AGM Results Are In!

Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to give you a post AGM report with the results of the voting and the comments received using the online voting forms. The AGM has I believe been a tremendous success which I am sure will be adopted by many associations and certainly a format we will consider for use in the future.

Firstly I would like to thank all of you that joined in this the first online AGM. We have had the best turnout of any AGM to date and in doing so we have reached a far wider audience than we would normally have expected at an AGM. I would also like to thank Ronnie for his hard work in putting the voting system in place. The comments received highlighted just how easy and effective it was to use.

I am under no illusion how difficult it will be for me to follow in the footsteps of Dixie, but I will do my best to do so and uphold the values of the MWA thank you for voting me in so unanimously. It is one of my long term aims to try and encourage a closer link with serving members after all they are the future of the MWA. So I would like to congratulate Sean Slee on his appointment as VC and the introduction of Joe Lyons as Southern Rep both uniformed members of the Minewarfare Branch and it will go a long way to achieving this. I shall look forward to working with Sean going forward, who will also continue as the Membership Sec until a suitable replacement can be elected.

It was good to see that several volunteers have put their names forward to be standard bearers. We will look at the feasibility of this and what training would need to be put in place. We will contact you if we can take this forward once lock down has been lifted.

Some of the votes concentrated on future re-unions and get together. I was pleased to see strong support for our next reunion to be in Portsmouth giving us an opportunity to visit the PV Monument. Also for the 1 in 5 reunions to be plan outside of the Portsmouth area from 2022 onwards. Polly Porter has already offered to coordinate the first one, so I expect this to be north of the boarder, a fitting place to start our reach out to the wider membership. The Malta experience also seems popular, Sam is doing an advanced visit this summer if lockdown restrictions allow, so expect further details on this later this year.

 It is as important as ever during these uncertain times that we continue to publicly show our support for the Minewarfare Branch and to use both the MWA Website and the MWA Facebook Group to achieve this. Please can I encourage you to support the Media and Website managers by contributing information? Now that more of you have accessed the website recently for the AGM you will have seen what a good site we have available to us. It needs to be continually contributed to for it to remain current and relevant. Can I ask you to visit more often and add content more frequently even if it is only a small comment? You will have noticed in a recent E Mail I have asked for members to submit a short biography of themselves. Thanks to those that have already done so, they are a good read, and some good examples for others to follow. Again could I ask you all to try and built upon this so we can all have an appreciation of each other’s careers.  

Finally, I do hope that the September Reunion will not be scuppered and that as many of you as are able can attend. While it will be no replacement for a full reunion it should still be a great event. Once again George has stepped up to the plate to coordinate this event and it will certainly good to share a toast with you guy’s again.

Thanks you all again for contributing to this AGM.

Taff R

MWA Chairman.