Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Miscellany

To be clear the subs go to the centre of MSCC. None is redistributed to the local centres who rely on their own fund raising skills.
Miscellany takes a huge chunk of that money. If you want it changing or to have better content then you as members need to help.

We get a great deal out of our membership. The local centre (DonMog) is very active and very friendly.

And DonMog runs a grass Autotest where we can play to our hearts content knowing that the only hangover from the event is that of vacuuming the grass out of every orifice of the car afterwards.

We would run a car trial if we could find a suitable sloping field - having lost access to the previous car trial field in 2020.

For everything we get from the club, the membership fee is modest - even if the magazine is a 5 minute skim these days.

Fair point Keith, but having submitted numerous articles & photos in the past 20 years and had very little published or even acknowledged one looses faith and gives up, my photos can't be that bad as I've made it into several other mags, VinMog annual calendar, website intros and was even the feature front cover once.

I'm bored of reading Saga tours and have found the member only discounts easily achievable with some polite negotiation

Pauly the other two are not Morgan related...

i hope to renew my MSCCDG membership at the turn of the year. I have also had an article published in Miscellany, all be it quite some time back.

Car Clubs are complex. Because they involve PEOPLE. I founded a local MG club in 1978. We met twice a month, and for a while it was huge fun. I only stuck with that for 22 years because nobody else wanted to do it. Of course, everybody had a view, Most people had complaints, but nobody wanted to get off their arse and help. Then over time "cliques" developed, and it became impossible to agree on much, even start times for runs out, and so activities dwindled, although the meeting survived and still does, even now.

The MGOC faced criticism of not being a club, and yet functioned consitently better than the MG Car Club, which initially didn't want to bother with post T Type MGs. Indeed meetings tended to be for pre 55 MG's (from memory). Our local MGCC meetings were unwelcoming, and although we tried a few times, it was a lost cause. I fell into writing articles for both club magazines almost by accident. This was the late 70's. Cameras were not digital, and I used a typewriter. I ended up on the V8 Register of the MGCC and because we shared a focused interest, the committee meetings were generally good fun. Although occasionally politics and personal grudges erupted. These took place at Abingdon and so were a big commitment of time, when I was working full time.

The point of those reminiscences is this. If you pay your subs just for a magazine, it's not good value. The value of any car club is involvement, but even this can be tough to achieve.

Rolling forward to the MSCC. I joined in 2003, five years before I bought my Roadster. It was a no brainer. Already I had 25 years of car clubs under my belt. I needed to get a feel for the MSCC. So for five years I consumed every page of Miscellany. It was very different to the MG clubs and yet all the component parts were the same. When I finally took the plunge it seemed logical to continue being involved. In time the club needed a Concours Sec and I had been involved since 1982, with both MG clubs, including running local events and the national MGOC concours for seven years. So that was a no brainer.

The senior officials of the MSCC work very hard, mostly on a voluntary basis. I attended committee meetings for seven years, and the AGMs, all while I was working full time, and I enjoyed being involved and seeing the club function close up. Like any other club, there were cliques and politics and tensions. There were ups and downs. That's people for you. The local meeting leaders attended those meetings and many were frustrated by the local politics of their groups, much as I had been with MG.

After seven years of that, it was time to back off a bit. I've continued my involvement in the Concours event, and still write that monthly ramble but that's it now. We did try our local Morgan meeting, but just like the MGCC local meetings we never really felt like we belonged. If local meetings want to capture new attendees, they need to be much more welcoming. We had the same problem way back in the 80's. People would rather sit and chat with their friends than engage with new faces, and I don't have an answer for this. Even at this year's Mog Event, at the drinks reception, and at the dinner, members want to cluster with people they know, and yet they miss out on a perfect opportunity to have a new conversation with strangers. We chatted to a couple from East Anglia who also had "no friends", but the highlight of the dinner was sitting on a table with a Belgian contingent, who we may never see again, but were charming people, and amazing company.

TalkMorgan delivers more, because it has no boundaries and therefore no limits. It does depend on individuals getting stuck in, but we've done some amazing things as a TM group since I joined in December 2008. I regret very much not doing the Scottish Tour which took place one April.....maybe 2009 or 2010. But we've had several factory visits. We've been shown around the inner corners of the factory, normally out of sight, and we've had audiences with Steve Morris. We've toured Superform and seen the wing manufacturing process. We've had large gatherings at Gaydon and Hive Beach, and numerous smaller collectives. That's what makes TM so special. If you want to plan something, you can just do it. Lets hope for more of the same going forward.

OK I'm done!

I agree with all of that.

Before the Skyline GTR became famous there were a group of 10-12 of us who had privately imported ours and used to meet up to swap tips and ideas etc. It was great. Then Top Gear made it a bit famous and the JDM thing kicked off. Suddenly we had every yahoo running 200bar boost and slicks turning up so the pub we used to go to cut us off.

TM remains the only forum/club that I really enjoy, scruffy moments included, because there is always something to learn from the vast knowledge of the contributors on a broad range of subjects.

I guess the face to face club community has migrated to the internet for most things now. Not always for the better. A supplement not a substitute.

Bravo, Dave. All of this rings true. If we could just get rid of the people, clubs would be great!

I have always made it a point to seek out the new people in the room, to make them feel welcome. And to try and connect with those I may not know a well as some others. I have seen the positive effect it has on the club, it really pulls the group together. Cliques start interacting with each other and walls are broken down.

Most clubs have a common theme running thru them, a few members do most of the organisational work often with very little appreciation and often having to deal with the sometimes less than complimentary comments from the by standing members, who can't be bothered to organise or do anything themselves and want everything laid on for them. Some members do enjoy the opportunity to co-ordinate the activities of the club and they should be recognised for their contribution. whilst others just want to attend and go home leaving everything to someone else to resolve/organise.

I've done with my time of being on committees, paid the dues in terms of facilitating an embracing and inclusive social gathering of often quite diverse group of individuals with a common interest. Invariably different groups of people often with common interests/characteristics beyond the club they tend to come together into smaller groups, often referred to as cliques, which I don't mind as long as they are friendly and open to outsiders of the clique .Having a diverse body of members can become very politically charged, but most people I find are pretty easy going and open to sharing a common interest to the benefit of all concerned.

If everyone was the same it would be a very boring world...............................

Very true. I have just done 2 years as AngleMog Centre Sec & will stand down after 3. It tends to be a thankless role & as you said I have had the negative comments etc but I did it to stop AM ceasing to be and have enjoyed it. Sadly no one seems keen to take on the reins next year.

I agree with Paul. Being on the other side of the pond the magazine doesn't do a lot for me. I enjoy the articles about travel, something to dream about. Not much of the magazine is of use to readers who live outside of Britain.