I was reminded of this when Ian Jamieson brought my attention to an announcement on the North Staffs website: "An Extraordinary General Meeting of the NSDCA is being held at Fenton chess Club, starting at 7:30. Each club is entitled to send 2 voting representatives. The sole items of business on the agenda are the proposed revisions to the Constitution and Rules." No link is given to these proposed revisions! (Can you have sole items? Perhaps best not to go there.)

Time for further investigation. First stop the constitution to see what it says about EGMs. Apart from within the pompous dissolution clause, nothing; not even in the fantasy version that the Publicity Officer sees fit to maintain on his site even though he has presumably been appointed for the benefit of the Association as a whole. No statement as to who can call an EGM, what notice needs to be given, what can be discussed, who can attend, or who can vote. Encouraging, not. Looks like someone is making things up as they go along.

Digging deeper by making use of other sources, things get better and worse. The covering email contained more and more exact information than Steve has put on his site. Thus we find that "As there is nothing in the present Constitution that stipulates how many members of each club should be eligible to vote at an EGM, I have assumed that the conditions should be the same as for the Annual General Meeting". A reasonable assumption. I would also suggest that like at an AGM, any member of any of our clubs is entitled to attend and speak, it is just the voting that is constrained.

Further "The only items on the Agenda of this EGM shall be the discussion and approval of an amended Constitution and set of Playing Rules as already agreed by the members of the League Committee.". Given that at the time of writing we don't know what these proposals are, this reads like the EGM will be an attempt to bounce the Association into accepting whatever is presented to them, an impression which is perhaps countered by what is written later.

But before we get to that we have "There are also several proposals on the table which are, in fact, amendments to this amended Constitution and set of playing rules". (So much for "The only items ...") That has to be wrong. The constitution is very clear that amendments to it must first be passed by the committee. Since any amendments put forward at a General Meeting can't have been approved by the committee first, else they would have been part of the proposal, amendments to the constitution cannot be acceptable.

Onwards. "Whatever is agreed at this AGM will be submitted for final approval as the League Committee's proposal at the Annual General Meeting in July." No doubt for AGM read EGM. Does this mean that the agreement will be submitted to the committee for their approval at some meeting to be squeezed in between the EGM and the last date for submission of proposals to the AGM, in which case the committee might not approve; or that the agreement will form the committee's proposal to the AGM in which case where does it say that an EGM has the right to force the committee to reach a particular verdict? Ugly either way, though the good news is that there appears to be an acceptance that the final decision will be the AGM's in July. Given the quantity and nature of rubbish I've heard rumoured to be finding favour it is unlikely that the EGM can bash the proposals into a sensible form. Could well be a case of ignore the EGM, and use the mantra "Just say no" to bin the lot later.

"Other matters may be debated at this EGM if the chair considers it appropriate." Those "only items" are getting less lonely by the minute.