Redundancies at British Cycling amid "declining membership"

mattw wrote:

I see no reason to be puritannical about Shell, as all the energy companies will have to move with the time anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/25/shell-boss-set-to-cut-jobs-from-low-carbon-division

Shell’s new chief executive is poised to cut hundreds of jobs from the oil giant’s low-carbon division as part a plan to boost the company’s profits.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/26/uk-regulator-trying-block-release-shell-north-sea-documents

Lang Banks, the director of the conservation group WWF Scotland, said: “It’s an absolute farce that the regulator is spending public money on lawyers to try and prevent the release of documents that should have been made publicly available a long time ago.

“If they are prepared to use these documents as part of the planning and the licensing process then they should also be prepared to make them public.”

Tessa Khan, an international climate crisis and human rights lawyer and the executive director of the campaign group Uplift, believes the regulator’s efforts to keep the documents out of the public domain are for the benefit of the oil and gas industry and at the expense of the environment and general public.

“The NSTA’s job is to act as an independent regulator but, for as long as it’s been around, it has favoured oil and gas firms, including colluding with the industry on how to best sell new drilling to the public,” she told Sky News.

mattw wrote:

Interesting one.

I see no reason to be puritannical about Shell, as all the energy companies will have to move with the time anyway.

They aren't moving with the times though. They cut investment in green technologies so they could make increased profits from Oil. Sponsoring British Cycling is the definition of Greenwashing.

mattw wrote:

I see no reason to be puritannical about Shell

Look up Ken Saro-Wira and Shell's complicity in his execution and those of other tribal leaders and rape, torture, extrajudicial killings and destruction of villages in order to further their interests in Nigeria, not to mention the grotesque pollution of farmland and water supplies in the Niger delta, might change your mind.

alan sherman wrote:

The trans issue hit membership too. The partial backtrack showed another error of judgement like the shell sponsorship.

Really, I doubt very much that the vast majority of current and ex members care about it.

I thought it was the UCI which back tracked, not BC which is just the local enforcement of UCI rules. 

There was one multiple repeat PBU who under their various guises had left BC over the Trans debate and something else, but was also proud to be a BC member when Shell was announced. The goal of these posts was to get the most responses as trolls need that to live. 

I didn't give a hoot about the shell matter, but as someone with a trans nephew them feeding into the TERF narrative, some of which reared its head on here, was absolutely why I cancelled and joined Cycling UK.

BC royally ballsed up the issue, and managed to annoy many viewpoints. I left because I have a daughter and thought the initial BC position was unfair.

I don't race any more but did feel staying a member was part of give back for the years I did. I suspect the non racing older members are the ones that left (for whichever reason) because we didn't need the racing licence so could leave without really being affected. The challenge for BC is how to win back the support of non racing members whilst growing the racing community.

If you don't follow racing, that won't mean anything......

Exactly the same here too.

My final straw with BC was the dictat telling me not to ride during the Queen's funeral.  The Shell decision merely confirmed that I had done the right thing by jumping ship to CUK who support cycling in the UK, rather than do the corporate crap with dubious sponsors.

Same reasons I left and joined CUK.
Having been instructed not to ride during queens funeral, I deliberately went for a 70odd mile ride. Roads were fairly quiet

With those numbers, without Shell who were the only offer they had,unless you wanted cryptocurrency involved, they'd have been filing for bankruptcy by now.

They've managed to decimate the UK road racing scene, you could argue the same for CX,MTB or BMX but they never cared about them anyway.

Better economic times would simply have hidden the fact they no longer know what their purpose is as an organisation, beyond administrative
oversight of lottery & government funded Olympic track cycling.

Very well put, its welcome to the real world I'm afraid.

Not actually the case.   They get 10's of millions of pounds from the UK government for grassroots sport and the Olympic program.  Plus more from the poor members who have to buy a monopolists racing license from them.

The commercial sponsorship is their gravy train/slush fund and arguably scope creep.  They should be firing the head of sponsorships and marketing.

I do some work with BC, I can say first hand the Shell money (without going into the ethics!) is there and being used to drive the Para aspect of cycling. I already know a handful of coaches etc who have been hired as a direct result of that pot of cash, who will now create a lot more opportunities for para athletes.

Junaid wrote:

I do some work with BC, I can say first hand the Shell money (without going into the ethics!) is there and being used to drive the Para aspect of cycling. I already know a handful of coaches etc who have been hired as a direct result of that pot of cash, who will now create a lot more opportunities for para athletes.

Wow! Great news for the Shell marketing department as they can now do some bonus virtue-signalling as well as greenwashing.  Double bang for dirty buck.

Junaid wrote:

I do some work with BC, I can say first hand the Shell money (without going into the ethics!) is there and being used to drive the Para aspect of cycling. I already know a handful of coaches etc who have been hired as a direct result of that pot of cash, who will now create a lot more opportunities for para athletes.

But people here don't care about what the money is used for, only where it came from and if it looks unethical.

I have no qualms about oil money. Glad to see it used in Cycling, better that than stashed in someones pocket.