to cope with any overflow. But I feel that we should follow good Rotary practice. I would ask all members to be sure to e-mail or phone our hard-working Secretary to say if they are not coming - and could Friends please contact her if they are going to join us. Frances should be in a position to give accurate final numbers to the hotel on Monday morning.

In memory of Mike Peters, it was agreed at Club Council to fund the purchase of a camera, DVD player and flat screen TV for video production in the craft workshop at the Milton Keynes MacIntyre centre - which is such a fantastic home for Mike’s son, Steve. We have had a very appreciative letter from Emma Killick, the Head of Operations thanking us for our contribution. Emma explained that people with learning disabilities can make great use of video to communicate to others about themselves. She says that our contribution will be a very great asset.

It was also agreed at Council was that we will fund a hearing loop system and hearing aids for the St John’s Centre in Hove. Their manager Nicki Freeman tells me that the RNID (Royal National Institute for Deaf People) will advise on the installation and its costs. Chris Heath and Bob Hinton will follow the project through. Hopefully we will be able to win a matched-funded District Grant as part of our contribution. Otherwise we will be drawing on some of the recently acquired Round Table funds which are dedicated for just such a project as the one at St John’s.

There was a very prompt response by Rotary District 1250 to the Japanese earthquake/tsunami calamity. We were initially asked by District to rally forces to raise funds for water purification boxes. It then turned out this was a false alarm, as the Japanese military reported that they were well-equipped to deal with emergency water supplies. Nevertheless we have now made a contribution and so filled our annual Rotary quota to fund the water box stock in good time to meet other needs.

We should be delighted at our growing membership! We should also be conscious that people are joining Rotary to play an active part in our community. Over the years Adrian Ball has been a great Chair of the Classic Motorcycle Run. Now that we have had to call a halt to the Run, Adrian and his team are looking at new fund-raising and "fun-raising" ideas to boost enjoyment of (and commitment to) membership. I would hope that we can do some brain-storming in the coming weeks.

IAN

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR APRIL.

5^TH. Our speaker today is David Diplock and he will be telling us all about the history and the intricacies of Real Tennis. The vote of thanks will be tendered by Peter Fowle.

12^th. A real heavy duty talk today when Tom Bishop will be, topically, giving us an up to date report of the Japanese Nuclear Power Industry and the vote of thanks will be supplied by Gordon Cummings.

19^th. Rotarian Mike Harvey will be visiting us once again to give us the low down on the forthcoming Hike 4 Hospices Charity Walk with President Ian performing the vote of thanks.

26^th. The title of the talk is "The Way We Live Now". I don’t have details of the speaker thus far.

CLUB MEETINGS.

1^st March 2011

30 present – 27 members and three visitors: Phillip Evans, a guest of President Ian, Olive Hamilton; a new Rotary Friend, and John Head, our speaker for today.

It was reported that Chrissie Tiltman will soon be coming home from hospital and that David Burchell is in hospital but being discharged but is still fairly poorly.

Derek Clouting visited Ian Varley last week, reporting that he was extremely bright and much more mobile but it still will be some time before he can visit Club. Derek also informed us that John Ansell sent greetings to everyone, including our two new members who he knows in conjunction with his work, when he worked.

President Ian gave a warm welcome to Olive Hamilton, who has become a Friend of Rotary.

President Ian was also delighted to be able to induction our two new members; Salah and Edith Sadek. They were both introduced to the club by their sponsor, Yveline Milner, who has been a friend of theirs for many years.

Our speaker today was John Head, a local solicitor, who was here to tell us all about CLEAR International, a charity that is supported by Christian lawyers who support those having problems with the law in third world countries, but in his case mainly in East Africa. John reported on his most recent visit to this vast continent.

He spoke of the injustices that were visited on people who had no way of combating it and should we actively be doing something about it. He said that evidence is on almost every page of the bible that mentions justice or poverty. Learn to live right, see that justice is done, defend widows and orphans and help those in need. John felt that this was not an optional extra and he takes all these statements most seriously. He said that the Lord’s spirit has come upon him because God has chosen him to give good news to poor.

In Africa, it is said that justice is open to all but most Africans don’t know their legal rights and they also lack legal clout

He went on to tell us that all the lawyers from CLEAR International give their time and services for free to put this to right and that those who suffer injustice are invariably the poor who cannot afford a lawyer.

Rather than go into great detail of what the aims are of CLEAR I think it would be better if I direct you to their website; www.clearinternational.org

I think most of us were surprised to hear that, in Kenya, the penalty for robbery with violence is Death and any one charged with this offence is not automatically entitled to the right to free legal aid from the state. Surprisingly, the death penalty for murder is not automatic which means that violent theft is, in the eyes of the Kenya courts, more serious that murder. John told us that Kenyan Christian lawyers are taking this anomaly to the highest courts.

John told us of his last trip to Uganda, which involved a seven hour journey from the airport, and told us of his visit to magistrates’ court where four or five cases of robbery were being heard and he couldn’t recognise the procedure opposed to that in our country.

Apparently there are five types of marriage under Ugandan law. John also held clinics with the local population, speaking on the subject of intestacy, when a will hasn’t been made and what happens to the deceased’s property and belongings after death. He once had a class of about fifty people and only four hands were raised when he asked if anyone had made a will.

This was an excellent talk by a very devote man and certainly opened our eyes up to what goes on in the third world with regard to the prosecution of criminals. He said people in these places were greatly encouraged, particularly when they learn that people such as John had travelled five thousand miles to try to help them.

Christian lawyers will also go into the prisons and perform seminars with the prisoners that results in the prisoners being able to inform the magistrates of their own legal rights.

On one occasion John was walking down the street when he was accosted by a chap who had apparently gained his freedom after listening to John the week before.

Once again I am limited for space but I could have taken up the whole of this bulletin with the facts and figures that John supplied us with, together with the many anecdotes of things that happened to him on his visits to East Africa.

A really good talk by a very devoted Christian lawyer.

The vote of thanks was given by Peter Savage.

8^th March 2011.

22 present – 20 of our own members and two visitors. Philip Evans and Paul Young our speaker for today.

President Ian was saddened to inform members that Shirley Ansell, after a long illness, has passed away and sent the Club’s condolences to John. It was also announced that the funeral will be private and for family members only. Donations for the Martlets, who have given her terrific support and care these last months.

President Ian reported on the joint club’s night at the Dyke Golf Club, with the news that our Club’s cabaret act, performed by Bob and Sheila Hinton, aided by Ralph and Eileen Harrison, had been voted the best on the night and the sum of £245, collected on the night was received and will be donated to the Sussex Cancer fund, in conjunction with Inner Wheel.

Hilary Ball sent a message to say that she was "overwhelmed" with the support of members on

Paul Young, representing Off the Fence Trust was our speaker today. Paul has been here several times in the last few years and is always very welcome. Today was an update on what has been happening with his charity.

Newspapers mention that charity sector is being badly hit. He feels it is one of the most exciting periods and we should get ourselves very involved in The Big Society. Gave us a brief resume of his life before finishing up in charity work some 25 years ago.

Worked for a local church until 1994 before he read about the amount of people dying on our streets in Brighton and Hove.

He approached council to see what could be done, and he said let’s get off the fence, hence the name, and decided to do something positive.

First year they had a budget of £3,000 in 1997 and this year the turnover is £300,00S and there are lots of people on the waiting list for volunteers.

I won’t go into great detail on the talk because Paul has spoken to us about three times over the last couple of years and most of you are familiar with the work that Off the Fence does.

If you want to learn more about this really worthwhile organisation I suggest you log on to:

www.offthefence.org.uk

There was great interest in the talk and this was reflected in the number of questions posed by members.

The vote of thanks was performed by Ray Tiltman, who concluded by giving Paul a cheque for £15,000 from the PortHove Trust.

15^th March 2011.

25 present – 22 of our own members and two new Friends of Rotary; Betty Raggett and Phyllis Howell together with Bob Lacey, our speaker for today.

Members were informed that David Burchell has been admitted to a nursing home in Dyke Road Ave.

Yveline Milner has made a fresh batch of jams and marmalades and was available for sale today.

Information about the District 1250 Conference, being held in Eastbourne in October is available. Please see Secretary Frances if interested.

There was news of two walks; firstly on the 1^st May, Seaford Martello RC, a walk from Seaford to Eastbourne and secondly a 5 mile walk along Brighton and Hove seafront on behalf of St. John’s Day Centre.

President Ian then announced that a Club walk in the Horsed Keynes area will take place on the 24^th of this month. George Robinson is the man to get in touch with if you are interested.

President Ian said that we have all been moved by the tragedy in Japan but nothing yet heard from District but Peter Fowle has heard from the shelter boxes organisation and it was decided at this meeting we should send money for a shelter box immediately.

President Ian was also tickled enough to read out the following extract from today’s Times;

"Definition of a Committee – A group of people who individually can do nothing but collectively decide that nothing can be done".

Bob Lacey, our speaker for today was here today to tell us all about the world of espionage and the title of his talk was "Russian Secrets and Spies.

Bob has had a multitude of jobs but his most prestigious post was as an advisor to Margaret Thatcher in her time at No10.

Bob received a telephone call from Downing Street, asking him to come along to see Mrs Thatcher. It was his first visit to No 10 and he said he was whisked through a long corridor and shown into a small ante room. Before he had time to read the Readers’ Digest on the table the Prime Minister walked in and said "hello Bob" and then she proceeded to ask him to be her advisor on countries in the Baltic Sea area. "What country would you like to be responsible for" she said and Bob said he wouldn’t mind the Austro-Hungary empire but apparently one of the last Emperor’s grandsons was handling that particular region. She then asked him Bulgaria and Romania would interest him and he said "no" intimating that these two countries were "basket cases".

He then offered to oversee the Baltic States and she then looked at him with a beaming smile, and he was then her advisor on this area for the next five years or so. Bob then said that little by little he made lots of friends in the region and was able to stay with their families rather than hotels, which were under the control of the various secret services. One couple informed him that you couldn’t imagine what it was like under the rule of the communist regimes. They said that it was even illegal for someone to own a map of their own country. Young people were not allowed to debate subjects in schools in case they were seen to be contrary. You cannot imagine that if immigrant women wore the colour of their national flag they were arrested. In one of his reports back to base he made the following statement "This guy is a crook but he was our crook."

Bob then moved on to the happenings of modern day Russian spies, much too complex for me to report on in this bulletin

He then went onto the happenings of modern day Russian spying, much too complex for me to report on here.

An amazing talk by a real man of the world, with many amusing anecdotes about his time behind the Iron Curtain.

There were many questions asked at the conclusion of his talk.

The vote of thanks was given by Bryan Meakin.

22^nd March 2011.

24 present – 23 of our own members and our speaker Adrian Pennington.

Secretary Frances reminded members that next week’s meeting will be in the evening 6.30pm for 7.

Greetings from Rotary Club of Burgess Hill were given by Paul Beaken, who was the speaker there a couple of weeks ago.

George Robinson asked for names of last minute participants in the walk at Horsted Keynes this coming Thursday.

Our speaker today was Adrian Pennington who started off by circulating small laminated cards with details of what he was all about. Adrian is a Performance and Counselling Psychologist who specialises in resolving conflicts and much more. Adrian has helped countless top flight performers; executives, senior managers, entertainers, politicians and International athletes.

The whole of Adrian’s methods are based on the 4C formula which is: Calmness + Concentration = Competence leading to Confidence.

He said that calmness is the key, particularly in tasks such as taking one’s driving test.

Adrian then led us all in an exercise, one that he told us he performed with year 10 and 11 female students previously.

The first part of the test was to close our eyes and country how many breathes one take.

Part two was a repetition of part one but this time we were asked to pause between each breath and then count.

First part was to close your eyes and count how many breaths you take.

Part two this time breath in, pause, then breathe out, pause and breathe in again.

The whole idea of this exercise was to control ones breathing because he said that people who control their breathing better inhibit the anxiety messages to the brain. The benefit of controlling ones breathing properly is that it calms your body and you are much less stressful

There was a recent study of fire-fighters that proved that the best of these were the ones who had the best breathing rates, i.e. slower.

If we breathe faster it is a message from our body to our brain to be on alert.

People who control their breathing better inhibit the anxiety messages to the brain.

Winter sports biathlons – golf - by breathing properly you calm your body and get less stressful.

The vote of thanks was given by, after he controlled his breathing, Bob Mulholland.

29^th March 2011.

45 Present – 22 of our own members plus partners with guests including Bob and Dorothy Allen, guests of David Henderson, Inner Wheel President Gill Langley, Nicholas Woodthorpe, here with Tony and Joan, Philip and Ann Long, guests of President Ian and Dr. Peter Haydn-Smith our speaker together with his wife, Geraldine.

Adrian and Hillary Ball, together with Ted and Veronica Bartup attended in full Arab regalia to celebrate their recent holiday in Jordan and Egypt. Adrian said he would have brought greetings from the Cairo club but he couldn’t cross Cairo High Street because of the sheer density of the traffic.

Today was the occasion for the "40 Set" draw and the cheque for £25 was won by Ted Bartup.

International Chairman Peter Fowle brought members up to date on the Beaune contact visit.

John Mainwood is seeking a place in a car for the journey to Beaune, informing us that he already has a lift back to the UK.

There was a raffle this evening for the prizes that Bob and Sheila Hinton, together with Ralph and Eileen Harrison, won at the recent club get together at the Dyke Golf Club. The raffle raised £80.

Dr. Peter Haydn-Smith our speaker for today, who is a criminal psychiatrist, and specialises in assessing the criminally insane, working at Broadmoor, Maudsley and Bethlem Hospitals.

He posed the question "Are they criminals or insane? Are they fit to be put on trial?"

He also rhetorically asked, "Why do people do such weird and awful things?" He told us that before he became a psychiatrist he was a dentist but working with patients who had dental phobias led him to study psychiatry.

He then went on to give us an outline of the history of forensic psychiatry, which first started during the reign of Henry II. He also explained the various degrees of places of imprisonment for the criminally insane.

The bulk of the talk was pretty dry stuff but the last ten minutes of his talk was very amusing with anecdotes about his various "clients".

Ralph Harrison stepped in at the last moment to perform the vote of thanks in the absence of John Austin.

BRIEF REPORT ON CLUB COUNCIL 28^TH MARCH 2011.

David Henderson reported that speakers booked for every week but forgot that we had Club AGM and Assembly during this period. AGM is to be held on 10^th May and Club Assembly will be 14^th June.

Treasurer Bob gave his quarterly report on our finances, going through various items in budget figures, pointing out that there was only £25 budgeted for speakers’ and guests’ lunches for the remainder of this Rotary Year. The usual annual donations of £1,000 to Rotary Foundation and £600 to the Polio Challenge were approved.

£250 was donated to the RNID, this from the money recently given to us by Hove Round Table.

It was reported that the International Hospitality Fund has a reasonable amount in the account for next year’s contact visit in this country.

The Community Account is looking "reasonably healthy".

There was a meeting with the Macmillan people, together with George Deutsch where it was essentially agreed on various actions to form a team together to publicise this project in other clubs.

It was also agreed that we will send a donation to the McIntyre fund to pay for a camera, DVD player and a TV. This is the organisation that looks after Stephen Peters on a full time basis.

It was stated that there were two or three sponsored walks in the pipeline

two sponsored walks in pipeline, firstly for the Seaford Martello Club and secondly one for St John’s Day Centre in Hove.

Sports Officer John Mainwood reported that all teams are out of this year’s District competitions.

Two water survival boxes have been purchased at the cost of £150 per box.

Membership – Mike Nettell absent but Philip Evans application is progressing.

A gentleman by the name of Philip Long has approached President Ian with a view to membership and he will be attending, with his wife at the evening meeting tomorrow (29/3).

There was concern over the security of our equipment at Courtland’s with the room often appearing to be open. Paul Beaken volunteered to set up equipment before each club meeting, whenever possible. I/C President Ralph is to set out his ideas for this problem for his year in office.

Publicity – An article, written by President Ian, appeared on the front page of the Portslade local paper.

There have been advertisements in The Argus and on local radio stations as a part of the national publicity initiative by RIBI.

It was agreed that the Club would pay the full amount, £2,900, for the purchase of a hearing loop for St John’s Day Centre.

Treasurer Bob reported that we hope they can produce a project for us to apply for a simplified grant from district which would be £500 and this would be matched by this club.

Stroke awareness day is hoped to be on Saturday, 9^th April, subject to agreement of Drs. Mike and David.

International Chairman Peter Fowle reported that he has had no joy from Evreux as to arrangements for those taking caravans to Beaune for the contact visit. There was also no news on how much money has to be sent in advance and no confirmation of the agenda for the visit has been sent.

It appears that there is some enthusiasm for next year’s contact visit is held in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

A dress designer acquaintance of Yveline Milner’s said she would like to put on a charity fashion show for Rotary Foundation.

It was stated that RYLA weeks is the 11^th-15^th April and that the customary Friday evening gala is normally attended by the President and others from the Club. This year’s even has a new venue, which is High Ashurst outdoor activity centre, near Box Hill. Date and time of next month’s Club Council is Tuesday 26^th at 6pm, Blatchington Windmill.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

MARCH 2011

President Ian reports

Fellowship in February was obviously clouded by the sad passing of Mike Peters after his long and troubling illness. What was so cheering was the huge attendance at the memorial service and the wake afterwards - not only by family and Rotarians but also from the various other areas of Mike’s life which he had so committed himself to, including biking of course! As he had so much wanted us to, we celebrated his life exchanging happy memories.

My thanks to SVP Ralph for minding the shop in my absence. Scilla and I gratefully soaked up some Canary Islands sun in the wake of ‘flu. We now look forward to more Club strolls in the months to come and hopefully, some other outings. I am anxious that everyone should pitch in with ideas for club activities. What should we be doing?

Recently there was a meeting in Worthing of District clubs to roll out the well-funded membership promotion campaign and hopefully Rotary will get some useful publicity in the coming weeks. George Deutsch and I were given some time at the meeting to promote the Sussex Macmillan Cancer Support Centre and suggest to clubs that joint Rotary association with the project across West and East Sussex could add valuable potential to member recruitment. We are due to meet with Macmillan to discuss a series of promotional raids to other Sussex clubs over the months to come.

Thinking about new members brings me neatly on to the excellent news that we are welcoming into the Club two new Rotarians. Husband and wife, Dr. Salah and Edith Sadek are old friends of Yveline Milner, who introduced them to us. Salah’s career speciality has been Materials Science (please ask him to explain more!). Edith was a Senior Nurse Manager in operating theatres. I was delighted to have a chat with them on our return from holiday and I am sure that they will bring great fellowship and enthusiasm with their membership.

Meanwhile, we continue to add new Friends of Rotary who will join us from time to time. Three ladies who would like to keep contact with the Club that they and their husbands were so committed to for so long to are: Brenda Couch, Olive Hamilton and Phyllis Howell. Vincent Petrarca is husband of Inner Wheel member Leonie and would like to join us when he can.

Do you know of someone who might like to have an initial informal association with Rotary as a Friend? If so, please let Michael Nettell know. We hope that, among our growing number of Friends, we will find new full members of the Club!

IAN

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR MARCH

1^st. Our speaker today is John Head representing "CLEAR International", an organisation that comprises of lawyers who give free legal services to those who need it in many parts of East Africa, and the vote of thanks will be given by Peter Savage.

8^th. Paul Young, quite a regular speaker at our Club, will be bringing us up to date on the happenings of "Off the Fence" and the vote of thanks will be made by Ray Tiltman.

15^th Our speaker today is Bob Lacey and the title of his talk is quite intriguing because it is entitled "Russian Secrets and Spies". The vote of thanks will be in the capable hands of Bryan Meakin.

22^nd. "Self Management" is the title of today’s talk which will be given by Adrian Pennington with the vote of thanks in the safe custody of Bob Mulholland.

29^th. One of our four evening meetings this year and the Dr. Peter Haydn-Smith will be telling us all about "Vampires" with the reply for the club being given by John Austin.

CLUB MEETINGS.

1^st February 2011

28 present – 21 of our own members and seven visitors including Dr. And Mrs Sadak guests of Yveline Milner and a party of four former members of the now defunct Hove Round Table and they were: Dennis Faulds, Ian Hill, David Keeling and David Nissen. Last but not least, there was our speaker for today, Marion Standing.

It was announced by Senior Vice Ralph Harrison, standing in for President Ian, that Club Council has granted David Burchell retrospective leave of absence to continue for a further few months until he was fit enough to attend club meetings.

Members were also informed that Chrissie Tiltman has suffered a broken hip and Ray will not be able to attend for some time. It was also announced that Ann Eaton has had a hip replacement operation and she is recovering extremely well.

Adrian Ball reported that Mike Peters is in some pain and waiting for doctor to call. Paul Thrasher reported that Ian Varley is in very good spirits and seems to be getting around and is even talking of returning to club in the near future.

Today was the occasion for the "40 Set" draw and this month’s cheque for £25 was won by David Burchell.

This was followed by a formal handing over of the Charity Fund of Hove Round Table and this took the form of a cheque for £16,638.48 which is to be used specifically for the elderly and needy of Hove.

Treasurer Bob Hinton thanked them for their very generous donation to our charity funds and said that there would be no trouble placing this money because of the many elderly and needy of Hove.

Our speaker today was Marion Standing and the title of her talk was "The Bluffers Guide to Biodiversity".

She told us that she was used to speaking to groups because she does lots of speaking with the Mothers’ Union.

Marion is a vicar’s wife and her husband is vicar of St Mary de Haura Church in Shoreham. The church is a Norman origin and was one of the first to be built in this area after the Norman Conquest. It used to be a huge building until it lost its nave many centuries ago.

Marion explained to us that starting in 2003, with the 900^th anniversary celebrations of St Mary de Haura, there has been celebrations every year, which coincides with the Adur Arts Festival and there is a different theme for each year’s events. In 2010 it was suggested that biodiversity should be celebrated. Mary said that she had no idea what this involved but after great research she learnt quite a bit about it.

A lot of the work was done in conjunction with the geography teacher at Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton, a leading light in biodiversity, who encourages children throughout Brighton and Hove to get involved with this very complex subject. A subject too complex for me to start explaining to you.

This was an excellent talk by a very enthusiastic lady, and if you really want to know more about what she was talking about I suggest you visit the church website on www.stmarydehaura.org.

The vote of thanks was performed by Adrian Ball.

8^th February 2011.

26 present – 21 of our own members, one Rotarian visitor, Stephen Neiman from Brighton and Hove Soiree and not least Past President of this Club together with four non-Rotarian guests; Salem and Edith Salek, Graham Hill our speaker for today and James Dean, one of our Friends of Rotary.

The meeting opened with the following message, spoken by President Ian:

"As many of you may now know, Mike Peters died on Sunday at the Royal Sussex County Hospital after a long, very, very tough period fighting a rare form of cancer. Mike became my first, truly great friend since we first came to Brighton over 30 years ago and it was he who first introduced me to Rotary. He was an extremely loyal, very active and dedicated member of our Club since joining in 1973. He was our President in 1998, made a Paul Harris Fellow and was the founder of the Club’s phenomenally successful, nationally known Classic Motorcycle Run – which he organised for 13 years. Above all he was a great, supportive and cheerful mate to us all. He loved to share a good joke, a pint of real ale and a lively trad jazz bash. In his business career, he showed remarkable pioneering foresight as a leader in the rapidly changing hi-tech world of office equipment. The Peters are true family folk. Mike and Trish have been fine parents of Steve and Claire and have been hugely rewarded as grandparents of Claire’s growing family far away in China. In retirement Mike devoted great energies as a church warden and to his much-loved classic bikes and their caravan. But then came the time when he had to bravely bear the long and agonising period of all sorts of treatment to try to overcome the cancer which had spread through him relentlessly over several years. He and Trish fought together – but sadly the battle was finally lost on Sunday. Mike’s death is such a great loss, and I would ask you to think of him now for a minute or so.

This message was followed by a minute’s silence by all present.

It was reported that Ian Varley and John Ansell are both "bright as nine pence" but still not up to attending meetings. It was reported that Chrissie Tiltman has had a hip replacement and Ray is unable to attend meetings for the next few weeks. David Burchell is still fairly poorly.

There is to be a meeting of the Motorcycle Rally committee shortly and it will be reporting back to Club.

Our speaker today was Graham Hill, formerly a very high ranking Sussex police officer but now involved, since 1996, with Victim Support.

Graham Hill, our speaker for today, was here to tell us all about victim support.

He started off by telling us that he came back to Brighton as a Detective Inspector in 1984, just at the time of the Grand Hotel bombing and the investigation of this took over his life for the next couple of years.

He felt that his move, on retirement, to Victim Support was quite a natural thing. He said the amount of time he gave to victims when he was a police officer was minimal because most of his time was taken up with trying to find the perpetrators of the crimes. He has since found that the amount of time given to victims is about 5% with the other 95% given to the criminals.

Contact with victims of crime was only the initial part of the investigation asking what happened.

Victim support, as the name suggests, is solely for victims, and does not involve itself with the perpetrators. Special rooms are now set up for victims, witnesses and others in the magistrate and crown courts, to avoid intimidation among other things. (Continued)

Victim support is obliged to look after defence witnesses as well as those for the prosecution.

They normally only become very involved if the crime is serious, such as a serious assault or a murder. He likened the aftermath of the crime to the Grand National when various walls appear to the victims’ families, such as the remand hearing, the inquest and then the trial itself.

See victim support website for further details.

He spoke of the help they gave to rape victims, both male and female, particularly with attendance at the aids clinics around. 47% of all members are domestic related.

They deal with 40,000 crimes annually. There are about 250 volunteers supporting victim support.

They are all trained, with frequent updates on their roles.

Then went on to hate crimes – not keen on the name. Usually specific to minority groups, particularly the disabled. When talking to any of these, they will tell you that they suffer prejudice and hate on a daily basis. Often get aggravation when trying to get wheelchair on buses.

He told us of a chap with learning disabilities who also had a facial disfigurement, who suffered serious abuse from schoolchildren, particularly when travelling on buses. This particular fellow had cigarettes stubbed out on him and even had coca cola poured over him. This came to the attention of Victim Support and the matter was passed on to the police.

Graham told us that even though there is financial support from local and national government they still need a further £20,000 a year to keep going and this is raised from local charitable organisations.

A very informative talk by an excellent speaker and this was reflected by the number of questions posed at the conclusion of his talk.

The vote of thanks was given by Ken Jones.

15^th February 2011

22 present – 20 members and two Rotarian visitors Steve Grint and Tony Johnson from Brighton Soiree.

John Eaton reported that Anne looks like she will be in hospital for the long term and said her mobility will never be very good but will face up to that once she comes home.

It was reported that Chrissie Tiltman has been moved to rehabilitation but slow progress is being made.

It was announced that owing to the funeral for Mike Peters, the walk arranged for the 17^th February has been postponed until the 24^th.

It was announced that the funeral for Mike Peters is being held this coming Thursday at Poynings Church at 2.30pm and everyone was invited to join the family afterwards at Corpus Christi Hall, Church Lane, Henfield.

Our own Clive Chapple was our speaker today and he was here to tell us all about his early life in Shoreham-by-Sea.

He made mention of speaking to the club about eighteen months or so ago when he spoke about his national service career. This talk covers the time before that, including his father’s time. His father came from a very large, and poor, family in London.

I must say it was most fascinating and once again Clive’s portrayal of life in Shore in those pre war days was spot on, he painting a most vivid picture in all of our minds as to what conditions were like.

He told us all about his father’s upbringing, who managed to fight his way out of extreme poverty and by dint of hard work and good manners finishing up as owner of his own business. Before this, his dad had been shipped off to Canada, together with his younger brother where they both worked on a farm, performing as a lumberjack among other things. In fact his brother remained in Canada and became a farmer. Clive’s dad came back to London and eventually went into the army during the First World War, joining the 19^th London Infantry Regiment, primarily because they had the best designed cap badge, and after three months training found himself in the trenches in France and finished up as Regimental Sergeant Major when he was demobbed. In the meantime he had lost an arm, this having been blown off in battle.

He had an artificial arm fitted at Roehampton Hospital, where limbs are still manufactured and fitted to this day.

He then unsuccessfully looked for work in London before coming down to Brighton. He was taken on by the boss of Fryer’s Furniture after proving that he could handle the heavy work involved despite his artificial limb. In fact the test involved him carrying a load meant for two people, which he did with ease.

Following on from this he managed to buy a house near Aldrington Halt and moved his wife down from London. They then purchased a house in Shoreham, where Clive has lived up to the present date.

Clive continued by telling us all about is adventures in Shoreham at this time, including trips to Shoreham Airport on a regular basis, pointing out to us that there is even a painting of a bunch of school boys watching the planes at the airport.

Clive told us all about the schools he went to in Shoreham, culminating in his time at Shoreham Grammar School.

As I said earlier, it was really fascinating taking in all the verbal pictures that Clive painted and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Unfortunately I am limited in the space I can hardly give his talk justice.

The vote of thanks was given by President Ian.

22^nd February 2011.

24 present – all our own members.

It was reported that Ron Loadsman is in a lot of pain with his shoulder and that Bob Green is still slowly on the mend. It was remarked that everyone was pleased to see Ian Varley looking so well at the function following Mike Peters' funeral.

Jams from Yveline. Housing society meeting next Tuesday after lunch and council at 6pm on Monday.

24 – All our own members.

President Ian commented on the wonderful service and turnout for Mike Peters at Poynings Church remarking that people from all aspects of his life were in attendance.

Today was the occasion for the "40 Set" draw and the cheque for £25 was won by Ian Varley.

John Penney, representing District Foundation was to have been our speaker for today but had to turn back because of traffic jams caused by a bomb scare on Kingsway, Hove.

President Ian was very grateful to Paul Beaken, who, with hardly any notice at all, stepped in as substitute speaker.

Paul’s talk was entitled "The Art of Coarse Teaching" and what a talk it was too, he giving us a very light-hearted and very amusing talk on this particular skill.

He started off by reminding us that there were many subjects under the "coarse" genre, including tennis, golf and fishing.

Paul said he was reminded of this subject when he went to Australia with Bob Mulholland a few years ago and was particularly impressed by the Aussies mastery of coarse barracking.

He told us of his tutor at teacher training college, telling the male teachers to marry one of the other lady pupils on the course but old the girls to avoid the chaps, because they wouldn’t be able to keep them in the manner they wanted to.

He knew from a very early stage that the difference between university education and teacher training courses meant that he realised that the whole class were going to be coarse teachers.

When he did eventually get to teach in a proper school he realised that he would never be let near the brightest kids on the block, this privilege being only for heads of departments.

Paul said he had trouble finding a syllabus to teach his class and was told by more experienced teachers just to try to keep the pupils happy.

His school even went to the trouble of installing a telephone in each classroom, this being the hotline to the deputy head. Any problems with a pupil, the teacher rang the deputy head and the pupil involved left the room immediately to receive his punishment from the deputy head.

It soon dawned on him that the best way to get onside with the pupils was the pick out the smallest pupil for punishment and always avoid one of the more popular pupils. He once asked a pupil named Cambridge to open the window for him and Cambridge said "sod off". Paul rang through and told deputy head that he had been told to sod off, so sent Cambridge along, the little lad went off happily enough. Paul also noticed that one of the smells coming from his pupils was caused by a number of them bring ferrets along as company, as strange as that may seem. Cambridge came back after two minutes, tears in his eyes, caused by three hits of the cane on each hand. Cambridge went back to his seat, and miraculously all the feet came back off the chairs and papers were put away. This also meant that the rest of the year was fairly plain sailing, albeit with no communication between Paul and his class.

Paul also taught at the Royal Masonic School, where he found no problem with absenteeism because all the boys were boarders. It was nothing like that of his other school because absenteeism was rife. He said it took an amazing amount of time to get through the roll call every morning, which suited him because it left less time to try to teach them anything. Paul said he got wasting time down to a fine art, and usually started lessons by recapping on the previous lesson in this subject.

The more I listened to the talk I realised, or hoped, that a lot of it was "tongue in cheek" because I felt that if this was an account of a run of the mill class at school, no one would ever get educated.

All in all a really good talk, and judging by the remarks I have heard since, much appreciated by everyone present.

The vote of thanks was given by Yveline Milner.

BRIEF REPORT ON CLUB COUNCIL 28^TH FEBRUARY 2011.

Treasurer Bob Hinton reported that cheque for £16,638.00 received from Hove Round Table at a recent meeting of the Club, confirming that the money should only be spent on the need and/or elderly people of Hove. He also felt that we should not let this money lie dormant for too long and that we should aim to spend it within the next three years.

Amount of £200 agreed for Victim Support, Graham Hill having spoken to us recently.

An appeal, through Inner Wheel, for Lucy Robinson, a Guide who is going to Costa Rica at a cost of £2,500 was granted and the sum of £100 was given.

£100 was also the agreed donation for John Head of CLEAR International, who is speaking to us at Club tomorrow (1/3) Balances for Community Fund and Charity Fund are £5,000 and £30,000 respectively.

Fifth Tuesday evening in May in doubt because of contact visit "stragglers and suggested we may have the evening meeting on 7^th June.

Ralph Harrison is to organise various walks, including walk around Arun and Wey canal near Guildford.

Membership Services – Two new members being inducted on Tuesday 1^st March. We now have seven Friends of Rotary and three widows of past members have shown interest in becoming friends.

Phil Evans, prospective member, is to attend club 1/3.

Equipment officer – Council decided on purchase of bunch of flowers (or pot plant) for Zena of Courtland’s who will be serving us at lunch for the last time tomorrow (1/3).

Publicity - Michael Nettell and President Ian working on an article for the Portslade sheet.

Council agreed donation to Macintyre Charity of £1,000 after proposal from Community Chairman Chris Heath. This is in memory of Mike Peters, because Steven, his son, has been looked after by this charity for most of his life. It was felt that it would be a good idea to contact charity and ask them if there was anything tangible we could buy with this sum of money.

Little Lamb Parent and toddler group in Hangleton – donation of £250 approved.

Arrangements for stroke awareness day to be finalised with Doctors Henderson and Barley. Paul Beaken to assist Chris Heath in this matter.

Adrian ball mentioned that he had received much correspondence from former participants in the motorcycle rally most of them who are upset at the demise of the event, some even offering to run it for us. Most of them said it was the best event of its kind. Cheque for £20 was also enclosed by one gentleman.

President Ian and Senior vice Ralph Harrison appointed this Club’s voting delegates for the upcoming RIBI Conference in Dublin.

Report of Motorcycle rally committee -- It was thought it would be a good idea to ask permission from Brighton and Hove Albion to see if we could collect money for charity at the Sussex Senior cup final on 16^th July. This is the first match scheduled to be played at the American Express Community Stadium, Falmer.

Next meeting of Council will be held on 28^th march 2011.

SELECTION OF MESSAGES FROM MOTORCYCLE RALLY PARTICIPANTS.

Dear Adrian – I was saddened to learn from your recent letter of the demise of the annual Engineerium Run. This was always a little special in that it was an early in the year event, held in a most appropriate setting and apart from the enjoyment of the run we got a meal as well! Ok, Blatchington Mill was a little different but still most pleasant. I take your comment about advancing senility of Rotarians, it happens to vintage motorcyclists too and at 82 I have to be selective about when and how far I can ride. At least I can still start the pre-war 350 Sunbeam I’ve had for 40 years – at present. I also wish Rotary success in your latest very worthwhile project. I look back with affection for a very special event – W.D.Pile.

Dear Adrian – So sorry to receive your letter regarding the demise of the classic run. I have enjoyed 5 or 6 of these and enjoyed them all. For me it was the start of the riding season. I fully understand your reason, it must have been difficult to arrange and marshal but you folk did a good job.

I enclose a cheque for £20 to put toward your project – Clive Willis.

To Adrian Ball – Rotary Club of Hove – Thank you for your letter about the Engineerium Motorcycle Run. I’m sorry that you are unable to continue this run which has been a key feature of our riding year. Understandably, with the unfortunate death of Mike Peters, this has become difficult to continue. I send best wishes to you in your future work – John Hawthorn.

Dear Adrian – I just received your note about the Engineerium Run coming to an end and wanted to send my thanks for running these in the past and whilst it’s a shame they are no more, I appreciate the effort that they must demand from all involved. I had just been discussing with a friend who introduced them to me what a great event they were and whilst an owner of a modern bike I really enjoyed seeing all the old bikes running together. I only attended three of the rides but all were great, the atmosphere was very chilled and friendly even when the weather was less than perfect. Thanks very much and best of luck for the future – Simon Llewellyn.

Dear Adrian – Thank you for your letter regarding the discontinuation of the classic motorcycle run. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Rotary Club for the fantastic organisation of these runs over the last 13 years. Always enjoyable and always with a good feed at the end. I have just been informed of the death of Mike Peters after his long battle with cancer. A great loss, he was such a nice man. Good luck with all future fund raising events. – Peter Baker.

Dear Adrian – Thank you for the letter explaining why the Rotary Club cannot continue with the Engineerium Run. I’ve been to all except the very first (nobody told me that year!) and have enjoyed each one greatly – the volunteers have always worked hard and been unfailingly pleasant and courteous, which has made the day go really well. I’m sure that many other riders will both miss the meeting and understand the pressures have become too much. Once again, thank you and everyone who has volunteered and made the occasions special. My only regret is that I never made it to no.1 in my class: D2 and D3, but never D1! – Ian Kearey.

Dear Adrian – We are very sorry to hear that the Classic Motorcycle Run is to stop. It was always a very enjoyable event and will be sadly missed. Meeting old friends and going on the mystery runs.

Is it at all possible to give us some idea of how much has been raised over the years? On the 27^th February we have a charity run and would like to be able to give the clubs a total for the magazines and web sites.

Also on Remembrance Sunday when a lot of the people who attended the Classic Motorcycle Run, ride up on their bikes. Passing comment as they leave is usually "See you at the Engineerium Run". Thank you for all the hard work – Bob Pullen.

Dear Adrian – Thank you for your letter. Couldn’t the Classic Motorcycle Run continue, if not in the same form? Meet and depart from the school, at say between 9am and 11am, in our own time. Just using the toilets. We will have had breakfast before we left home and can stop where and when we wish, if needed. We could do a previous run, for say £5-£10. Leaving over a two hour period should make things easier. We need not return to the school to finish. We should not need any Marshals, as we have to manage when we are on our own. – R Walter.

Dear Adrian – I was so sorry to receive your letter advising termination of the Classic Motorcycle Run.

The event will be sorely missed by me and friends in the VMCC as it was always so well organised, but I suppose that all good things must come to an end and I wish you every success with your new venture.

My grateful thanks to all your members who gave their time over the years for us motorcyclists.

Bob Gardner.

Hi Adrian – I hear with great sadness about the death of Mike and the cancellation of the Engineerium Run. I did not know Mike, but I think he was the guy who also spoke on the Tannoy system at all of the three of

the runs that I have done. I’m sure all of the bikers who took part over the years will share my thoughts and wish all the best to Mike’s family.

Does the run really have to be cancelled? I’m sure that most of the people who take part will be disappointed and would still love to do the run. I know these things take months of dedicated organisation by key people, but surely someone could step in to take over from Mike?

From my experience, most of the charity bike rides I have done are quite simple, often with no food provided or at most a cup of tea. Most bikers will gladly make a donation to charity and go on a ride with friends for the social and riding aspects alone, so I guess it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s a win-win for biker and charity.

Hope something can be done. I can possibly help with some aspects, but couldn’t manage full time support.

Matt Marchant.

Dear Sir – Thanks you for your letter. I am sorry to hear that you have decided to close the Bike Run. I have done 12 of them, it was always something me and some friends had always looked forward to.

The way it was organised and how well we were looked after made it a good, nay very good, day out with plenty of bike chatter before and after. We will all miss it very much. I am a member of a small group of bikers who organise a Charity Event once a year and I can well appreciate the hard work you put into it. Again, a big thank you for all you and your fellow members for giving us so much pleasure over the years. Good luck to you in your future projects – Roland Hill.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE
BULLETIN

February 2011

Senior Vice President’s Message.

Following all the celebrations at Christmas I expected the new year in Rotary to start out slowly.

Ian's absence allowed me the pleasure of presiding over the first meeting of the year when Paul Beaken, using many of the skills of the teacher, controlled and enthralled us with his talk on the police.

However, he narrowly failed to stop David Henderson shouting out , doubtless if David had put up his hand Peter would have "let him go"

January is the month we test out our resolutions. The first was a walk I organised close to home with the aim of taking a little exercise and then putting back the ounces with a pub lunch washed down with plenty of chat..

None of the views that I promised could be seen because of the mist but as we passed Oldlands Mill Fred Maillardet popped out and offered us a guided tour and a full description of the engineering and restoration.

I shall organise the next walk on Thursday 24^th February before handing back to Ken Jones.

We are invited to a joint meeting of all the Rotary clubs in the area at the Dyke golf club on 3^rd March. Please come if you can, I feel that as our numbers decrease and our average age increases we should be ready to combine with other clubs to become a stronger unit both to promote fellowship and allow us to do more for the community.

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR FEBRUARY

1^st. Our speaker today is Marion Standing and the subject of her talk is "International Year of Biodiversity". The vote of thanks will be given by Derek Clouting.

8^th.Frances Amos is to talk to us today about the Victim Support Scheme and the vote of thanks will be proposed by Ken Jones.

15^th Our own Clive Chapple is speaking to us today and the title of his talk is "Life As It Was" with the vote of thanks being made by President Ian.

22^nd. A visit from District today with Foundation Chairman John Penny bringing us up to date with news from Rotary Foundation.

RADIO BROADCAST.

Keith Upton has kindly produced 4 CDs of the recent programme, which run for two consecutive weeks on Radio 4. This programme consisted of the radio reporter visiting various Clubs throughout the land, to find out if there was a future for our fine organisation. If anyone would like to borrow a CD, I will be quite happy to let you have one of them.

CLUB MEETINGS.

4^th January 2011.

25 Present – 24 of our own members and one non-Rotarian guest; James Dean, our most recent Rotary Friend.

It was announced that David Burchell has had a fall but is apparently making a recovery. It was also reported that Ron Loadsman is still making progress

Message from Brenda Haycock thank you for invite to Christmas lunch.

Senior Vice Ralph was in the chair today and he gave a special welcome to our new "Friend of Rotary" James Dean. He also told us that Peter Fowle is seeking £50 deposit from those intending to travel to Beaune for the contact visit in June.

Our own Paul Beaken was the speaker this lunch time and the title of his talk was "Police History – 500CE To the Present"

Paul started off by telling us that the word ‘police’ derives from the ancient Greek word ‘politea’ literally meaning the policy of organising on enforcing.

He also explained the derivation of the word constable, which apparently comes from another ancient Greek word ‘stabuli’ (counter of horses at the stable).

This was a fascinating talk about a subject that people know little about. I think our only knowledge of the modern police force was that it was founded by Sir Robert Peel in the nineteenth century and it hasn’t entered our minds much that there was any form of policing before that time.

Apparently there was, but it was done by people employed by the local Lord or Baron.

Much of the policing before the advent of what we now know as the police was performed by nightwatchmen, who were quite scruffy people, and who were armed with various weapons and instruments, such as a rattle, a truncheon and a cutlass.

Paul also showed us quite a collection of various cells that people were locked up in by these sheriffs throughout the country.

Moving on to the nineteenth century, Paul told us that the first police uniforms were very navy like, and were designed so the policemen would not look too confrontational.

One of the main reasons the various police forces were formed was the happenings at the Peterloo riots when the army was brought in to keep the peace, with a resultant loss of many lives.

It was felt that the sight of army uniforms antagonised the crowd causing the rioting to escalate.

Towards the end of the talk there was a really interesting part about the formation of a women’s police force. This was led by a lady who was a nazi sympathiser and this was reflected in the ladies’ uniforms which were very Gestapo like.

This was a really good presentation accompanied by plenty of excellent pictures and diagrams, mainly illustrating the various pieces of police equipment throughout the ages.

Obviously plenty of interest in the talk, judging by the amount of questions posed at its conclusion.

There was also a mini-quiz at the end, on the derivation of slang words for police.

The vote of thanks was performed by acting President Ralph.

Very good talk with plenty of really good pictures and diagrams to do with the police equipment throughout the ages.

11^th January 2011.

23 present – 22 of our own members and one non-Rotarian guest- Jonathan Chamberlain, our speaker for today.

Secretary Frances informed members that there was an invitation from the Brighton Rotary Club to attend a talk by the chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council.

Paul Thrasher reported on a visit to see Ian Varley, who he says is getting a bit more mobile now and sent his best wishes to us all. Adrian Ball stated that Mike Peters is still very poorly but has an appointment at the Royal Free Hospital next week where he could be kept in for a couple of days to have radiotherapy. Mike also sent greetings. It was also reported that Ron Loadsman is having neck pains.

Membership Chairman Mike Nettell spoke about the District 1250 "Project X" advertising campaign in March. We were also informed that there is to be a programme on BBC Radio 4 about the possible demise of Rotary because of loss of Members. This programme runs over two weeks on Friday at 11am.

Treasurer Bob Hinton reported that following our donation of £100 to the Children of Chernobyl, they normally sent some photographs to us, but this year they have sent a calendar featuring their work together, this calendar was specially made for us.

Bob also thanked us, on behalf of the Hove Methodist Church, for our donation to the Christmas Lunch.

There were also thanks from the Starfish speech programme for our donation of £200 late last year.

President Ian reminded members that there was to be a walk this coming Thursday and to let Ralph know numbers for lunch at the pub.

Jonathan started off by telling us that he felt that those present today were the right demographic for his talk and with our connections he hoped that we will pass on his message to wider circles.

Jonathan told us that he was here today to tell us about the two books he had written on cancer, the first one entitled "Cancer – The Complete Recovery Guide". He said that he wished he had read a book like this when he was wife was engaged in an unsuccessful fight against cancer.

Basically, his talk was telling us not to go the conventional route on contracting this horrible illness, but to ignore it and fight it with your own weapons. His theory is that we should prepare for cancer before actually getting it.

Understandably this didn’t go down too well with some of our members, particularly those that had been through lengthy battles with it.

I’m making an executive decision here not to report fully on the talk because I think quite a few people found it upsetting. I can only suggest that if you really want to find out more about Jonathan’s theories you can get these by logging on to www.fightingcancer.com or www.cancerfighter.wordpress.com.

The vote of thanks was given by Paul Thrasher

18^th January 2011.

24 present - 22 of our own members and 2 non Rotarian guests: Caroline Jupe, our speaker for today and Becky Greenwood, her friend.

Secretary Frances announced that there is a vacancy for a Foundation Grants Officer in District.

In the absence of President Ian for the next three Tuesdays, Senior Vice President Ralph will be taking these meetings.

It was reported that Ron Loadsman and Bob Green are both making good progress and that Mike Peters has gone to the Royal Free to have his first radioactive injection.

It was announced that the quiz team, reigning champions of District 1250, had lost their crown, losing to a team from Hove Breakfast. This was blamed on the lack of alcohol available at the home of the opposition Captain, the venue for the quiz.

There was a touch of irony about the meeting today because Ralph announced that we didn’t have a microphone, which was pretty apt because our speaker was from the Royal National Institute for the Deaf.

Our speaker today was Caroline Jupe and she was here to tell us about the help they are able to give with regard to deafness, particularly to those of an advanced age.

She supplied us with the remarkable statistic that one in seven of the population has a hearing loss and the number is increasing. She said that the youngsters of today are going to suffer from deafness because of the volume they have their personal stereos at when walking along the street.

The long term aim of the RNID is to find a cure for deafness, but this will be a long way away and in the meantime the RNID provides vital support and services and and raises awareness of the increase in deafness. They are also funded to provide biomedical research.

Caroline then showed, with the aid of slides, how the ear functions.

She then went on to cite various people who lost their hearing including a bank manager who had to retire early as a consequence.

The RNID also runs a care home in Wilbury Gardens, Hove where twelve people are looked after, some of them blind as well as deaf.

This talk was short and sweet and was very well presented by a lady who knew her "stuff" inside out.

There were questions afterwards from Bob Mulholland, Frances Du Toit, Paul Beaken, David Henderson and Peter Savage.

The vote of thanks was given by David Henderson.

25^th January 2011

25 present – 23 members and two non-Rotarian guests; Nicky Goody and Jan Clark, our speakers.

It was reported that David Burchell has a dislodged rib, which has now been put back, after his fall recently.

Bob Green is having trouble with his diabetes levels. Both John Ansell and Ian Varley are progressing well. It was also reported that Mike Peters had one day at the Royal Free Hospital for a radiation injection and appeared to be in good form the day after he came back.

Speaker secretary David Henderson said he is looking for a speaker to address the Club on 15^th March. This will complete his programme for the first quarter of this year.

Council members were asked to note that next week’s meeting will start at 5.45 (not 6pm).

Nicky goody and Jan Clark, our speakers today are both from the St John’s day centre at the top of St John’s road hove. The day centre has been open for some 28 years and is very beneficial to lonely people, giving them somewhere to spend their days in good company and being fed and watered to boot. "A very local resource for those over 60"

Nicky goody, the manager, was first up and she filled us in with what resources are there for their clients. Jan then gave us a description of the project, telling us where it is, remarking that many people pass by without realising that project is there.

Activities there including – cafe – trips – support and advice – IT – Clubs – space to hire – community services. They come under the umbrella of the Impact organisation.

A quite lengthy talk that covered every different aspect of the very worthwhile work they do.

Three quarters of the funding comes from council with the remainder coming from the primary care trust

See pamphlet from centre for details of the talk.

Vote of thanks by Michael Nettell.

Questions after by bob Mulholland, George Robinson and Bob Hinton.

Vote of thanks by Michael Nettell.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE BULLETIN

January 2011

President Ian reports

A very Happy New Year everyone! It has taken some time to get this piece written as a Christmas cold has completely churned up my brain for several days. I’ll make this as coherent as I can!!!

I was delighted to receive a phone call on Christmas Eve from Bob Mulholland to let me know that the Christmas Collections total was in excess of £2135.00 This is particularly pleasing given that we had lost one of our two days at Sainsbury’s due to the appalling weather. We had also expected that the mood of recession might dampen peoples’ generosity – no way! So we must pay all tribute to Chris Heath and the team for starting planning in good time and getting very encouraging support from members, friends and Inner Wheel. Thanks to Bob & Ann as ever for coping with all the cash and counting it! Thanks to Paul’s new displays and the new Santa at Tesco’s Hove, we looked much bigger and better in the public view. I am sure it made a difference.

Many of you will have had feedback from shoppers. It would be interesting to hear some of it. Perceptions of Rotary are often so fuzzy! There would be those who would stride by saying confidently "you do a really excellent job!" when it was quite clear that they had absolutely no idea what we do. Other more honest folk would ask us point blank: "who are you?" The displays DO much to help to explain! I noticed a number of people studying them and taking Cancer Centre appeal leaflets.

Courtlands gave us a splendid Christmas lunch and was it was very pleasing to have some many of us together enjoying fun and informal fellowship. Many thanks to Bob and Sheila Hinton and Mike Barley for the seasonal music!

The January diary is looking good. David has a full speaker line-up, including two of our own members. Ralph takes us on a Ditchling-based stroll on 12^th. The Project X membership recruitment think-in in Worthing has been re-arranged for the evening 12^thand is open to all. Please let Mike Nettell if you intend to come. We will also be promoting the Cancer Centre project at that event. We are invited to join the Inner Wheel visit to the Hove Synagogue on 24^th.

Finally, it is good to hear that we have a new lady Friend of Rotary. She is Nicki Goodey who runs St John's Day Centre and she will be talking about the Centre on 25^th January. The Friends scheme has gone even better than I expected and I hope that we can grow it further in the coming months. It is interesting to note that RIBI is intending to roll out what would seem to be a similar "associate" initiative in the middle of this year.

PS: We will be in search of curative winter sunshine later in the month, and so you will be in the tender care of SVP Ralph – please honour and obey him!

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR JANUARY.

4^th. Today sees Paul Beaken, in his spare time a Guide at the old Brighton Police Station, below Brighton Town hall, giving us a brief History of the police force from 500 CE (AD in old money) to the present time. The vote of thanks will be given by President Ian.

11^th. Jonathan Chamberlain is our speaker today and his talk is entitled "Decision Making in Cancer" and the vote of thanks will be given by Paul Thrasher.

18^th. Our talk at this meeting will be given by Rebecca Murray RNID and her talk is entitled "Help for the Hard of Hearing".

25^th. Our last meeting of this month welcomes one of our newest "Friends of Rotary", Nicky Goodey and she will be telling us all about "The St. John’s Day Centre and Cafe". The vote of thanks will be performed by Michael Nettell.

COUNCIL MEETING.

Next Council will be held on Monday, 31^st January 2012.

Nothing to report because there was no Council Meeting in December.

CHRISTMAS MESSAGES.

Thanks to all of you who took advantage of the Christmas Message scheme in the last bulletin. As a result of your efforts we managed to raise £250 which together with gift aid should benefit the Club’s Charity Account by over £280.

CHRISTMAS COLLECTIONS.

A fine effort this year, despite the weather,which caused the cancellation at Sainsbury’s on the Saturday, because we managed to raise £2135.00 in the week leading up to Christmas. Well done everyone.

CLUB MEETINGS.

7^th December 2010.

21 present – all our own members.

A board was circulated for members to put their names down for the Christmas lunch on 21^st of this month.

It was reported that Mike Peters is very poorly and is due to have treatment at the Royal Free Hospital next week and has a Macmillan Nurse in attendance.

It was reported that both Ron Loadsman and Bob Green are making steady progress.

Derek Clouting reported that John Ansell is unable to attend club because of his frailty and that Ian Varley has a hand problem.

It was reported that Ted Bartup and Paul Beaken took a party of Housing Society tenants to La Ristorante Topolino for their Christmas treat. 18 people attended, despite the heavy snow that morning.

Today was the occasion of the Club’s SGM which took it’s normal form with the presentation of last Rotary Year’s financial statement. Treasurer Bob ran through the accounts in his normal very efficient manner and at the conclusion of this he asked for the accounts for year ending June 30^th 2010 to be approved. This motion was proposed by Peter Savage and seconded by John Mainwood and carried unanimously.

Senior Vice President Ralph then took over the meeting and read out a list of next year’s officers.

These did not include the Senior Vice President or the Junior Vice President for 2011/2012 because no one has come forward for nomination.

It was pointed out that this could become a very serious issue because without these posts being covered there is a real danger of the Club going into extinction.

President Ian said he would leave members to ponder about the lack of vice presidents coming forward and Bob Hinton made a remark, saying that a number of Inner Wheel clubs have folded for the sole reason that they couldn’t find anyone to take over as president.

14^th December 2010.

25 present – 24 of our own members and one non Rotarian guest; Nickey Goody.

Board circulated with regard to a visit to Brighton Synagogue next week. It was announced that Yveline Milner has a fresh batch of Jams and Marmalades for sale.

President Ian told us that he is going to see Mike Peters this afternoon and reported that he was still fairly poorly.

He was then delighted to congratulate Ray and Chrissie Tiltman on their recent Diamond Wedding Anniversary.

Community Service Chairman Chris Heath asked for move volunteers for the Christmas Collection mentioning that he was very keen to see double manning, particularly at the Tesco store in Church Road.

Paul Thrasher reported that he had visited Ian Varley and that he was in very good spirits.

President Ian also thanked Yveline Milner for her generous gesture of free drinks for all today. Cheers Yvveline!!

Our speaker today was our own Bryan Meakin and he gave us an account of his recent visit to the United States on a Rotary Hosting Fellowship scheme. Bryan told us that he had been involved in this scheme for 20 years or so and about sixteen years ago he had hosted a Rotarian and his wife who lived in Washington State, hence the title of Bryan’s talk "Tales of the North West Frontier".

Bryan and Mary have visited many places throughout the world under the RHF and they decided that as they celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 2010 they would visit the self same couple from sixteen years ago.

They didn’t go straight to their host’s house because they decided to have a holiday first, flying to Vancouver and then taking a cruise to Alaska. Bryan through in the interesting fact here when he told us that every resident of Alaska receives $3,000 for living there.

Following on from the cruise they met Dick and Jane, their hosts and went on a 2,000 mile trip through the Rockies. This took place in a huge six litre SUV which carried the Rotary International slogan; "Service Above Self" on the number plate. Rotary obviously came first for him because the number plate didn’t even have a state sticker on it.

It was a really interesting and amusing talk with mentions of a fruitless trip to see bears, which disappointed Mary no end but she did get to go gold panning and brought some back with her.

Bryan did say that he was not at all impressed with the American cuisine and was thoroughly sick of burgers of all types by the end of the visit.

He also told us of a very interesting ceremony that takes place between American and Canadian Rotarians once a year when they all meet on the border to shake hands and exchange flags.

This has been taking place since 1932 to put paid to the story that the peoples of Canada and the USA didn’t get on too well. Lack of space forbids me from giving his talk justice but all in all it was an interesting insight into how the pioneer type Americans live.

Vote of thanks from President Ian.

21^st December 2010.

52 present including 45 members and their partners with 5 guests and two friends of Rotary.

President Ian thanked members for supporting the Christmas Collection in such good numbers, this despite the most difficult weather conditions we have had to deal with.

It was reported that Bob Green’s condition remains much the same and that Ron Loadsman has gone on holiday for the Christmas period.

President Ian remarked that it was sad not to see Mike Peters at the meeting but at the same time he was delighted that Trish and Steven were here with us. He asked Trish to take back all of our good wishes to Mike.

Gill Langley, President of Inner Wheel wished the Club a very Happy Christmas on behalf of all the ladies invited today.

This was a very jolly occasion and after lunch there was a raffle, organised most ably by Ted Bartup.

Following the raffle there were two draws for the "40 Set; the cheque for £50 going to Ken Jones

Then came the highlight of the day when Bob and Sheila Hinton led all assembled in the singing of Christmas songs and carols. They were ably accompanied by Mike Barley on keyboard.

At the conclusion of the singing a quiz was organised and this was won by Bob Mulholland.

All in all a very lovely occasion.

President Ian ended the festivities by wishing all and sundry a Happy Christmas and New Year.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE BULLETIN

DECEMBER 2010

President Ian reports

Fingers crossed! A white Christmas might be very attractive, but let’s hope that it is not too perishing for our collections. Thanks to Chris Heath and the team for getting things organised in good time and thanks in advance to all members, friends, Inner Wheel and other helpers for filling quite a lot of the slots. Doubtless we will still be chasing you from time to time to fill the remaining ones.

Thanks to Paul Beaken’s creative efforts, we will have excellent display material at the three sites and there will be cheerful, lively music – which seems to encourage giving. We will have a rota of people who will be setting up and closing down each day. Fortunately, whatever the weather, Hove Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s are under cover and you can escape the cold in the entrance of Portslade Tesco’s. A reminder that the slots are now for 90 minutes. Chris will be working hard to make sure everyone knows when they are on duty. If, for any reason, you are unable to cover, are unsure about the rota or hit a problem please call one of us. The numbers are below.

Now that there will not be a motorcycle run next year, the Christmas collections are (for the time being) our one major fund-raising commitment and I hope that everyone will do everything that they can to make it a success. Please remember that, as well as our usual general support for local and international causes, we are collecting specially on behalf of the Sussex Macmillan Cancer Support Centre. We are pleased to have a Macmillan volunteer helping us collect. There will be Paul’s new displays about the Centre and leaflets to give out to anyone wanting to know more. Public awareness is very important to the success of the Centre.

I hope that, despite all the seasonal sorting out, we will have a good attendance of members, wives, partners and friends at our Christmas lunch on 21^st December. There will be a quiz, a raffle and a couple of carols – led by Bob Hinton and accompanied on keyboards by Michael Barley.

I realise that it is getting towards half-time in my year as President and I would like to thank everyone for the support and help that you have given to me. It is good that we have been able to make some progress with the club and I hope that we can add more interest and fun to the diary in the coming months. I would be very pleased indeed if we could give Ralph a few more members to look after in his coming year!

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR DECEMBER.

7^th. Today is the occasion of the Club’s Special General Meeting, during which the Financial Report for the year ending 30^th June 2010 are presented and it is also the occasion for announcing the names of Club Officers for the Rotary Year 2011/12.

14^th. a very interesting talk in prospect, when IPP Bryan Meakin will give a talk entitled "Tales from the North West Frontier and the vote of thanks will be proposed by President Ian.

21^st. The last meeting of this calendar year, because there is not to be a meeting on the 28^th, will be our Christmas Lunch with our ladies in attendance. There will be Christmas Carols, led by Bob Hinton with Mike Barley on keyboard. President Ian is also arranging a short festive quiz.

NOTES ON THE COUNCIL MEETING HELD ON MONDAY 29^th NOVEMBER.

There will be a raffle, to be held by Ted Bartup, at the Christmas meeting on 21^st December. A quiz and a "couple of carols" led by Bob Hinton will also be included.

Report of accounts for Rotary Year ending 30^th June 2010 was given out to Council members for perusal prior to SGM on 7^th December. It was also reported that cheque signatories have been ratified by the bank.

Money from the now defunct Hove Round Table Charity fund is to be transferred to our Club shortly and this sum will be ring fenced for the Elderly and Needy of Hove. Taking into account the usual donation from Round Table to Hove Methodist Church is £250 it was decided that we would donate £500 this Christmas.

The annual cheque of £100 to be sent to the Children of Chernobyl.

It was also agreed to give £200 to the Starfish Project, the organisation that helps people with severe stuttering and stammering problems.

It was also agreed that we will give support to the Potato Project (subject of talk on 23^rd November) when they submit a matching grant.

David Henderson was praised for his work in obtaining quality speakers.

Various walks have taken place since last council, the last one being from the Brighton Marina to Rottingdean and back, with 15 people taking part.

Two darts teams have been eliminated from the District completion and the quiz team is playing its second round this evening against Burgess Hill.

Membership – Mike Nettell reported that he attended the St John’s Day Centre as a volunteer and as a result Nick Goody, the administrator at St John’s is to attend our club shortly, with a view to becoming a friend of Rotary. She is also one of our speakers in January.

Peter Reeve, Peter Goodley and George Deutsch will, with their ladies, be attending the evening meeting tomorrow (30/11).

Membership seminar to be held in Worthing this coming Wednesday (1/12) and will be attended by President Ian, George Deutsch and others. It will also give President Ian and George an opportunity to publicise the Cancer Project and seek help from other Clubs in fundraising.

Publicity – Press release sent out by President Ian about the Brighton Cancer Project. The release is a copy of what is on the Macmillan Nursing website.

Newsletter – To be published at end of this week (4/12)

Community Service - Christmas collection arrangements are well in hand.

International Service – 40 set coming along slowly with some people dropping out this year. Peter Fowle will be collecting deposit for contact visit to Beaune in January. Deposit will be £100 per person.

Suggested that some ideas should be formed to what the programme will be for 2012, to tell other two clubs at Beaune.

Youth - No Mock Interviews at Brighton and Hove High School owing to their schedule being finalised and no room in the programme for this highly regarded project. John Mainwood explained to Wendy Fox the other youth projects Rotary is involved in and there will be a further meeting in the early spring.

Next Council will be held on Monday, 31^st January 2012.

CHRISTMAS COLLECTIONS

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP YET?

Tesco Church Road: 18^th – 23^rd ^December, 10am – 4pm

Tesco Portslade: 18^th and 20^th – 23^rd December, 10am – 4pm

Sainsbury: 18^th and 20^th December, 10am – 4pm

CONTACT NUMBERS:

Chris Heath home: 01273 502056 mobile: 07754 948523

Ralph Harrison home: 01273 844237 mobile: 07754 800377

Ian Collington home: 01273 558832 mobile: 07768 887880

CLUB MEETINGS.

2^nd December 2010.

22 Present – 21 of our own members and one Rotarian visitor; Derek Hopkins from Cuckfield and Lindfield, our speaker for today.

The board for denoting attendance at the evening meeting at the end of the month was passed round.

It was reported that Ron Loadsman is still very poorly and that Bob Green’s condition is "up and down" on a daily basis.

President Ian reported on the visit of the RIBI President to the Brighton and Hove area last Wednesday. He and Bob Mulholland attended the Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton to listen to Jim Moulson speak to the Rotary Club of Brighton before visiting one of our Housing Society houses at 29 Sackville Road to meet Chairman Ted Bartup, Treasurer Paul Beaken and a housing tenant.

President Jim was very impressed with the whole setup and even remarked on it at the District Council Meeting to Howard Attree, not even realising that Howard was a Hove Member.

residents – appreciated our efforts and were very impressed with the whole thing.

President Ian thanked John Ansell for contributing to the re engraving of the Club bell and also Yveline Milner for arranging same.

Derek Clouting to take bell to show John Ansell the work carried out and also was asked to send best wishes to Shirley Ansell who is going through a very bad time health wise.

Bob Hinton pointed out to members a half page article in District 1250 news about the non uniform day held at Hove Park School some time ago which missed the last edition because of a faulty email address.

"Thanks for Life" was the recipient of the money raised on that day.

Ken Jones had another successful stroll and we are looking forward to another one next month -

12 people took part last week and Ralph Harrison is to organise the next one.

Derek Hopkins, our speaker today is a retired aircraft pilot, who reckons he has flown the equivalent of 99 times to the moon and back, having completed 11,500 hours flying time out of some 250 airports. He said he will try the almost impossible task of condensing this into 20 minutes.

Derek was an excellent speaker who regaled us with many stories about his time as a military pilot and a civilian pilot, his civilian career consisting mainly of flying freight from one place to another.

He started off by telling us about a pilot on Imperial Airways, which was the fore runner of BOAC and BEA. Incidentally he told us that BOAC stood for Better Offer on A Camel

This pilot, O P Jones; used to carry a small attaché case about with him all the time, putting it on his lap and peering inside it before shutting and locking it prior to take off.

No one would dare ask him what was it until his last flight when he was at cruising height – first officer asked him what was in the case and O P replied "no business of yours" but then proceeded to show him what was in the case and there was just a plain sheet of paper and on it was written "port is left!.

Derek told us that his only severe bit of combat was when he was stationed in Malta in 1956 when the order came to bomb Cairo during the Suez crisis.

This was a very entertaining talk by a remarkable old gentleman. Despite his age, in his late eighties, he was very amusing and had remarkable recall of his many experiences.

In reply to a question from Peter Savage he told us about one of his experiences flying cargo when he had to fly 32 ostriches from Lusaka in Zambia to Birmingham Zoo. The boxes for the ostriches were the wrong size and it meant that the plane could only take 16 of the ostriches. They got round this by building a temporary scaffold in the plane which meant that the ostriches had to stand upright in a group for the whole trip.

9^th November 2010.

27 of our own members and two non-Rotarian visitors Peter Reeve (Friend of Rotary) and Roger French, our speaker for today.

Yveline announced that there were various jams and marmalade available for purchase.

President Ian presented Peter Reeve with his friend of rotary name badge.

President Ian also reported on the fact that Mike Peters is due to come out of hospital today after recurring stomach problems. Ray Tiltman said that Ron Loadsman is still not at all well and Derek Clouting stated that Ian Varley is becoming more mobile and he hopes, in a couple of weeks time, to let Derek take him out for lunch. Derek also reported that he has visited John Ansell on a couple of occasions and despite John being full of life he is not fit to attend Club.

Membership Chairman Michael Nettell reported on Project X – the project that aims to make Rotary more visible to the general public and consequently attracting new members. There is to be a meeting on this subject on 1^st December in Worthing with this in mind.

Community Service Chairman Chris heath reminded members that the boards are being circulated for people to put their names down for the various Christmas collection sites. He told members that the periods are in segments of one and a half hours and not hours as in previous years.

Hove A darts tea lost their match but they did manage to win the charity match, enhancing the Club’s charity coffers by £10

Our speaker today was Roger French, who has served as Managing Director of the Brighton and Hove Bus Company for 27 years.

He started off by plugging his recent books on the 75 years of the Bus Company, all proceeds from the sale of the book going to charity.

Roger told us that he has worked himself up from the very lower rung of the bus ladder, starting as a conductor on buses in South Wales and Kent before moving to Brighton in 1982.

Plugged roger’s book, all which the proceeds go to charity.

Roger (and I can vouch for this) serves and chairs many committees and seminars in the City and was awarded the OBE for his services to transport.

Roger reminded us that this is the second time he has addressed our Club but thought it was at least 20 years since his last talk.

He then went through the salient points of how one persuades more people to travel on buses, pointing out that in 1993, a key year for the bus company, there were 22 million journeys made on the city’s buses

Roger then went on to explain how he managed to get more people to travel on buses but by 2010 this had risen to an amazing 46 million journeys.

He said that in the next 17 years he would like to get up to 100 million journeys and reduce the amount of cars on the road. He pointed out that he is a car driver and bicyclist himself.

Roger then went on to tell us how they managed to double the amount of journeys in the last 17 years, citing five different but important points.

How have we doubled the figures?

Frequent buses. Because the wait for the bus is the most negative part of his product (buses)

Price – 25 percent free because of bus passes. Not necessarily cheap but to give good value. Roger went into detail about the fare structure throughout the years since 1993. 85 percent of fare paying passengers do this through a daily ticket rather than individual journey. Next spring a scheme similar to the oyster card in London is to be introduced.

Buses that are easy to get on, meaning buses that can lower their platforms to enable the elderly, infirm and wheelchair passengers to get on easy.

Deliver the best customer service. 850 bus drivers should be happy and cheerful, greeting their customers. Roger said he couldn’t do their job in today’s conditions, traffic, other drivers and dodgy passengers. Company always replies by return to any emails.

Marketing – make people aware what you are doing. 250 buses out on the streets all carrying the company’s own promotions. They don’t carry any commercial advertising at all. Particularly the "I’m on the Bus" campaign which made people ring up and ask if they could be involved in this campaign. It has ended now but is being resurrected. The naming of buses has been a great success, with buses being named after people that have contributed to the city as a whole. Only qualification, with a couple of exceptions, is that the person must have passed away.

The key to the whole thing is working in harness with many organisations, particularly the local council to make everything to go smoothly.

All this has made Brighton buses one of the most efficient and renowned transport companies in the country.

This was an absolutely first class talk by a very accomplished speaker and this was reflected by the many questions after, all of which Roger handled most adroitly.

The vote of thanks was given by Ken Jones.

16^th November 2010.

23 present – all our own members.

Community Chairman Chris Heath made an appeal for volunteers for the Christmas Collection sites in the week leading up to Christmas Day.

It was reported that Ron Loadsman is still very poorly. Paul Thrasher reported that Ian Varley is making fairly slow progress and is pretty much housebound. Ian would welcome visitors of telephone calls from members. It was also reported that Mike Peters is in the Royal Free Hospital and President Ian is waiting to hear what is happening to hear from Tricia as to what is happening to Mike.

Ken Jones told us that he has organised another walk, this one taking place from Brighton Marina to Rottingdean and back with various stops for much needed refreshment. He told members that if the weather was too inclement they would retire to the Bowling alley for a game or two.

President Ian informed us that there had been a meeting of most of the Presidents of Rotary in the Brighton area recently and it was decided that there would be a get together of all the Clubs on 3^rd March 2012 at the Dyke Golf Club for all members, including their ladies, and tickets would be sold on a first come, first served basis.

President Ian also told us that the Club had been represented at two very wet Remembrance Day services with Ray Tiltman attending the Portslade Service and Bob Mulholland and himself turning up for the Grand Avenue, Hove tribute.

The speaker today was most probably the best one of the year but modesty forbids me from telling you who it was. Oh, okay twist my arm, it was ME.

The talk was entitled My Seventy Years of BLISS, the bliss being an acronym for Bob’s Life in Short Sentences.

I won’t report on it in any great detail, just to say that it was an abridged account of my life thus far and if anyone is interested in the full text I will be happy to send you a copy of my talk, spelling mistakes and all.

I thoroughly enjoyed giving the talk and I hope those listening did as well.

The vote of thanks was given by President Ian.

23^rd November 2010.

28 Present – 26 of our own members and two Rotarian visitors – Julie and Martin Peniston-Bird from Oxted and Limpsfield, our joint speakers for the day.

Secretary Frances asked if the Apologies book could be put out on the front desk every week because she never knows from one week to the other how many people will be attending meetings.

It was also stated that volunteers are needed for Club duties in December because of various illnesses and volunteers came forward in the shape of Paul Beaken for collecting the cash and Senior Vice Ralph Harrison performing care of visitors.

Adrian Ball informed us that he will be visiting Mike Peters at the Royal Free Hospital where he has had an operation on his bile duct which, hopefully, will help him in his current predicament.

Ken Jones rose to tell us that 16 people were intending to take part in the walk from Brighton Marina to Rottingdean next day (24/11).

Community Service Chairman Chris Heath pointed out that there are still quite a few vacancies on the Station Road site for the Christmas collection.

It was reported that Ron Loadsman is still very poorly and that Bob Green’s condition seems to vary from one day to the other.

Julie and Martin Peniston-Bird, our joint speakers for today were here to tell us all about "Project Potato" a project dear to their hearts, and which is based in Bulgaria.

It all started about thirteen years ago when Julie heard an appeal for people to sponsor children of the third world. They were offered children from Africa, India or Eastern Europe, so for reasons of practicality they settled on one from Eastern Europe and consequently sponsored a six year old girl called Annie who live in Rakitovo, two and a half hours drive from Sofia, capital of Bulgaria.

After visiting Rakitovo and seeing the abject poverty there they decided to raise some money and this amounted to £4,000, enough to buy dental equipment two years of the dentist’s salary.

Martin then took over the talk from here and showed us a slide show depicting the state of the hovels they lived in, at some times in temperatures of minus twenty degrees centigrade. They showed us a two room shack that was home to nine people – horrendous!

I obviously cannot give you a full account of the talk due to lack of space but I had better explain why it was entitled "Project Potato"

It was on their second visit, after talking to the Mayor of Rakitovo, that this was initiated, asking people to apply for potato seeds for planting. Several hundred applications were made but the first 65 were selected. It was a great success, meaning that they not only had enough potatoes to live on, but were able to sell the surplus to other villages.

Following on from this, many villagers asked if it was possible to have animals to rear for meat and after a long discussion it was decided that rabbit would be ideal, quick breeders that they were. The only problem was that when it came to the time to kill the rabbits for eating the families were very reluctant because they had grown to love most of the rabbits as pets.

Eventually they did have enough meat to eat and the project then went on from strength to strength with further donations from Julie and Mike helping.

The whole scheme has expanded to a remarkable extent, with training schools for various skills being set up, which is giving work to most of the working population of the area.

An amazing story and very well told by Julie and Mike.

Once again, there was great interest in this remarkable project shown by members and there were questions asked from President Ian, Bob Mulholland and Ken Jones.

If you want to know more about Julie and Mike’s project, you can find out all about it by logging on to www.rakitova.co.uk

The vote of thanks was performed by Senior Vice President Ralph Harrison.

30^th November 2010.

41 present – 19 of our own members; 3 Rotarian Friends; George Deutsch, Peter Reeve and Peter Goodley, and 19 non Rotarian Guests including Bob and Dorothy Allen, guests of David Henderson and Professor Richard Vincent, our speaker for tonight, together with Miriel, his wife.

President Ian welcomed back Bernard Greaves and Patrick Douch, both returning to Club after a lengthy illness.

He also said that Mike Peters has sent his best wishes to Club members but is still fairly weak.

Derek Clouting was pleased to report that Ian Varley is progressing well and was well enough to go with Derek to the local pub. Ron Loadsman is still very unwell and Bob Green’s progress is erratic.

The draw for the "40 Set" was made by the speaker’s wife and the cheque for £25 was won by Paul Thrasher.

It was reported that Council met last night and a report of this meeting is in the early part of this bulletin.

Congratulations were given to Bob Mulholland and his quiz team, consisting of John Mainwood, David Henderson and Paul Beaken for their victory against a team from Burgess Hill and commiseration for George Robinson’s darts team that lost against another team from Burgess Hill.

Our speaker tonight was Professor Richard Vincent and he told us all about a Rotary supported venture in Uganda, but mainly about the fantastic work done over the last 40 years by Dr. Keith Waddell. The scheme is called "Medicine for Africa and is wholly based in Uganda and is supported by the Rotary Club of Rubaga, which is in a sub district of Kampala, capital of Uganda.

The names of places involved in this project are different but basically the whole setup is the same as I reported on for the last meeting. The progress and expansion of both projects follow the same lines and the people that are involved in the setting up and running of the programmes are all of a similar category, heroes in their own right and deserving of medals for all the hard work and, both physical and financial that they give.

Mountains of the moon border the Congo

Richard showed two sets of pictures from Mbarara, the location of the hospital, showing Dr Keith performing his work in 1969 and one of him doing the same thing in 2010. Apart from the doctor having aged 41 years it could have been the same picture, what with the pose he takes up and the surroundings of the picture.

Dr Keith actually taught himself to treat people with cataracts and on completion of this he left his base and visited all the outlying villages to treat people in their own homes, thereby saving them some very tricky journeys to the hospital.

One of the problems Dr Keith has is when patients come into him with their illnesses, bringing medicine that has been given to them by the village medicine man which, is of course, pretty useless

Dr Keith even his his own little house where he relaxes after hours. It/s pretty basic, with no radio or TV, just a couple of rooms and a cold shower.

Dr Keith is obviously a very dedicated person who has given his all to this deprived part of the world for such a long time and is a perfect example of an unsung hero.

Richard finished by saying that the whole project is Christian based.

There is now a nurses' training school.

Keith is obviously a very dedicated person who has given his all to this deprived part of the world and has been involved here for over 40 years. A real unsung hero.

Richard then went on to the education of the population.

This was an excellent talk given by a very dedicated person.

The vote of thanks was given by George Deutsch, our Rotary friend.

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

NOVEMBER 2010

President Ian reports

At his recent visit to Brighton & Hove, RIBI Jim Moulson pointed to the sizeable efforts which are to be made next March on a £150,000 ‘New Members Campaign’. Every Rotary member has chipped in £2.75 to RIBI for this and some of our money will be coming back into our patch for this mass media onslaught. We should certainly be ready to take advantage of promoting Rotary in Hove. But as an old hack journalist, I have to say that I think that our current efforts through word-of-mouth and direct contact within the community are just as important as big budget PR.

It would be very rewarding to think that we have been ahead of the race, with yet more Friends coming along and enjoying our company (and of course, we theirs!). As an added bonus we look forward to hearing from the two latest ones, Michael Jayston and David Diplock as speakers in the near future. Please keep Mike Nettell supplied with suggestions of friends or those you have links with in other local clubs or organisations who might be interested in coming along to have a look at the Club. There are many people who, while working, were too busy to keep up with Rotary, Round Table, and Lions etc. What we are discovering is that, as they retire and have some unexpected chunks of time, the idea of becoming a Friend of the Club really does appeal – particularly as very often it re-connects them with old friends.

I am pleased to report that District Governor Simon Crowther has arranged for us to have a slot to present to a District meeting in Worthing on 1^st December, to encourage other clubs across West and East Sussex to join with us in promoting and fund-raising for the Cancer Support Centre. Chairman George Deutsch will be outlining the project to them. I am due to have another meeting soon with the other Brighton & Hove presidents and will talk to them about possible co-operation on the appeal. We also have the opportunity to include news of our efforts on the Macmillan Sussex Appeal web site. Paul Beaken is working on displays about Rotary and the Support Centre and (with Macmillan) we have created a colour leaflet to give out to the public.

Chris Heath and his team will be devoting the next few weeks to getting the Christmas collections programme into place. It is intended to spend some time and money on making sure that we look (and sound) good. Could we even recruit a few carol singers to appear from time to time? We hope that all able Members and our new Friends will play their part. Two of the three supermarket venues are under cover, so collecting is much less of a wintery experience than it used to be.

On our third successful stroll Ken Jones led an intrepid, rain-proofed band around Arlington Reservoir and on to a companionable pub lunch. I really hope that we can build up on these social events, particularly as we are able to welcome and include friends, partners and family. If you have ideas for other outdoor or indoor get-togethers (ten pin bowling!?) do let Ralph Harrison know and we’ll try to set them up.

It was all tribute to the Housing Society that, once again, an RIBI President wanted to find out more about this unique Rotary operation. On his visit to Brighton & Hove Jim Moulson and District Governor Simon Crowther came over to see flats at 29 Sackville Road. They were clearly very impressed to be shown both a flat with comprehensive disabled facilities and another, superbly-equipped, very homely conventional flat. In appreciation of his visit, Jim Moulson presented resident Vanessa Layte with an orchid. Society Chairman Ted Bartup and the team gave Jim an insight into plans to expand the operation and he was given a copy of Paul Beaken’s video and the book about the Society to take back to RIBI.

CHRISTMAS BULLETIN.

For the fourth year running a big part of the December Bulletin will be given over to Christmas Greetings from Members to other Members of the Club. This is a great idea, because it saves you (or the missus!) writing greetings on 40 or so cards every year and all this for an outlay of £10.

Please let Editor Bob have your messages, together with a cheque for £10, made out to "The Rotary Club of Hove" and I will make sure your greeting is included in next month’s bulletin.

NOTES ON THE COUNCIL MEETING HELD ON MONDAY 25^TH OCTOBER (COMPILED BY GORDON CUMMINGS)

The poppy wreaths have been ordered for laying at the Hove and Portslade Memorials on Remembrance Sunday, 7th November 2010.

At the moment we have five ‘Friends of Rotary’, with two others joining soon, together with a four further probables. Friends’ Partners are welcome to attend our evening meetings.

The darts and quiz teams have been entered in the District Competitions.

There is a change in the speakers programme for 2^nd November. The talk will now be ‘How Can I Become a Space Man?

It was decided that the Club will not meet on Tuesday 28^th December 2010.

Vice President Ralph Harrison reported on arrangements for the RIBI Conference to be held in Dublin on 14^th to 18 the April 2011. Registration has to be in by

31^st December 2010. Those interested in attending should contact Ralph as soon as possible.

We now have an equipment cupboard made by Derek Clouting. Courtland’s Hotel reception, President Ian, Secretary Francis and the Rotarian on cash for the month have the keys.

The Rotary Bell has been engraved with the club’s name and Rotary Logo, thanks to John Ansell.

A team are preparing for our Christmas Collections.

Some 33 people have signified their intention to take part in our contact visit to Beaune. Deposits are required by 15^th January 2011.

The RIBI President Jim Moulson is visiting the Brighton Club shortly, after which he is coming to see one of our Housing Society properties in Sackville Road.

THE BENEFITS OF RIBI

At the conclusion of DG Simon Crowther’s talk to this Club on Tuesday, 12^th, Peter Savage asked "What was the purpose or usefulness of RIBI?"

Subsequently, DG Simon sent the following reply.

"In 1922 the Rotary nations were offered their own administrative units. Great Britain and Ireland (now RIBI) were the only countries to accept, and so we have our own constitution and by-laws, differing slightly from, but in harmony with, the RI Manual of Procedure.

This set-up occurs nowhere else in the Rotary world, giving RIBI substantial powers of self-governance and local autonomy.

The benefits of being part of RIBI include:

General Council – the governing body of RIBI meets four times a year to create and propose policy. The 29 District Governors are you elected representatives. In the rest of the world district governors usually only meet at annual institute meetings.

Annual Conference – the business of the Association is discussed and the opportunity is available to ask questions about the annual accounts and budget which determines the members’ annual subscription. Contrast this with other countries where the RI board agreed the annual per capita fee.

Training – perhaps the biggest benefit for RIBI members is the training provided by Rotary. At RIBI Assembly, chairmen and members of RIBI committees/resource group guide and help the district officers to pass the Rotary International messages to clubs. This system is invaluable and occurs nowhere else in the Rotary world.

Committees/Resource group structure – largely composed of experienced past governors and district specialists on which clubs and districts in Great Britain and Ireland can call for advice and support in all areas of Rotary activity. Generally speaking, these centres of excellence do not exist in the rest of the Rotary World.

RIBI’S ‘leverage’ through joint action including projects such as Sight savers/Water Aid Aqua boxes/Emergency/Shelter Boxes; Jaipur Limb/Mukti; Hope and Homes for Children; Kids Out; Stroke Awareness and REMIT.

And in the rest of the world... there are no formal and consistent methods of working together.

Magazines and publications – we have our own magazine "rotary today" written for RIBI members covering local and national activities and the internationality of Rotary. Our publications also allow for the adjustment of materials to suit the customs and culture of RIBI.

Insurance – all clubs and districts within RIBI have the benefit of central insurance cover negotiated at low cost. These premiums are part of the RIBI subscription. In the rest of the world clubs have to arrange their own insurance cover.

Staff support – a small but dedicated team of staff serves RIBI members exclusively.

The Secretariat offers a wide range of services within the departments of Marketing and Communications, Operations and Finance.

No firm evidence that the Secretariat would remain here if RIBI went. A move to Zurich as the Joint European Office would be possible.

The additional cost of contact would be borne by the clubs and members.

Loss of understanding of local issues and of advice reflecting our culture and systems.

Loss of Specialist support e.g. Protection policy, Public relations.

Ken’s Walks.

Keep an eye out for the next of these. The last one was very successful with a very good turnout, despite the murky weather, of people taking part in a walk round the Arlington Reservoir last Wednesday.

THANKS FROM DG SIMON.

The following email was received by President Ian, following on from the visit of RIBI President Jim to the Brighton Area last Wednesday.

"Thursday

Good evening to you Ian ~Thank you so much for arranging for RIBI president Jim and me to visit one of the houses and learn more about this amazing project that your club has been involved with for the last fifty plus years...

Thanks also to your colleagues who were there as well.

I look forward to seeing you on 1st December at Worthing - maybe it would be an idea if you now liaised with Barry Hopkins who is running that meeting - he can be found at barhopkins@aol.com

With best wishes

Simon"

CLUB MEETINGS.

5^th October 2010 (report in last month’s bulletin)

12^th October 2010.

30 Present – 26 of our own members, 2 Rotarian visitors, DG Simon Crowther and Ian Russell, both from RC of Godalming Woolsack and two non-Rotarian guests; Gwen Leach and Beniseller Varentos, guest of Keith Upton.

Ray Tiltman reported on Ron Loadsman, who has returned to his home from Somerset but is still very poorly.

Today was the annual visit of the current Governor of District 1250, Simon Crowther who was here to give us the message from on high (Rotary International)

Simon started off by going to the middle of the room so that he could make himself heard better.

He said firstly that one of things he liked doing, as DG, was looking at Club website.

He also said that the visit is not an inquisition but an occasion of friendship, fellowship and encouragement.

The DG said that he has been trying to think what to impart to a Club without talking down to them; what sort of style the talk should take and he thinks he is getting the hang of it now after many visits to clubs and has streamlined it and got rid of all the "America speak". He remarked that he should have the talk completely tweaked by his visit to club number 60, informing us that the visit today is the 40^th of his year. He said that part of his job was to inspire and motivate clubs but he could see that because we have three PDGs David Burchell, Ian Varley and Clive Chapple, that this is not necessary.

There is a link between the Hove club and Godalming Woolsack, his own club because Ian Varley was responsible for setting up that club during his time as District Extension Officer.

The remainder of his talk was the same format as previous years’ DG talks with emphasis on Membership, Foundation and various projects proposed by District, RIBI and RI.

He also gave special mention to the success of the RYLA project and praised the work done by our own Club’s Housing Society. .

He also posed the question; Why do we need District answering the question himself by saying maybe we do and maybe we don’t and then cited the achievements of our Club including our being the current District Quiz Champions and our support of the aforementioned RYLA. He was also complementary about our commitment to our contact clubs

He concluded by saying that we are all very fortunate to be Rotarians and we can make a difference with a bit of fun on the way as well.

There was a question from Peter Savage afterwards, about the relevance of RIBI which is answered in another part of this bulletin.

The vote of thanks was given by President Ian

19^th October 2010 (courtesy of Bob Hinton)

24 present, 23 members. The guest was Gill Langley who spoke briefly giving the greetings of the Inner Wheel Club and confirming their commitment to support the Cancer Research Centre Project and the great need that it will meet.

Inner Wheel has arranged a visit to a local Synagogue on 24 January and members will be welcome to join the party – more details in due course.

Frances du Toit has joined Yveline in raising funds for the Charity Trust by making jars of produce; Tomato Chutney in her case. Yveline has extended her range to include Quince jam and jelly harvested from the Collington Quince Tree.

[Quiz team victory I expect you have already]The following were also drawn to attention:

Ralph’s email re RIBI Dublin Conference and request to support Ian by attendance.

Presentation to District 1250 of the Cancer Support Centre at a meeting on 1 December.

Visit of RIBI President Jim Moulson to Brighton Club meeting on 27 October.

Update by Mike Nettell of encouraging progress in recruiting new Friends of Rotary.

The main speaker was Peter Fowle with a presentation about the Contact Visit to Beaune next year. This was in effect the information already supplied in writing but illustrated with photographs and charts, with the aim of gaining the necessary commitment from members to take part in it.

26^th October 2010

23 Present – 20 of our own members, two Friends of Rotary; Michael Jayston and David Diplock and David Allen, our speaker for today.

President Ian stated that he would be visiting the Brighton Rotary Club on Wednesday, together with Bob Mulholland, to see RI President Jim Moulson. President Jim will then pay a visit to one of our residents of the Housing Society at 29 Sackville Road.

John Eaton thanked everyone for their messages of sympathy to Anne after her recent operation.

He also mentioned that it was their 50^th wedding anniversary this coming Friday.

Secretary Frances informed members that she had made a batch of Chutney which was for sale.

Today was the occasion of the "40 Set" draw and the cheque for £25 was won by Ken Jones.

Our speaker today, David Allen, who had stepped in at the very last moment to give us a talk on the first Brighton Trunk Murder.

David was a brilliant, and loud, speaker who gave a most comprehensive account of this most foul murder, committed at the beginning of the 19^th century.

I won’t expand on this further because it was only about a year ago that most of us attended a lantern show where the aforementioned murder was the main topic and I think everyone knows all the gory details now.

David certainly grabbed all of our attention with his account. The vote of thanks was given by Ray Tiltman.

FRIENDS OF ROTARY. (Michael Nettell)

Here is an up-to-date list of our Friends together with details of their occupation and interests.

Friends Name        Partner’s Name        Occupation                      Hobbies and interests.

George Deutsch.          Rosalind            Hospital    Consultant          Chairman Sussex Cancer Retired Fund, sailing, walking,Carpentry, photography

Peter Goodley             Linda               BT Manager Retired                 Walking, gardening Talking newspapers.

Peter Reeve                   Pat                  Project Manager (IT)                  Walking, skiing, swimming, Reading.

Michael Jayston        Elizabeth Ann Actor/Writer Cricket and Theatre.   James Dean Widower Printing Company (RTD) Opera, Classical Music, Economics, Photography.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

OCTOBER 2010

President Ian reports

At the 1250 District Convention, in the Heritage Motor Museum deep in the heart of Shakespeare country, I felt very much like Nick Clegg! Only after I had taken office did I go through my first party conference routines! Scilla and I had never been to a Rotary conference of any kind, or "Convention" as District Governor Simon Crowther had re-branded it. Veteran of the conference circuit Peter Fowle reports elsewhere in this bulletin. But, as a total novice, I do wonder for how long the current conference model will remain viable, given the costs, travelling and age of participants? Next year is certainly more accessible – just use your bus pass to get the 12 to Eastbourne!

At the Convention various UK and worldwide causes were well exhibited and paraded. Apart from the rallying words from Rotary dignitaries, there were some excellent reports on projects by energetic 1250 District clubs, with various lighter interludes including yarns from the marathon ocean-rowing Sarah Outen and veteran comic Don Maclean. In all, due to cutting a day off the Convention, we had 16 presentations on the Saturday and 6 on Sunday morning! The evening dinner dance delivered great food and excellent live 50s/60s music - which provoked an awesome number of seniors to indulge in hazardous revivalist dancing antics (me included) .

Perhaps the keenest jolt to the senses came from RIBI CEO/Secretary (and recently inducted Rotarian) Annemarie Harte - who has been charged with a making a searching review of all aspects of RIBI services. With great Irish plain speaking she challenged some of Rotary’s cosy traditions. For example, should we abandon toasting "The Queen" and "Rotary the World Over"? She confesses that the more geriatric fellow Rotarians in her club find her hard to cope with.

As to the overall nature of the "Convention" shouldn’t there have been some actual debate? There was certainly no "Conference", no interaction or participation between clubs and delegates. We do have the opportunity to debate the role of District next week when we are joined by Governor Simon Crowther. What are your thoughts?

Nineteen souls joined Ken Jones’ conducted tour of Cuckmere Haven last week, to be rewarded by only light spots of rain and a very enjoyable scenic amble followed by a welcome pub lunch. As with our first walk, we were delighted to have friends and family of Rotarians with us. The next easy amble is round Arlington Reservoir on 27^th October. Again, friends and family are most welcome.

Last week Yveline Milner, Peter Fowle and I represented the Club in Evreux at the ceremony to inaugurate a new specialist therapy room in one of the Marie-Helene centres in the region which offers support to autistic and severely disabled youngsters. Our Club had helped to enable the funding of this project by being a partner to Evreux in their application for matched funding from RI in Evanston. President Bernard Roy and his predecessor Jean Morel gave generous appreciation of our club’s support in their speeches at the ceremony.

In turn Evreux will help us with our efforts to support the Macmillan/Sussex Cancer Fund project. Andreas Ruf from Pforzheim was also in Evreux for the Marie-Helene launch. He says that we can also expect support from Pforzheim. Cancer Fund Chairman George Deutsch is now looking at his wish list for something tangible that (with matched funding) we could jointly provide. To start things off, after George outlined the Cancer project to the club on 5 October, we presented him with a cheque for £500. Together with Gill Langley, President of Inner Wheel, I have had a meeting with the Macmillan Sussex Fundraiser Rob Moon with a view to start promoting the project in our Christmas collections.

Evreux and Pforzheim are also very interested in some form of a three-way initiative to support a Tools for Self-Reliance project. I have spoken to the Chief Executive of the charity, Jan Kidd and she will explore the possibilities. I will of course keep you in touch with progress on this.

Finally, I am delighted that we have already begun to welcome in the first of our Friends of Hove Rotary - George Deutsch, Peter Reeve and Peter Goodley. I look forward to more suggestions from you for other new Friends.

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR OCTOBER

5th: "Sussex Cancer Charity" Dr George Deutsch - VoT Paul Beaken
12th: Visit by DG Simon Crowther - VoT Pres Ian - Jewels to be worn
19th: Beaune Visit Presentation - Peter Fowle
26th: "Victim Support" John Hayward-Cripps - VoT R Tiltman

NOTES FROM CLUB COUNCIL

Many of the items dealt with at the October meeting are mentioned elsewhere in the Bulletin and this summary covers the other main points.

A real effort is to be made to expedite club business as quickly as possible, ensuring speakers are able to start on time and so end club meetings by 2.15 p.m. A start on this was made on 5 October and worked well.

As last year a team has been created to prepare for and run the Christmas collections: Chris Heath, Mike Nettell, Ian Collington, Ralph Harrison, Paul Beaken and Ray Tiltman (liaison with Tates regarding the erection of Boundary Road Tree). Full support needed from Club members for the collection rota

40 set subscriptions will be collected this month

Rotary Christmas Cards re-appeared this year. Yveline has now sent of the order, so you have either chosen yours or missed the boat

Special General Meeting to receive last year’s accounts and elect 2011/12 officers fixed for Dec 7^th.

CLUB MEETINGS.

7^th September 2010.

20 Present – all our own members.

Motorcycle Rally Committee to meet this coming Thursday, 7.30pm at 28 Shirley Drive (Chez Collington).

It was reported that Ron Loadsman is in hospital with various chest problems. Bob Green is progressing very well and is still hoping to be back at club soon.

President Ian read out a commemorative poem for your editor’s 70^th birthday and then presented him with a copy.

Ray Tiltman asked members to get to the barbecue this coming Saturday promptly because of the failing light this time of year so the cooking can be done in daylight.

Michael Nettell then gave a short progress report on the Friends of Rotary project. In the discussion that followed Yveline Milner had some concerns about "What is Rotary?" in the first paragraph of the letter and thought the piece emphasising fund-raising may put off prospective Friends.

There were a few more suggestions as to how the letter could be rephrased after which Mike said he would like names from members of possible candidates for this scheme, particularly with a mind to recruit people to help us out with the heavily man-powered Christmas Collections.

There was then a fairly lengthy discussion on how to fine tune the scheme with some of the suggestions being taken on board by Mike.

President Ian then gave a run down on what is being done about the Cancer Support Fund in conjunction with George Deutsch with the remark that he is trying to make this a joint effort with the other Brighton Clubs. He is also to liaise with the Macmillan fundraiser for this area.

It was suggested that it must be publicised at the Christmas Collection sites that the money collected will partly be going to the Sussex Cancer Fund

Rotary Housing Society has agreed to finance any extra pop ups that may be needed to publicise SCF.

The remainder of the meeting was taken up by a report on the previous evening’s Club Council, which was published in last month’s bulletin.

14^th September

24 Present – 21 of our own members.

Housing Society Committee meeting followed the Club meeting and Election process for District Officers was explained.

Bryan Meakin brought greetings from the Helensburg Club in northern USA and promised a talk about his trip in due course.

We were sad to learn that Ann Eaton had been badly hurt in a fall (at a later meeting reported to be a fractured hip). Good wishes to be sent to her and John.

Ray Tiltman reported on the successful barbecue on 11 September which was likely to yield a profit of over £570 towards the cost of students attending the next RYLA course. A bowls afternoon arranged by Inner Wheel had been very enjoyable.

President Ian urged members to commit to attendance at the RIBI Conference in Dublin (see Diary above) in April as soon as possible. He would be attending and would like good support.

Adrian Ball announced with not a little sadness that after careful consideration the Committee had decided that the Motor Cycle event which had been so successful over the years should no longer take place as the demands made in terms of preparation and successful delivery were now overstretching the capacity of the Club. The Committee would remain in existence and would work on possible alternative ways of raising funds to support the work of our Charitable Trust – and especially our planned support for the Sussex Cancer Care Centre. Maybe a series of events rather than one big one will be the answer.

Mike Nettell said that the Friends of Rotary system was now ready to go live with the material to give to potential Friends now available. Names of those who are being invited should be given to Mike to guard against duplication of invitations to the same person.

The Talk to the Club was given by Jo Fuller backed by her two colleagues who together prepare and publish the North Portslade Community Newspaper. 6000 copies are published and distributed all by voluntary labour. It began in 1996 and has developed over the period into the impressive publication (Issue 85) most recently produced and which we were able to see for ourselves. Many problems have been overcome in that time (including financial ones) and the paper is now on a sound basis. They are particularly fortunate to have very helpful and relatively inexpensive printers. There is a 50% division between adverts and text and the income from each edition is enough to pay for the next one. Howard Attree gave the vote of thanks.

21^st September

26 present – 24 of our own members.

Members were reminded that the meetings of Club Council would now take place on the last Monday of each month with slight adjustments (generally moving to Tuesday) when there was a Bank Holiday). Plastic milk bottle tops can be given to Frances for the benefit of charity.

Inner Wheel are staring their annual packing of shoeboxes with toys, pencils, sweets etc. etc. to send for distribution to deprived children in eastern Europe. Please bring items for inclusion and give to Frances or Gordon Cummings to pass on to Inner Wheel.

Last week’s reminder of the RIBI Dublin Conference was stressed again.

Ian Varley was taken ill and had to go to hospital whilst on holiday in Cornwall. He is now back, but still in hospital (Worthing). [By the time you read this he is back home and recovering well. Welcomes visits, but phone first] .

Today’s speaker was our own member Bob Hinton. As he said when he started this sounds like a My Job talk. He told us about the time in 1995 when he was solicitor to the Shoreham Port Authority

At that time calves, for veal, were being exported to France through the port of Dover. The animal rights people were protesting so the Dover Port Authority decided to stop the exporters using Dover. The exporters took their case to court but the date for the hearing was set several months away. In the mean time they still needed to export the calves so looked for an alternative port and one they chose was Shoreham.

The Board at Shoreham asked Bob’s advice as to what they should do. He explained to them that, as Shoreham Harbour was a public port, they must allow the exporters to use the harbour for their legal business or they would themselves be breaking the law and could be sued. So they had to allow the exporters to use the port.

This provoked protest from the animal rights people. Right from the start an element of the protests were violent and intimidating, to such an extent that at times there were 1000 police brought in from other areas on duty.

During that time Hove and Adur Councils got together (they were both opposed to the use of the port for animal exports) and decided to use planning control powers to stop the exports through Shoreham. Bob had to explain in several live radio interviews that, no matter what the councils felt, there was a legal duty on the port to permit all lawful trade and the board was still obliged to allow the exporters to use the port.

Bob played several extracts from Radio Sussex interviews where you heard him explaining the situation as the law stood. He also said there was a lot of intimidation to both the board and himself which at times was frightening

The problem was finally resolved when the Dover court case was decided. The Judge criticised the Dover Harbour Board for not performing their duty as a public port and said they must allow the exporters to use the port for their legal business.

During the talk Bob explained how the protest and the work of the veterinary officers in France at least partially improved the calves’ welfare when they arrived in France.

28th September

25 Present – 24 of our own members (but not the substitute editor; hence short report)

Today’s speaker was Dai Sommerville Jones who, on second retirement, founded and chaired various energy companies around the world following 30 years at sea. He said it was a story of a simple sailor. His talk was interspersed with many delightful jokes which had members laughing frequently. His 30 years at sea took him to many parts of the globe his role was mainly in communications. When he joined the navy there were 453 ships in 6 fleets now 80 in one fleet including 40 coastal protection ships. He now is a member of the Mission to Seafarers of which there are 600,000 across the world. They are looked after by the Mission regardless of religion, nationality etc. The president presented a cheque for £100 to the Mission. John Austin gave the vote of thanks.

District 1250 29^th Annual Convention (Conference to most of us)

Report by Peter Fowle

(When I saw this was the 29^th conference I realised that I have been going to Conference for 31 years and although I have not been to all of them I have not missed many. The first 2 were District114)

This year it was held in the Gaydon Motor Museum near Stratford-upon-Avon

The conference was to be held over three days but, because of the lack of numbers and the cost, it was cut to two days but none the speakers were dropped and most of them spoke on the Saturday! We sat down at about 9.45 and when the morning session finished we were given a packed lunch still sitting at the same table so we only had about 15 minutes to stretch our legs before the afternoon session started (3 Hours)

The conference started with the usual welcomes first from the Chairman of the local Council Sir William Lawrence, followed by the Chairman of Dist 25 Inner Wheel and finally by the DG of Dist1250 Simon Crowther.

The first speaker was Annemarie Harte, a young Irish lady, CEO/ Sect. to RIBI She told us that one of the conditions of getting the job was that she joined a local Rotary club which she has now done

Her talk was in two parts. First she told us about her remit at RIBI which was to review every procedure and process provided by the Secretariat. From what she told us she hit them like a whirlwind. She is now getting RIBI Council to network their meetings and to video conference, which must be saving RIBI a lot of travelling expenses

Also when she started at the office in 2007 there were 15 staff and 16 printers, they now have 5 printers between them as all their computers are inter connected

The second part was about her experiences as a new Rotarian in a club where she is the only female, the youngest member (somewhere in her thirties) and the average age of the other members is in the high seventies. The first job she was given was Foundation chairman but nobody could tell her what was expected of her and she said she did not get much help from the foundation member of RIBI either. She had us all laughing for the first time since we had sat down.

The next speaker was from the Motor Museum he told how and why it was set up.

That was followed by the first of 4 club presentations. This was the Farnham club’s COBGATES project, a service for people with Dementia and their carers.

The next speaker was from Watts Art Gallery a £3,000,000 project in Surrey which will be open soon.

It was now time for lunch 1 cheese sandwich, 1bag of crisps, 1 apple, 1 Kit Kat and a bottle of coke which we ate sitting at the same seat we had sat at all morning.

The afternoon session started with Malcolm Wells from the Canine Partners

Then Sarah Outen who in 124 days rowed across the Indian Ocean, she is the youngest of eight women to solo row an ocean

Now the second club project HALO by the Rotary Littlehampton this project is helping Aids Orphans from Kwa Zulu Natal

This was followed by the RIBI Representative V.P. John Minhininick

Club presentation three by Chichester Harbour is to help the victims of Domestic Violence and they started with a frightening video of this taking place.

This was followed by Colin Spurway a Rotary Peace Scholar. The idea of this 2 year scholarship, paid for by Rotary, is for mature peace workers to take the course in the expectation that they return to similar work but with more knowledge.

Now the fourth club project. Storrington’s KILOLO was to extend a school in Africa. The club raised the money, also 5 members and their wives went out there and did the building up to roof level and the roof was going to be put on by locals supervised by the local Rotary club

This was followed by a Shelter Box speaker. We were told the various parts of the world where they are working at this moment and some of the pictures showed how the tents formed small towns

Finally Artist and Conservationist David Shepherd.

Session ends! All the speakers were very good it is such a pity there were so many that it was too long to sit with no break and too much to absorb it all at once. Also it only left us with a few minutes to view the museum which was a missed opportunity.

Saturday evening started, as did Friday evening, with a visit to Ian’s room for a glass or so of wine and a chat about the day. We had the advantage of having inside information as Howard was in our midst

The Dinner Dance was a great success. The food was very good ( lamb shank) the band was very good, you could dance or talk while they were playing without having to shout and in all visits to conference I have never seen the dance floor full for so long .

Sunday morning started with a church service with a youth band playing prior to the service and then for the hymns

There was a short break then the speeches started again

Lis Murry was the first with a talk and videos about Help for Heroes who so far have raised over £14,000,000, a very moving subject.

Next was Shaun Parry-Jones in a wheelchair. As a young man his neck was broken while playing rugby. He was taken to Stoke Mandeville where after 2 days he was told by the doctors that he would never be able to feed himself, never marry, never work, in other words he would be dependent all his life. He was then taken back to the ward very despondent but later a cleaner going round the ward saw him and said, "You don’t look very happy." He told him what he had heard from the doctors. The cleaner said, "You don’t want to take any notice of them, they are all bloody liars." So started a slow recovery to where he is today and several years on he is married, drives a car and is a partner in a firm of solicitors.

Next was David Blight, Starfish Project, who introduced the young lad who spoke to our club the other day and another young man

Now the trophies were given out and the RIBI VDG did his summing up

Next year’s incoming DG told us about next year at Eastbourne 2^nd Oct 2011

The last to come on stage was comedian Don Maclean who was very amusing and had us all laughing. He was on stage 30 minute over time.

In all a good conference but with too many speakers

Peter Fowle

THE CONTACT VISIT TO BEAUNE – MAY 2011

Here are short details of the arrangements Peter Fowle will be providing in full (with video presentation) at the Club meeting on19 October. This contact visit promises to be as enjoyable as the one we arranged in Oxford in 2009 and so will deserve full support from Club members and partners.

The visit will take place in Beaune arriving on the 26^th for the 27/28 May 2011

The cost of the hotel and the visits in Beaune is £500 per couple or £300 single room

For those of you who wanted a coach I can get a 12 seater for £1700 that = £141.66 per person if 12 people go or £170 p.p.if 10 go by coach Hove to Beanue

The cost by train is about £100 p.p.. London to Beaune

For the program I have a slide show on my computer which I will have with me at our meeting for the next 3 weeks.

Later I will have a printed program which will be in the next newsletter.

Peter

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

SEPTEMBER 2010

President Ian reports

It has been a very sociable time for the Club, with an amble, lunch and the annual barbecue. Master of the Walks Ken Jones mustered 19 Rotarians, partners and friends for an amble around Shoreham - taking in some of the old town, the wacky array of houseboats, passing by the river Adur and airport and then into The Amsterdam for a bargain £5 lunch just before the rain poured down! Hopefully these gentle walks will become a popular fixture in our diary. The next one is on Wednesday 29^th September.

The International Lunch hosted by Gill Langley, was a very enjoyable event – notably for the fantastic lunch created by Jenny Saunders and the Inner Wheel pud-making team. It did not go un-noticed that the happy couple behind the bar were celebrating their wedding anniversary with Himself only days away from reaching the big 7-0!

At the end of the month Peter Fowle, Yveline Milner and I will go to Evreux to represent the Club at the opening ceremony of a new therapy facility for disabled in the town - which we have supported in a matched funding project. During our visit I hope to discuss a similar commitment to our fund-raising for the Sussex Cancer Support Centre. Evreux and Pforzheim have already indicated their initial support.

At a meeting with Dr George Deutsch, the Cancer Support Centre project chairman and Gill Langley, President of Inner Wheel we mapped out ideas for the first stages of what we hope will be long-term commitment to the Cancer Centre’s operation. We are also hoping to involve other Brighton & Hove clubs and indeed those across the District in what will be a vital charitable medical facility serving the whole of Sussex.

To try to improve communication of Club matters, this bulletin will now come out after the monthly Council meeting to include details of what was discussed & agreed. (see Minutes page)

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR SEPTEMBER.

7^th. Today, being the first meeting of the month, will be devoted to a report of the previous evening’s Club Council (included in another part of this bulletin)

14^th. Our speaker today is Joe North and he will be telling us all about the Portslade Newspaper with the vote of thanks being given by Howard Attree.

21^st. One of our own today, in the form of Bob Hinton, and his talk is entitled "The Battle of Shoreham". Peter Fowle has volunteered to perform the vote of thanks.

28^th. Dai Sommerville-Jones (Welsh, I think!) is talking us today and he is going to tell us all about his "33 Years in the RN".

CLUB MEETINGS.

3^rd August 2010.

25 present – all our own members.

It was reported that Bob Green seems to be progressing satisfactorily and hopes to be with us in the near future. Paul Thrasher reported that Ian Varley is still in some pain but is off on his annual jaunt to Cornwall, with his family. President Ian reminded members that IPP Bryan Meakin is the point of contact if anyone wishes to report absences through illnesses.

Members were told that Blackcurrant and other jams are available to buy from Yveline Milner today. Yveline is also seeking a lift to District Convention (Conference!!) in September.

Sports Officer John Mainwood informed members that it was that time of the year again when teams must be formed and entered for the various District Competitions including Bridge, Darts and Quiz.

Treasurer Bob Hinton then went through the figures on the end of year club accounts reporting that it had been quite a good year financially with the General Fund ending up with more or less what we started with. The Reserve Balance stands at just over £2,500 and the vast majority of Members had paid their subscriptions

He also told us that the Charity Account was pretty healthy and many members contribute to it through various schemes and this is shown by the gift aid figure.

There is just over £10,000 in this account and he also reported that we gave out about £11,000 as donations to worthy causes. This fund could also receive a considerable fillip from the now defunct Hove Round table, with the sum of £16,000+ which will be ring fenced to help the needy old folk in Hove. This will entail thinking of more community activities to do with the elderly and needy people in this area.

He explained about the Community Fund, which has a similar role to the Charity Fund but money from this is given to community projects that are not necessarily charities.

Finally, he mentioned the International Hospitality Fund, the fund for raising money for the home Contact Visit. He said that this should rise steadily in the three years between each visit and this needed to be boosted by various fundraising events, such as Hospitality Lunches on a regular basis.

There was then a short but inconclusive discussion on how we could use the Round Table money.

President Ian was next up and he informed members of the main points discussed at the previous evening’s Club Council.

He told us recent donations made by this Club, to St John Ambulance, Stephen Love, a recent speaker and to the West Blatchington Windmill. The Windmill and St. John donations were for their involvement in the Motor Cycle Rally. A donation was also made to the Pforzheim RC to help them in their project in which they help young immigrant children to speak the German language.

President Ian, together with Peter Fowle and Yveline Milner are travelling to Evreux at the beginning of October to do with Evreux’s Marie Helene Project.

David Henderson had also given a "trailer" to Club Council with regard to forthcoming speakers. It was also reported that Ken Jones is to organise regular walks and a board was passed around at this meeting with the purpose of finding likely participants.

The International Hospitality Lunch at Gill Langley’s on 5^th September and the Barbecue at Storrington on the 11^th of that month were also mentioned.

President Ian then told us a national scheme which involves clubs getting together to plants millions of crocuses throughout the United Kingdom. The six clubs are to get together to make one really big display in the Brighton and Hove area.

Peter Fowle also mentioned the contact visit to Beaune next June, informing members that the Eurostar fare to Beaune would cost £97.00 return. There was a good response from members present when Peter asked how many members would like to attend the visit.

10^th August 2010.

29 present – 26 of our own members; 1 Rotarian visitor, Tim Parker from Brighton and Hove Soiree and two non-Rotarian Guests; David Hunt, our speaker for today and Charles Gilson, a guest of Chris Heath.

Boards were circulated today with regard to the trip to see Gyles Brandreth in Worthing on October 3^rd and also for members to denote if they would be attending the 5^th Tuesday meeting on the 31^st of this month when the speaker will be a lady from the Starfish Project – a must see!!

George Robinson gave news of the upcoming barbecue at Storrington on 11^th September, appealing for raffle prizes and help from members’ ladies with regard to "puddings".

Ray Tiltman reported that Patrick Douch was seeing a specialist today.

He also informed us that Bob Green has a hospital appointment this coming Friday and we may see him soon. It was also reported that Ian Varley is "pretty chirpy" and is looking forward to his imminent holiday in Cornwall. Derek Clouting also brought greetings from John Ansell, who still doesn’t feel up to attending club at the moment.

Bob Hinton informed members that this club has made an immediate purchase of two water boxes at a cost of £300.00 for the Pakistan Flood Disaster. A letter has been received from the organisers thanking us for our generous donation and these tents will be sent to some of the many homeless in that stricken country.

Our speaker today was David Hunt and he was here to tell us all about the first 100 years of Scouting in Brighton, scouting having been founded in 1908 in this city.

David has been involved with the Scouts movement for over 50 years and this was shown in the excellence of his talk because he was certainly very knowledgeable about all aspects of Scouting.

He mentioned in passing that anything to do with scouting is almost completely ignored by The Argus, saying that in days past the old Brighton and Hove Gazette or Herald used to report Scouts’ activities on a regular basis, unlike The Argus, which rarely mentions scouts in their pages.

David went through a whole catalogue of what scouting involved, and mentioned that links with Rotary go back many years, particularly through Tony Cuttress, a member of the hotel and baker family, who encouraged, with the support of Rotary, links with European scouts, mainly in Holland and Norway.

He then mentioned various schemes that the local scouts are involved with throughout the world, including supporting the street scouts of Kenya. In fact a party of scouts is in Nairobi at the moment, building houses and schools in the large slum in that city.

They were also heavily involved in recommencing scouting in Russia after the fall of communism.

David bemoaned the fact that scouts are not very visible nowadays but he was pleased with the fact that there are more teenagers than ever wanting to join the scouts than in the previous year.

All in all a very fine talk by a true enthusiast and this was reflected in the amount of questions afterwards.

The vote of thanks was given by David Henderson.

17^th August 2010.

22 present – 21 of our own members and one non Rotarian guest; Paul Myers, our speaker.

It was reported that Patrick Douch is attending the Eye Hospital and Bob Green is getting on well but not allowed out yet. Ian Varley is now on holiday in Cornwall with his family.

Paul Myers, our speaker for today, has had a fascinating life, having been a record producer, mainly of Classical music and has worked for CBS and Decca, which gave him the opportunity meet a lot of the giant of the music world including amongst others Daniel Barenboim, John Williams, Placido Domingo and Georg Solti. As well as having a busy life as a producer he has also managed to write seven thriller type novels, all set in the orchestral world.

Paul told us that he became a record producer by accident through his brother who wrote West End reviews and film scripts. He also had "collectors’ mania", starting on a small scale with stamps and cigarette cards and finally records. Paul was a great fan of both classical music and the popular music of the time, with a special fondness for Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, but his all time favourite was Aaron Copeland, mentioning the fact that he had heard a piece, fifty years old, by Copeland, and said that he was still moved by it.

Paul didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life when he left college and travelled extensively, finishing up as a DJ at a radio station in what was then Rhodesia. He left there when he felt the security of the whole country was not so good and what with the troubles in the Congo he felt Africa was out of the question as far as work was concerned. He travelled to New York where he worked as a jewellery salesman in Tiffany’s for a short while trying to find work in radio, quite difficult even though there were 40 radio stations at the time.

He called one that turned out to be a Chinese language station.

Finally he was introduced to David Kapp, who owned his own record company in the Twenties and who used to drive down to the Deep South and was responsible for discovering such luminaries as Bing Crosby, Eartha Kitt and Harry Belafonte. Paul said you could say that David had a "real nose for a star". He took on Paul, because he was looking for someone to write notes for the music.

His first job with David was to look after a 15 year old boy called Brian Hyland, who became famous worldwide for singing the "Polka Dot Bikini" song.

After two or three years of working with mostly unknown artists he was head hunted by Colombia records and luckily the chief of this organisation was a real Anglophile which helped in Paul being selected. Paul worked for them for some time before being sent to London, "because he spoke the language", as head. He loved this part of his life because of the cheapness of recording in London and all the top people came there to record, but eventually he moved to Decca because he felt that CBS dropped their standards as far as Classical music was concerned.

Paul then went on to lots more details of the fabulous life he led, travelling the world doing what he loved most in life and meeting.

I wish I had more space for devote to this talk because it was a rare glimpse into a world we can only imagine.

Paul concluded his talk by playing a selection of his favourite pieces to us.

The vote of thanks was given by John Eaton.

24^th August 2010.

26 Present – 24 of our own members and two non Rotarian guests; Joan Woodthorpe, here with Tony and Tony Platt, our speaker for today.

Secretary Frances mentioned that more names are needed to support next week’s evening meeting. She also informed members that the President of RI is visiting the area on Wednesday 27^th October and will be a guest of the Brighton Club at The Royal Albion Hotel.

Invalids: Ron Loadsman fairly poorly, Bob Green making steady progress, Patrick Douch due for another visit to hospital and John Ansell has had an operation on his right eye and is presently suffering some discomfort.

It was announced that the outing to see Gyles Brandreth in October has been cancelled.

Members were then reminded of the two events coming up; firstly the International Hospitality Lunch at Gill Langley’s on 5^th September and secondly the Barbecue at Storrington on the 11^th of the same month. Desserts are required for both.

Ken Jones told members to bring their "willies and umbrellas" for the walk around Shoreham tomorrow.

Tony Platt, a former pharmacist, was here to tell us all about the restoration of the Arun and Wey Canal, a subject we hadn’t heard about for many years.

This canal, if fully open and operational, would enable craft to travel from Littlehampton through to the Central London by way of Guildford.

Unfortunately it is in a really bad state of disrepair despite all the work carried out by groups such as Tony’s, who have carried out extensive work to various parts, diverting routes, building new lock and renovating river banks. Tony says they rely solely on volunteers with armies of people clearing out the route of the canal through forestry.

They have even found a postman at Loxwood who is a great builder of hedges and who has landscaped parts of the route to great effect.

One of their big tasks is to install vast amounts of pond liner because canals tend to leak some on construction.

The reconstruction of the various bridges is a tricky business because modern bricks are a different size to those used in the construction of the original bridges.

There are more than 20 locks on their stretch of the canal and all of these have to be brought back to their original state. One disused lock, which was virtually hidden, had to be rebuilt and it was discovered that they had to drop the canal some six feet to get it under the road.

Some of the canal is workable enough to enable the group to run trips and they have a new, all electric, 30 seat boat, which brings in revenue for the rebuilding fund. There are also special days set aside on which you can bring you own boat along. Tony showed us a delightful picture of a day such as this when there were up to 20 boats in a lock at one time.

Tony finished his talk with a short video presentation showing some of the restoration work on a small part of the canal.

There were questions at the conclusion of the talk from John Eaton, President Ian, Paul Thrasher and Bernard Greaves.

The vote of thanks was given by Gordon Cummings.

31^st August 2010.

44 Present – 20 of our own members and one Rotarian visitor, Colin Crookes, President of Brighton and Hove Breakfast Club, accompanied by his wife Maureen. Remainder of guests were mainly the better halves of Members and included Phyliss Howell, a guest of Derek Clouting, Bob and Dorothy Allan, guests of David Henderson and finally Ann Blight, our speaker for today who was accompanied by David, her husband and Matt Callard, who was also here to help out with Ann’s presentation.

Raffle prizes are needed for the functions on the 5^th and 11^th September, and both of these events were given a promotion by President Ian and George Robinson.

President Ian informed members that it is hoped to "roll out" the Friends of Rotary scheme in September.

The "40 Set" draw was made by our speaker and the cheque for £25 was won by Ray Tiltman.

Ann Blight our speaker today runs The Starlight Project, an organisation that helps people overcome acute stammering.

Ann said that stuttering is called "The Cinderella of speech therapy".

She also said that the whole aim of the scheme is not to cure but to help people overcome the most severe forms of stuttering.

Stammering is not felt by most people to be a big problem but these same people don’t realise the devastating effect that stammering can have on a person, stopping them communicating with others and making it very difficult to apply for work or perform well in the workplace (if and when they get a job!).

She pointed out that on a four year course of speech therapy there was only eight weeks devoted to learning about stammering.

Ann started Starfish some twelve years ago, realising what a neglected subject it was particularly as she had a stammer in early life too. She also said that the most famous stammerer in this country was the late King George VI, who was heard to stammer every year during the Christmas broadcast to the nation.

It was discovered early on that stammerers never suffer from their handicap when singing so it was felt that it could be contained with various breathing techniques and that is precisely how it is done.

Ann said that she also noticed that stammerers never made eye contact with other people when they were speaking and this was one of the first things that she corrected.

The third thing she taught was for the stammerers to throw their voices and then you have the three main ingredients of control.

She then went on to mention here talk to many of us Rotarians in Jersey last year, at District Conference, which was one of the most moving presentations that I have heard on these occasions.

Following this she then showed us a short DVD presentation, showing Matt, the aforementioned guest, on the first day of his course, when he spent an agonising amount of time trying to have a telephone conversation and the end product in which he spoke with just breathing pauses at the end of every sentence.

Matt then spoke to us to tell us about his problems with his stammer and you could detect the very special effort he was making to stop his stammer by way of pausing between every sentence with deep breaths before every phrase.

He had tried various therapies from the age of 11, including private speech therapy and various psychological ideas until a friend recommended Starfish, to which he didn’t go initially because he thought it would be similar to other unsuccessful courses he had been on.

He said he never thought that he would finish up addressing fairly large audiences on the subject. He finished up by saying that it has changed his life in a very big way and would forever grateful to Ann and her organisation.

It was then Ann’s turn to come back and she told us that the majority of stammerers seem to be of the male persuasion, but she doesn’t know why.

She also remarked that children pick up stammering because they are so excited to speak and they then speak too fast and stumble over their words.

A truly inspiring talk from a very remarkable lady.

The vote of thanks was given by President Ian.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

AUGUST 2010

Some August thoughts from President Ian

Between all of our members, how many friends have we got? It will be interesting to see how many of us can bring along some new faces as we set up the Friends of Rotary project. I am very pleased that the idea has been so widely welcomed, with various useful suggestions coming from our recent lunchtime discussion. We can now fine tune the pilot scheme to launch publicly in September. I think that we have nothing to lose by it and a great deal to gain if some of those Friends become full members in due course.

It was also very encouraging to meeting up with other, new, Brighton and Hove presidents to talk about more contact and co-operation between us. Last week ADG Neil Hills led an informal meeting with Colin Crookes of Breakfast, Stephen Grint of Soirée, Eric Gill of Brighton, Brian Dollings of Brighton East and me.

It was clear that we are all keen to strengthen our clubs with joint efforts. I was pleased to hear Colin making great use of the expression "joined-up-Rotary", and we can look forward to seeing more of members of other clubs at our meetings. I hope that individually or in small groups we will also do more visiting.

We discussed a number of initiatives which, if they bear any fruit, I will feed back on. To keep up to date, we intend to operate an e-mail group, also involving club secretaries. One cheery suggestion which we all liked was for a joint inter-club fun evening with partners in January. More on that, anon. We will be meeting up again in October.

I would be grateful for any thoughts on how we should report on Club Council meetings. To have a long presidential droning-on at a lunchtime meeting (even if enlivened by expert contributions from Council members) is not exactly appetising.

I am wondering if we might generate a Council minutes summary which could be included in the newsletter. If we were to do this, we would need to publish the newsletter a week later, immediately after the Council meeting. Please let me have your views. I am conscious that we could communicate better.

Hopefully, my long drawn out distractions with work will soon slim down. I look forward to spending "more time with my family" and with Rotary!

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR AUGUST.

3^rd. Today will be devoted to a report on the previous evening’s Club Council with a report on finances from Bob Hinton

10^th. Today’s speaker will be David Hunt and he will be telling us all about "100 Years of Brighton Scouting".

17^th Paul Myers is our speaker today and his talk is entitled "Adventures in a Revolving World" Don’t miss this one, it promises to be very entertaining.

24^th. Tony Platt is here today and he will be covering a subject that we haven’t heard at Club for quite a while and that is "The Wey and Arun Canal"

31^st This is an evening and what an evening it promises to be because we have Ann Blight speaking to us about "Starfish", an organisation that helps people with severe talking disorders. A party of us were fortunate to hear her in Jersey last year and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.

International Hospitality Fund

SUMMER LUNCH

Sunday 5^th September, 12.30 for 1pm

140, Woodland Drive,

At the kind invitation of Inner Wheel President Gill Langley.

Cost £10.

Remembering Colly

Many Club members were present at the funeral service for Colly Coulson on Friday 2 July. I myself missed it because we returned from holiday the same afternoon. I expect many of you would like to pay tribute to his memory in a tangible way and Margaret has made it known that she would like this to be by way of contributions to the cause which is the joint project of both Jill and Ian as Presidents of the Rotary and Inner Wheel Clubs of Hove. The project is to contribute to the fund-raising for the proposed Sussex Macmillan Cancer Support Centre for which a site has been made available near to the existing Cancer Centre at the Royal Sussex Hospital.

The easiest way for any of you to do this will be to make a payment to me as Treasurer of our Club’s Charitable Trust Fund. I will earmark any gift for the project and record it as coming from you. When all contributions are in I will let Margaret know the result of the collection. I will close the list at the end of August. If you make your gift by cheque it should be payable to The Rotary Club of Hove Charitable Trust.

Most members of the Club who pay income tax have made Gift Aid declarations to cover gifts to the fund and any gift covered by a declaration will enable me to recover an additional amount of about 28% of the gift from Inland Revenue. This will be added to the amount now given. This has been very beneficial to the fund in recent times; I recently received Tax Refunds on member’s gifts totalling over £490 for the last 2 tax years.

If you are a tax payer but have not yet given me a declaration and would like to do so (or if you are not sure whether you have made one), have a word with me about it.

Bob Hinton

CLUB MEETINGS.

6^th July 2010.

27 Present – 26 of our own Members, including Honorary Member John Ansell and one Rotarian visitor; David Bellamy from Burgess Hill, our speaker for today.

Secretary Frances told members to contact Bob Mulholland if there is an incorrect entry under their name in the Club Directory. Amendments will be printed in later bulletin.

It was reported that Bob Green is at home and progressing well. Paul Thrasher reported that Ian Varley is in pain and not at all happy after his recent operation.

President Ian touched on a few highlights from the previous evening’s Club Council making special mention of "Friends of Rotary" and told members that there was a paper on each table explaining more on this scheme.

There was also an update on what was happening at the forthcoming District Council in Warwick. Please see President Ian for further details.

President Ian was then highly delighted to present a certificate to John Ansell commemorating John’s fifty years in Rotary and on him being made an Honorary Member of the Club. John was quite overcome with the whole occasion.

David Bellamy, our speaker today, was here to tell us all about the Grafton Project, a scheme that district was involved in, in which they helped orphaned children in Sierra Leone. The scheme was also run in conjunction with Mercy Ships.

The help took the form of building an extension to the hospital clinic and the erection of a classroom for the school.

The whole thing was completed recently, with ten to twelve teams of Rotarians and friends carrying out labouring work and the building was opened by a government minister

District 1250 carried out all the construction work but the task of feeding the 600 orphans was taken on by a town in Holland that contributed money on a weekly basis.

David told us that just seeing the children on arrival makes you want to try to make their lives better. He found that all the children were desperate to learn and very proud of what they were being taught.

When David first arrived, he was absolutely appalled by the conditions at the school, planks of wood being used as desks and seats and leaking roofs as well.

Following on from that first visit, a sum of £70,000 was raised. Another £22,000 was raised as a result of a walk from the Sierra Leone Embassy in London to the town in Holland that was previously mentioned. Their aim then was to build a new secondary school, new latrines and a skill centre which would enable to orphans to learn the necessary skills to earn a living and become self sufficient. All these tasks were completed by December 2008, with all the supplies coming by Mercy Ship.

Although we have heard of similar projects in the past, one couldn’t but help to be impressed by the speed and energy of which this project was completed.

It meant that a huge difference in the life style of 600 war orphans was made, with good education facilities and much better living conditions

An excellent talk by someone who has actually done something to make a lot of people’s life a lot better.

Questions afterwards from Michael Peters and Chris Heath with the vote of thanks given by Howard Attree.

13^th July 2010.

26 present – 25 of our own members and one non-Rotarian guest; Chris Neilson, our speaker for today.

It was reported that Ian Varley is confined to wheelchair and is in quite a lot of pain and not expected to attend Club for some while.

Bob Green still progressing quite well but not allowed out of the house yet.

Treasurer Bob Hinton reminded members that their subscriptions were due.

Bob also mentioned that Jennifer Moffatt, who was the first of Bob’s counselled Ambassadorial Scholars was visiting Bob’s home this coming Friday and that anybody who wanted to reacquaint themselves with her would be welcome.

Detective Chris Neilson was our speaker today. Chris is head of the Sussex Police Economic Crime Unit, covering fraud, but he was here today to keep us all informed about MAPPA (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements)

This agency was set up in an attempt to protect the general public from various criminals, predominantly those convicted of sexual and violent, or both, offences.

These offenders are split up into three categories 1: Registered Sex Offenders, of which there war about 30,000 in 2004/5) 2: Violent or other Sex Offenders (12,600) and 3: Other Offenders, of which there were 3,000.

Information is then shared about these offenders with different agencies and the police will share information with offender managers that they have gathered about an offender’s behaviour from surveillance or intelligence gathering.

Local authorities will help find offenders suitable accommodation where they can be effectively managed.

With the help of all these various agencies and the police force, the hope is that the offenders will not reoffend, but if there is a risk that they may, surveillance is stepped up on all of them.

Although it may seem pretty straightforward, a visit to the MAPPA website will explain all the intricacies of the scheme.

You will also find out how MAPPA, the result of various acts of parliament passed since 1997. These acts included the sex offenders act 1997 and the criminal and court services act of 2000, the one that actually created MAPPA. This also led to a host of departments, all with their own acronym, including SOPOS, ROSHOS, FTOS and NOS (please don’t ask!!)

Quite a fascinating talk.

The vote of thanks was given by Ken Jones.

20^th July 2010.

24 Present – 23 of our own members and one non Rotarian guest, Stephen Love, our speaker.

Volunteers are being sought for a Military Tattoo at Ardingly on Saturday, 4^th September.

Michael Nettell announced that there would be a meeting, immediately after this one, to discuss the setting up of the "Friends of Rotary" scheme.

Letter read out from Gill Langley, President of Hove Inner Wheel, thanking this Club for its £1,000 to her Club.

Howard Attree, wearing his District Treasurer’s hat, informed us that there had only been 300 registrations for the upcoming District 1250 Conference and has now been reduced from Fri/Sun to one of Sat/Sun, but the programme will be just as extensive as before.

Howard also mentioned the Focus on the Crocus project, which is a reinvention of Thanks for Life next February, and as February is the month for crocuses blooming, RIBI aims to get in the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest crocus displays up and down all the country, and with this in mind all Rotary Clubs have been invited to purchase vast amounts of crocuses (croci!!) and make impressive displays in their home town. It was suggested that maybe the six Rotary Clubs in the Brighton area could get together to make one big display. Howard said that £50 buys ten thousand crocuses.

Stephen Love, our speaker today, was formerly head teacher at Boundstone Community College at Sompting for many years.

It was on a visit to Indian, with a party of six formers as part of an unnamed project. He fell in love with the country and on a subsequent visit to plant thousands of trees on behalf of the Greening Project.

On another trip he heard, to his horror, that babies born, many as a result of rape, to unmarried mothers met very inhumane deaths. Following on from this he set up the Love Trust for Indian Children".

He came back home determined to raise enough money to do something about this problem and with the help of charities such as John Eaton’s Osborne Charitable Trust set about his task. He also contributed a large amount of his own money to the project

He managed to raise about £40,000 and with this set about building an orphanage for these unfortunate mothers and their children in a town about 500 miles inland from Mumbai and about 50 miles from the nearest decent sized town, and this opened about ten years ago. Initially there were only a small amount of babies but to date they have saved about 150 of these "little human beings" from a horrible fate.

Every child they take in is taken in with the aim of getting them adopted. All the babies are adopted in India and none is taken out of the country.

Stephen said that bureaucracy is very complicated, with many rules and legislations, courts and reports, much like the forms that are necessary in the UK, not surprising because the bureaucracy is very much on similar lines to this country, a legacy from their days under British rule.

He also said that there was a great deal of corruption in India, but if you face down the people that want "backhanders" and show you are very intent in dealing with them, the people wanting backhanders will fall away.

Luckily for him, his organisation now has a reputation as an honest and straightforward one and not many people now ask for a bribe before agreeing to doing or supplying anything.

He told us that a lot of the young pregnant girls will often be the victims of support. They have usually been assaulted while they work in the fields and cannot go back home to Mum and Dad because of the disgrace involved. They still get a chance to keep the baby but this has never happened so far.

Stephen’s organisation will keep the baby for up to a year but by then they want to get the baby adopted. The project has managed to make adoption a respectable thing to do, which wasn’t so previously.

Money is received in all the various ways, with covenants, legacies, and donations from companies but most of the money has to be raised by conventional means, with donations from members of the public.

This was a very straightforward story of someone who had a mission and carried it out, thereby saving many babies from a nasty death.

Stephen took questions at the conclusion of his talk and Bob Hinton asked what happened to handicapped children, who obviously wouldn’t be easily adopted by anyone and Stephen said that they were normally passed on to a similar Indian organisation that had the facilities to cater for them more easily.

Howard Attree asked if, in the future, the girls were likely to be encouraged to keep their children but Steven thought that this was unlikely because in the countryside there is a very strong Hindu culture and there were what, in this country would be called old fashioned views on babies born out of wedlock

Peter Savage wondered if it was more difficult to place a female baby rather than a male and Stephen quoted the old saying of "Boy is a son until wife, but a daughter is a daughter for life".

The final question was from John Eaton, who asked what equipment his organisation needed and Stephen replied by saying that he would have to speak to his trustee in Indian as to what is required.

A really good talk by an excellent orator, who was obviously passionate about this very worthwhile project.

The vote of thanks was given by John Eaton.

27^th July 2010.

29 Present 28 of our own Members and one Rotarian visitor; Hugh Peters, our speaker today and a founder member of Brighton East RC.

There was a discussion during lunch with regard to this Club taking on Friends of Rotary whereon it was agreed that it would be an idea worth trying but details of the scheme need to be ironed out. Application forms for members to find friends of Rotary were on each table.

Ron Loadsman was poorly. He was also pleased to report that Bob Green has been out walking and is making good progress. Derek Clouting told members that Ian Varley is still unwell.

Today was the occasion for a "40 Set" draw and the cheque for £25 was won by George Robinson.

Speaker Secretary David Henderson made an appeal to members for speaker suggestions.

Our speaker today was Hugh Peters, a 94 year old veteran of the Sicily Landings in World War II and this was the subject of his talk.

He started off by telling us that he was very aware that war was likely when growing up in the thirties and he trained annually with a regular regiment of the artillery. He was subsequently called up on 30^th August 1939, four days before the outbreak of the war.

In 1940 he found himself in France and was one of the 300.000 or more evacuees from Dunkirk.

He went on to tell us of his adventures over the next few years, including a voyage he made with a flotilla of ships, heading for North Africa, which took about nine weeks owing to the huge diversion that convoys such as this had to make to avoid enemy fire. He and his men, for he was a Captain of Artillery, then spent nine months in the desert, going on to Tunisia and with "clapped out" transport a further three weeks to reach the Southern end of the Suez Canal where they boarded a 22,000 ton liner to Sicily, where they were greeted on the horizon by the magnificent sight of Mount Etna.

He then went on to tell us about the many battles he took part in on this very volatile island.

He told us about the chaotic things that happened at the initial invasion, including the fact that the Royal Navy were not told that American Air Force planes would be flying over them and consequently fired on them. Communications at the time were not very sophisticated and the range of wireless communication was only about six miles, which isn’t very useful if you were seven miles from base trying to communicate with headquarters.

It was a wonder that the invasion was a success at all because of the aforementioned chaos, but history shows that it was one of the most famous exercises during that time.

This was an amazing talk by a very brave and modest gentleman. He had terrific recall of the whole experience which was an amazing 65 years ago and everyone present was fascinated with this account of what must have been a nerve racking period of his life.

There were many questions asked by members afterwards.

The vote of thanks was given by David Henderson.

There are two stand out figures on the attendance numbers and they are both the Davids, Burchell and Henderson with 100% attendance, one being our senior (in age) and the other still working full time and yet able to get to club meetings every week.

DIRECTORY CORRECTIONS.

Please add Gordon Cummings and John Eaton to the list of Paul Harris Fellows.

Michael Nettell’s email address should be michael.nettell@talktalk.net

Peter Fowle’s email address is p.fowle@talk21.com

Add F. du Toit to members of RC of Hove Housing Society

Frances du Toit email address is francis.dutoit.ntlworld.com (please note i in Francis, not as she spells it in real life.

ROTARY CLUB OF HOVE

BULLETIN

JULY 2010

Some Thoughts from President Ian

A Happy New Rotary Year! My grateful thanks for the good wishes and support that I have already been given. Let’s hope that between us we can defy some of the woes of the recession and enjoy some growth and prosperity in the life of our Club. I am determined that everyone should be able to get what they personally want from their membership. This means I will appreciate lots of feedback – positive or negative – so that we can keep things on track. By this time next month, we should have some specific pointers for the months ahead to talk about.

I already have some of my own ambitions for the year ahead. At the end of July the new Presidents of the Brighton & Hove Clubs will be meeting to discuss better links. We are all already agreed that we would like to increase the amount of contact and joint efforts between us. I would hope that we will see individuals from other Clubs visiting us more often, not just through raids.

I also hope that we can work together in making Rotary more visible in the community. I have chosen as the President’s Charity the Sussex Cancer Fund which is working with Macmillan Cancer Support to set up a £5.7m centre for patients, family, friends and carers. I was delighted to discover that Gill Langley, my counterpart in Inner Wheel, had quite co-incidentally chosen the Cancer Fund as her charity. It would be a great achievement if Rotarians in Brighton & Hove and across Sussex could share in the fund-raising for a cause which has great resonance for so many of us. I have already asked the Pforzheim and Evreux Clubs if they will give some support.

The Contact Visit to Pforzheim was most enjoyable, interesting and very sociable. Although only nine of us were able to go this year, there are great hopes that next year, courtesy of our friends in Evreux, we could travel in force to Beaune the centre of great Burgundy wines. I would like everyone who is interested to support Peter Fowle and Paul Thrasher in exploring how we might make or even extend the visit, set for 27-29 May. More about this soon.

Sadly in recent months, numbers attending Club meetings have dwindled. I hope that we can reverse this trend with the continuing attractions of excellent speakers and with some new faces. Please do invite guests to join us when you can. The membership team will also be working on the pilot Associate Membership project to open up the Club to some key folk in our community who cannot devote time to being fully active members. We will be working to create a programme of events and outings that will appeal to as many members as possible.

There are certain jobs in life that you think you will never do! For me, that included presidency of our Rotary Club. I know that I was not alone in feeling reluctant to take it on. I joined back in 1982, left in the nineties because work got in the way and then re-joined in 1999. After all these years, I have been appalled to discover how ignorant I have been about some aspects of Rotary. So I am particularly grateful for all the help and advice that I have had. I will continue to seek it!

CLUB PROGRAMME FOR JULY.

6^th. Our speaker today is David Bellamy from the Rotary Club of Burgess Hill and he is here to tell us all about The Grafton Project.

13^th. Hello, hello, hello – we have a policeman speaking today and it is Inspector Chris Neilson and he will be giving us his view on "Managing Dangerous Offenders".

20^th. Steven Love will be addressing us at this meeting and he will be publicising his own personal charity which is "Love Trust for Indian Children in Need".

27^th. For the second time this month we have a Rotarian to speak to us, this time it is Hugh Peters from the Rotary Club of Brighton East and he is to speak to us on "Sicily – An Invasion Experience".

HEADED NOTEPAPER.

An up-to-date version of the club’s headed notepaper is available for downloading from the Club website (see front cover of directory for address).

CLUB MEETINGS.

1^stJune 2010.

26 present – all our own members.

President Bryan was delighted to see the return of Ray Tiltman and Ray thanked everyone for their get well messages and cards. President Bryan was also pleased to see Ron Loadsman back after a lengthy absence.

Ted Bartup reported that Bob Green is still receiving physiotherapy in hospital but hopes to return home sometime this week.

Congratulations were given to Isobel and Paul Thrasher on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary and Paul gave a cheque for £50 to be placed in the Club’s Charity Account.

Today saw a report on the previous evening’s Club Council and President Bryan started off by saying that the Motorcycle Rally raised £2.500 approximately which he felt was pretty good in the present economic climate. He also informed members that Rotary no longer refers to young people as youths but is now using the term "new generations" (dear me!!)

There is to be a meeting with the remaining members of Hove Round Table next month to discuss how to "spend their money", this money left over from the disbandment of the Club.

A donation of £100 has been made to the Girl Guides to help them celebrate their Centenary at the gathering in Hove Town Hall.

Following the talk from the representative of Chestnut Tree Hospice a cheque for £200 has been sent to that very worthwhile organisation. £100 is also to be given to Sarah Sells, a recent speaker, for her Ethiopian Charity.

All final arrangements are in place for the joint project with Evreux.

It was recommended that John Ansell, who resigned from the Club after over 50 years of service and this matter will be dealt with at the Club AGM, which follows on from this council report.

Council is quite perturbed about the "thin" attendances" lately and it has been noted that apologies are not being formally given. It was felt that the hotel is not being fairly treated and could even charge us more for our meals if they have no idea of numbers to cater for.

Secretary Frances to take responsibility for absentee book and also to inform hotel of how many members to expect at each meeting.

Membership – still no new members for a while despite Mike Nettell’s efforts. Hove Actually to run an advert, costing £60, to do with recruitment.

Community Awards have been Okayed for Portslade Community College, Hove Park and Blatchington Mill schools.

Ralph Harrison to look into possibility of entering a skittles team in the Lewes RC skittles tournament.

Hanna Young, 19 year old daughter of Paul Young, founder of "Off the Fence" going to Ethiopia shortly on charity mission asked for support and club agreed to give her £250.00.

As stated earlier, today was also the occasion of the Club’s AGM.

I will just give you the highlights of this because minutes of the meeting will be available later.

There were reports, written or oral, from the Chairmen of the various committees.

Treasurer Bob Hinton recommended that next Rotary year’s subscription should be £107 but after some discussion it was decided that it should be at the increased sum of £110.

The concluding business at the AGM was to elect Adam Trimingham and John Ansell as honorary members.

8^th June 2010.

24 present – 23 of our own members and one non Rotarian guest; Gemma Cornwell, our speaker.

President Bryan had the very pleasant task of presenting Gordon Cummings with a Paul Harris Fellowship for his great service to this club over the last 40 years or so.

Ted Bartup reported that Bob Green is still awaiting assessment to see if he can cope when he goes back home.

It was announced that the Club Quiz team are competing in the final of the District 1250 Quiz competition tonight and President Bryan wished them well.

Bob Hinton told members that they must have many jam jars at home with "Spread and Save" money in them and he would be grateful if the money was brought in as soon as possible.

Our speaker today was Gemma Cornwell, who is the Community Fundraising Office for Prostate Cancer Research.

She started off with a small quiz on prostate cancer statistics which we all failed miserably.

She then gave us a brief history of her own organisations, telling us that it was founded in 1996 when it was felt that the time had come for prostate cancer to be publicised more because it was killing some 10,000 males every year.

She then described to us what the prostate is and what function if performs and then listed the symptoms of prostate cancer that included frequent passing of water, unable to empty bladder properly etc. She also told us that any diet rich in fat, dairy products or red meat may increase the risk and said that prostate cancer is the largest incidence of all the cancers.

There is some ignorance among the general public about the condition, with one in ten people thinking that it affect men and women but this is obviously untrue. Gemma told us of a lady she knew who swore blind that he had contracted prostate cancer three times and had been cured every time.

I won’t go into great depth about her talk because I’m confident that most of our members know a lot about this particular subject. Gemma gave an excellent talk and fielded many questions, very efficiently, at the conclusion of her talk.

The vote of thanks was given by John Eaton.

15^th June 2010.

28 present – 27 of our own and one Rotarian Visitor; Assistant District governor Neil Hills, our moderator for today’s Club Assembly from Oxted and Limpsfield.

Senior Vice Ian Collington was in the chair today and he had the most pleasant task, together with ADG Neil to give a Paul Harris Fellowship to Paul Thrasher.

SVP Ian gave a big welcome back to Patrick Douch after his lengthy sick leave.

Ray Tiltman informed members that Bob Green is having house assessment in the very near future and it is hoped that he will able to return home soon.

Congratulations were given to Joan and David Burchell on the celebration of their 69^th (yes! 69^th) Wedding Anniversary.

Bob Mulholland was delighted to announce that the quiz team, consisting of himself, Paul Beaken, David Henderson and John Mainwood had won the District Quiz Competition at the first time of asking. He also thanked Ian Collington and Ralph Harrison for their single appearance contributions to this achievement.

I/C President Ian presided over this year’s Club Assembly and started his remarks by saying that he was quite optimistic about the coming year and that ongoing feedback was needed. Any ideas and more participation in activities is a must and he also said that we haven’t "done committees" very well these last few years. He suggested slimming down of the committee structure with key members in the club being asked for help when needed. He also said that, thanks to ADG Neil Hills, there are going to be more get togethers with other club Presidents in the coming year.

He informed members that Gill Langley is his Inner Wheel counterpart and they are intending to hold a Fund raising lunch in September at Gill’s home.

He also thought it was important to keep an eye on the Probus diary to avoid clashes that occurred last year.

He announced that his project for this year is the Sussex Cancer Support Centre, run by George Deutsch, who has agreed to become an associate member.

New programme secretary David Henderson was the first of the various officers to rise, saying that he had a number of speakers in mind, who he hopes will match Ralph’s efforts this past year.

Ken Jones and George Robinson are to organise a walk every month and have a few social and vocational visits in mind and hopefully will get together with other club officers to feed each other with new ideas.

Sports Officer John Mainwood informed members that the number of darts teams is diminishing and ten pin bowling is only just surviving but is looking forward to another year of getting involved as much as possible.

It was stated that Bryan Meakin will be happy to arrange visits to concerts and shows.

Mike Nettell = Membership Chairman – said that this time last year he was hoping to meet other membership officers from the Brighton Clubs but this didn’t come to fruition. Hopefully this year he will have more success. He is to work on associate members and hopes that local free newspapers will cooperate with us with any good stories. He is also looking at local schools with the hope of attracting head teachers to our club meetings.

John Eaton, speaking on behalf of community and vocational said that requests for funds from various organisations had dried up so community now concentrates on seeing what support is needed by local organisations and charities. Fare Share will be supported once again and a barbecue at Knowles Tooth is due to take place shortly. Support will also be given to SERVE, known as Blood Runners, and St John Ambulance Brigade, particularly with regard to their help at Stroke Awareness and the Motor Cycle Rally. He then went on to a list of various charities that will high in our priorities for the coming year.

Gordon Cummings then spoke of the plans for the motorcycle rally next year, with 250 motorcycles taking part in helping to raise thousands of pounds for charity. It was usually held on the last Sunday in April but next year this day is Easter Sunday so the rally will be held on 8^th May – watch this space!

International Chairman Peter Fowle told us that his committee will be doing their usual thing and he will be seeking guidance from his counterparts in German and France this coming weekend as to what project they wish us to support with them next year.

Contact visit in 2011 will be held in Beaune, heart of the Burgundy wine district on Fri/Sat/Sunday 27/29^th May. Aqua boxes are another thing to look at but he said we have no storage facilities at the Courtland’s Hotel. He suggested that Shelter Box is a better proposition because it is just a case of buying the box.

Foundation Chairman Yveline Milner went through the various projects that her own particular branch of Rotary supports including ambassadorial scholars, matching grants, spread and save. She said that the emphasis has been on larger projects enabling joint club efforts which, with the help of a matching grant, huge sums can be donated.

ADG Neil Hills summed up at the end of the meeting without telling us what he thought of

our programme for this coming year.

22^nd June 2010.

28 present – 23 of our own members and 5 non Rotarian guests; Stuart Mclaughlin, principal of Portslade Community College together with four members of the RYLA team from his school, Beth Ansell, Tom Jackson and Harry and Joanne Kent (twins!)

SVP Ian Collington was in the chair today and he brought back greetings from both Evreux and Pforzheim’s club Presidents on the occasion of the Contact Visit.

Ray Tiltman ported that Bob Green was home and feeling pretty good at the moment.

There was news of Ian Varley, who is currently in Worthing Hospital with kidney problems but hopes to be home this coming week.

There was a final call for anyone who wants to make a late booking for the joint Presidents’ ‘do’ this coming Friday.

Ray Tiltman kicked proceedings off with regard to the RYLA team, introducing Principal Stuart McLaughlin and the four RYLA candidates (see above).

Ray said he has never been disappointed with any of our RYLA candidates throughout the year and this year was no exception. He remarked that the only school pupils that seem to be mentioned in the local paper are the ones who get into trouble and never such as the four who visited us today.

Tom Jackson was the first of the team to speak, telling us that as a volunteer at a local youth club this course was great for his leadership. Harry Ken was of a similar mind. Joanne Kent said that she had wanted to work on her teamwork at school and found the course very helpful in this regard. Beth had a completely different reason, wanting to enhance her orienteering and map reading skills and she found plenty of scope for this. They then, individually, went through their programme for the week, a programme that has never changed much throughout the year and I think you are all fairly familiar with what goes on at this wonderful course.

The highlight for all of them was the show that all the participants had to compile, choreograph and perform on the final night. I’ve seen a few of these and they never fail to impress me in what they can turn out at such short notice.

All of the candidates were full of praise for what they had got out of the course and they all spoke in a very confident manner. They all thanked Ray Tiltman for giving them the opportunity, together with this club for agreeing to his choice of team. They also said they hope to be able to be involved in further Rotary projects in the future.

SVP Ian said that it was one of the best accounts of the RYLA project that he had ever heard and Ray Tiltman piped in by saying that he hoped we agreed with what he said when he remarked that the first time he had met this team he had not been able to get a word out of them but now, with the confidence they have, they had given a very good presentation to us.

Acting president Ian presented the candidates with their RYLA certificates and then gave a Rotary Community Service Award to Stuart Mclaughlin for Portslade Community College’s fine work in the community. Stuart thanked the Club for the award and for our hospitality to him and the pupils present today.

At the meeting’s conclusion SVP Ian gave a brief account of the visit to Pforzheim.

The main part of the weekend was an introduction to the workings of federal government. He also mentioned the Pforzheim club’s main project that was devoted to funding of educating immigrant children in the German language, teaching immigrant children to read and speak German.

Speaking personally, I really enjoyed the whole weekend which was a very busy one, with no hardly free time as such. We firstly met up with all of our friends from Pforzheim and Evreux at the Park Hotel on Friday afternoon before setting out to the City Hall to listen to Judge Wolfgang giving us a rundown on what Federalism is. We were then addressed by the equivalent of our Mayor, giving us a further explanation of Federalism.

At the conclusion of this, it was back to the hotel to prepare to go out to various Pforzheim members’ houses for the evening meal, although one or two groups of people were treated to dinner at restaurants.

First thing Saturday, two coach loads of us were taken to Stuttgart for a visit to the Porsche Museum. This was most fascinating to those of us interested in automobiles.

We were all then treated to lunch at The Cube, a rooftop restaurant in the centre of Stuttgart, a restaurant blessed with magnificent views over the city.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the State Parliament where we were treated to another lesson in Federalism along with a comprehensive explanation as to how their "Parliament" operates.

Saturday evening saw us all gathered for the banquet at Konigsbach Castle, home of Bettina and Achim von Saint-Andre, past President of RC Pforzheim. Although we had been warned to wrap up, some of were still surprised as to how chilly it was on the evening. Nevertheless it was a memorable occasion, enjoyed very much by all of us.

There was supposed to be an official farewell at the Park Hotel on the Sunday morning but may be the enjoyment of the previous evening led to this event not happening.

On arriving back in the UK I/C President sent the following letter to his Pforzheim counterpart.

"Dr Thomas Wüst

President

Rotary Club of Pforzheim

Händelstrasse 38

75417 Mühlacker

Germany 23 June 2010

Dear Thomas,

I would like to thank you and all the members of your club on behalf of all of us from Hove who were at the Contact meeting in Pforzheim. It was a very enjoyable and memorable experience. As always, we were pleased to meet up with old friends but also to make some new ones. We very much appreciated all the fine food and hospitality – whether it was in members’ homes, restaurants or in the historic setting of Königsbach Castle . Our thanks again to Bettina and Achim von Saint-André for a wonderful evening.

It was very interesting to hear about the German federal system at a time when we in England are going through a period of considerable political change. We felt very privileged to be entertained by both the Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg and the Mayor of Pforzheim. Of course we all enjoyed the amazing Porsche museum and found the tour of Norbert Ratzlaff's jewellery company fascinating.

Above all we want to express our appreciation for all the hard work and organisation that must have gone into hosting such a smooth-running visit. Scilla and I went on to have a wonderful walk in the Black Forest with Burkhard Thost and Stefan Jung.

Now we look forward to next year and the visit to Beaune – followed by our next chance to entertain you in 2012. In the meantime, I repeat my invitation to your members to let us know if they come to England so that we might meet up.

With very best wishes to you and Cornelia – Ian."

9^th June 2010

33 present – but only a paltry 12 Rotarians. Visitors, mainly wives of Rotarians also included Richard Draycott, our speaker for today, Bob and Dorothy Allen, guests of David Henderson and Dave and Rose Hills, guests of Keith Upton.

Being the last meeting of this Rotary year, the "40 Set" draw consisted of two prizes, the cheque for £25 was won by Paul Beaken and the £50 prize went to Ann Mulholland (whoopee, less housekeeping to pay out this week!!)

Sickness reports: It was said that Patrick Douch is unwell but not sure what is up with him. Bernard Greaves is also "laid up" and feeling quite poorly. Ron Loadsman is convalescing in Dorset and Bob Green is making steady progress but will not be back at Club for some time. Finally, Ian Varley is back home from hospital but is in some discomfort.

Today was also the day for the handing over of office from President Bryan to I/C President Ian. Bryan said a few words of thanks to various people for helping throughout the year. These were Ted Bartup for his work on housing society, Peter Fowle for his help in working with the French in their joint project and for the Contact Visit to Pforzheim. Ralph Harrison for his "super" range of speakers, Mike Nettell for "working his socks off" in trying to recruit new members. Ray Tiltman for the fish and chip lunch at Easter and his 23 years of finding RYLA candidates, Adrian Ball for chairing the Motor Cycle Committee, John Eaton for his work in Community, particularly the Christmas collection and the Stroke Awareness Day, me for "churning" out this newsletter every month, Bob Hinton for his immaculate work as Treasurer and finally to Frances du Toit for taking the secretaryship in her stride in her first year. He then thanked everyone else in the Club for "putting up with him".

After this short farewell he then handed over the badges of office to President Ian and his team.

New President Ian then gave a Past President’s badge to IPP Bryan.

Ian then gave a short speech, very similar to the one at Club Assembly, saying that he wanted to make Rotary more visible in the Community and telling us that went to the launch of the Sussex Cancer Fund yesterday, which is his charity project for his year. He also said he wanted to liaise more with the other five Presidents in the Brighton area.

After all this, we still had a talk to listen to and tonight’s speaker was Richard Draycott, a chartered surveyor by trade, who was here to tell us all about the Sussex Air Ambulance. This worthy scheme has only been in operation for about three years but needs enormous amounts of money to keep it going. It was launched in June 2005 by Kent Air Ambulance the first stage needed £50,000 to enable Kent to cover Sussex. The second stage needed a further £200,000. Sussex actually raised over one million pounds and in June 2007 a dedicated air ambulance for Sussex was raised.

I think you all know the workings of this service so I won’t go into great details about it except to say that it was a most comprehensive, and long, talk but nonetheless very informative.

Members were obviously very interested in what Richard had to say judging by the amount of questions that were asked of him at the conclusion of his talk.

One quite pertinent question came from Bob Allen, one of our guests, when he posed the question to Richard, as to why the various helicopters in Sussex did not liaise more, thus saving money. Richard didn’t really have an answer to this fairly difficult question. He could most probably come up with one after a great deal of thought.

The vote of thanks was given by IPP Bryan Meakin.

COLLY COULSON.

All members were saddened to hear of the death of Colly, such a huge part of this Club for many years, serving as President in 1992/93 before he resigned a few years ago. Colly died suddenly on Saturday 19^th June and his funeral took place at Worthing Crematorium last Friday.

Colly was a larger than life character and was a keen supporter of everything in Rotary. Being such a natural sportsman he excelled in Ten Pin Bowling, having been a member of the GB team in his pre-Rotary days.

He was also a European Champion at speedboat racing, the cause of his permanent limp after a nasty accident. Colly was always someone you could go to for advice, even though sometime this advice could be fairly unorthodox to say the least. I also believe Colly was the last member of this Club to attend an RI Convention, him and Margaret going to Portland many years ago, lodging about 50 miles from the actual Convention site. It was very appropriate that I heard of his death in a telephone call from John Eaton while I was strolling round the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. Colly would certainly have enjoyed this part of the visit. I’m not sure about the Federalism part! Because of the timing of his passing it was also possible for the members of Pforzheim and Evreux to show their respect to such a regular, and popular, participant on Contact Visits with a two minute silence that same evening.

Colly’s parting has left a big whole in many of our lives and will be sorely missed by many people. This was reflected in the vast amount of people that turned up last Friday.

If anyone would like to write a more comprehensive tribute to Colly, I would be quite happy to include it in next month’s bulletin.

MOTORCYCLE RALLY.

The following letter, together with a generous donation, was received by Mike Peters from one of the (happy) participants of this year’s event.

"Dear Mr Peters"

I am pleased to enclose a cheque in the sum of £360 in respect of sponsorship raised for my successful completion of this year’s Engineerium Run on my 1926 BSA 1000 V Twin.

The run was most enjoyable and completed without problems, despite the age of the machine. I was particularly pleased to be rewarded with the best Vintage Machine Award.

I would like to thank you all for the hard work that I know such events require. My father was a long term Rotarian and is Past President of the Eastleigh Rotary Club and I well remember the commitment of him and his colleagues in support of the deserving causes around the world.

Keep up the good work and thanks for a great day – yet again.

Yours Sincerely.

Paul Gandy"