So, to answer some of your points...
shananna wrote:
A cool discussion, thanks.
If I've got it right :_
The BCA have a huge amount of funds (£1,000,000! really, is that true!!!)
No, not true. The £1,000,000 was estimated as the total amount of money sloshing around within UK caving generally, so for instance, BCA has about £200k, BCRA has a similar amount. Ghar Parau has a large bank balance too. Hidden Earth has about £15k in the bank as well, despite giving around £3-5k to good caving causes each year...
I know Wessex has around £60k in the bank at the moment and many other clubs have a large bank balance, this was all added up to get the £1,000,000 figure.
Incidentally, Wessex's money is mostly allocated to the long term upkeep of our hut. I'm pretty sure other clubs with premises have similar amounts, and for the same reasons.
BCRA has all their money from bequests and it's ring fenced to fund various grant schemes they run, and to help keep the British Caving Library running.
BCA has a lot of money too, but it needs quite a bit as it "self insures" the excess to the BCA insurance so needs enough of a buffer to keep the scheme running if there are any claims...
As for funding, BCA does have spare funds and will give them to any properly budgeted request that will benefit cavers. If the caving community think that the cave rescue teams are worthwhile recipients then it should be raised via the finance committee for consideration.
However, most cave rescue teams appear to be well funded via grants from the Home Office, via the Mountain Rescue Council, and for donations and collections.
I guess if NWCRO is strapped for cash they could do some fundraising or request funds for a specific project that need an input of cash (cave radios for instance).
shananna wrote:
In theory, members think the BCA should funnel some of this dosh towards clubs generally
BCA's funds came from the clubs and from individual members. It gets no funds from elsewhere.
It channels funds to benefit cavers generally, for instance it grant funds the British Caving Library, it grant funds Ghar Parau, It funds all the conservation and access works in the regions and the running of the regional councils (Such as Cambrian Caving Council). It grant funds the anchor program.
It also funds the Youth and Development committee in supporting younger cavers and youth/university caving clubs. It also funds Caver training.
All of this benefits all cavers and seems quite an equitable way of funding. If there were conservation and/or access projects in Wales then they would be funded, via Cambrian, from BCA's funds. It's there for the asking and to date no properly budget request has been refused (that might be different if BCA was short of funds).
shananna wrote:
We shouldn't taint charities because of a few bad apples (I personally think more about the staggering wages of the executives!).
Large charities are actually big businesses and as such believe they need suitably qualified staff, who all need to be paid. I think executives are way to highly paid generally, both charities and the private sector but unless there is a change of policy at national level, I guess the excessive pay regime for those at the top is here for some time yet...
shananna wrote:
And to extend honorary membership to the rescuers isn't hugely favoured.
The thing about Honorary membership (said an honorary member...

) is that you need enough full paying members to keep the club financed and in a lot of clubs, the honorary members can be a significant drain on the club's finances. A reasonable balance needs to be attained. Now I don't think that honorary members actually cost UCET much, if anything but in a lot of clubs it costs to service those members with insurance, journals, etc, without any contribution from them. Wessex for instance has around 20 honorary members, but around 300 members so that represents quite a small percentage of the membership. It all depends on how UCET's budgets stack up.
shananna wrote:
In starting this chat, the bottom line for me still remains that there are 13 young people trapped in a dire situation underground. One highly experienced cave diver has already died in his efforts to rescue them, and the risk of further deaths is increasing by the hour for everybody on or in that mountain.
We shouldn't forget the reason we are at this debate. I'm hopeful that the expert cave divers will extract them all safely but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is the most complex and biggest cave rescue, ever...
The death of the Thai diver is incredibly sad but it should be noted that he wasn't a cave diver but an open water diver, as are all the Thai divers there. The environment they are in is completely alien and with that many untrained diver on site I'm honestly surprised we have only had one fatality so far. This should also be of credit to the cave divers, who it seems are now in charge of the rescue and are the only people doing the actual diving...
shananna wrote:
I've cried every day since hearing about it and feel sick to the stomach thinking about it. They're the same age as my kids, they could easily be our kids or grand kids in any other situation. Wrangling over who 'should' do stuff doesn't progress anything regardless of the circumstances. If I was in that situation, what I think I would appreciate most is knowing that whoever COULD DO something, did it, that I wasn't failed because of 'politics'!
I'm certain there is politics, but I don't believe it's affecting the actual rescue attempt. The international cave diving team are calling the shots, the Thai army divers are supporting them and they are all getting on with the job. There are no others, in the entire world, better qualified to do the extraction of the kids than those who are there and I am hopeful of a successful mission. However it goes, nobody else could ever do more than they are doing, we, as British cavers, should be immensely proud of them and the part they are playing. I for one will be buying them all a pint if I see them at Hidden Earth, or in my local...