I can't find the British Go Association proposal anywhere
I may have missed some important step, and the proposal may well have been a good one - it did at least do rather better than Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest. But at present I feel something has gone awry.
Just before the European Go Congress, a very brief discussion flared up in the BGA's own forum, gotalk. The idea was to get some members' views for British input into the European AGM, and not just on this topic. There was very, very little interest shown. However, just before his departure, our European rep, Geoff Kaniuk, offered a list of his own views on a wide range of matters and said that this was how he intended to vote if it was left up to him. There was a smattering of replies to that, with some disagreements. Presumably Geoff took note of these comments, and also of instructions from the BGA Council which we were not privy to. It may usefully be added that Geoff is very experienced in go politics, tournament organisation and go rules, and has tons of common sense. He was, I'd say, an ideal representative, and I'd certainly have no qualms about him representing me.
Nevertheless, a couple of things disturb me about the process.
One is that very, very few Brits took an interest in the debate, and very, very few attended the congress (the number of Brits attending also seems to be on the decline). There is also no Brit currently involved in the European championship. I do wonder, therefore, if some weight should have been taken away from the British proposal for that reason. (That's a theoretical objection - I have no problems with the actual proposal.)
The other, which applies also to some other countries and to some other items on the agenda, is that too many items are being put to the vote without prior vetting or other groundwork. And the ambush tactics are allowed to work! Surely any major proposal should be sent out to other member countries some weeks or months before the AGM, not necessarily for discussion (i.e. extra work for the proposer) but to give other people time to mull it over, and so make a final vote more informed. As I understand it from the outside, this does indeed happen for some proposals - so why not for all? Is it poor chairmanship, different ways or traditions of doing council business in various countries, language problems, Eurovision type country cliques, or what?
