Author: Jim Murphy

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Happy Valley Rotary Club Visit

As a Rotarian you are always a welcome guest at the meetings of any of the 34,000 Rotary Clubs around the world – its an opportunity to see how Rotary operates in other areas and to make new friends and contacts.

Club Junior Vice President Sammy Chung, a senior lecturer at Wolverhampton University and Honorary Professor at Shenzhen University, often visits Hong Kong and other parts of China. During a recent visit to Hong Kong he had the opportunity of attending a meeting of the Happy Valley Rotary Club.

The Club meets every Monday at the Hong Kong Bankers Club and counts amongst its members barristers, accountants, University lecturers as well as a legal adviser to LegCo – the Hong Kong legislative council. Whilst at the meeting Sammy heard from Jeremiah Chan about the introduction of the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong and from Chan Tsz Wa and Cheng Chun Tou two Interact members who explained the voluntary work which their Club was undertaking in the local community.

Sammy tonight presented President John with the Happy Valley Club banner which President Fenn had sent back to our Club with him.

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Changing Wolverhampton – Simon Warren

We were joined this evening by Simon Warren, the Chief Executive of Wolverhampton City Council. A former Rotarian himself Simon comes to local Government by a somewhat unusual route. Originally an aviator with the Royal Air Force Simon’s 25 years in the service saw him flying Vulcan bombers and chasing down Russian submarines and Caribbean drug smugglers in Nimrods before ending his flying career enforcing the no fly zone over Iraq shortly after 9/11. The end of his flying days brought fresh opportunities and three years spent with NATO in the USA as Head of Strategic Management.

Once he’d left the service Simon looked for a way to put the change management skills which he’d acquired during his time with the Air Force to use and served as Rugby Council’s Chief Executive for four years before joining the team at Wolverhampton.

Despite the advantages of its location the Wolverhampton economy has been in decline since the mid 1970’s. Simon is adamant that he hasn’t joined the Council to manage decline and he and his team are focusing on promoting economic development around the City’s existing strengths. Naturally with his own background Simon has a particular interest in recognising the strength of the City’s existing aerospace companies and shortly after taking up his position the council took a stand at the Farnborough International Air Show in order to showcase and support our existing manufacturers and to attract other aerospace companies to the area. The City’s existing strong links with the Indian sub-continent are also seen as an opportunity to encourage both inward investment and export opportunities for manufacturers and the Council will look to build on these.

Simon noted the changes which had taken place in the City’s planning department and which were taking place in other parts of the Council to make departments more commercially sensitive and the important role which this played in encouraging investment into the area. He pointed to the recent decision of Jaguar Land Rover to build a new engine plant in the City as an example of how this approach was now paying dividends and with this and major retail developments by Tesco and Sainsburys about to get underway Simon is convinced that there will be a change in peoples attitudes in the City and that there will be a growing belief that things can be better.

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Ladies Weekend 2012 – Cheltenham

Our annual Ladies Weekend is a chance for the members of the Club to thank their partners for the support which they give to both their husbands and to the work of the Club over the year.

Appropriately enough in a Jubilee year this years trip took us to the Queen’s Hotel in Cheltenham Spa. Cheltenham is a Regency gem characterised by the many town houses with intricate ironwork balconies and painted stucco façades which line the historic Promenade, squares and terraces. No doubt of equal interest to the ladies was the ample opportunity which the town affords for a little retail therapy.

Our weekend began with an entertaining visit to the town’s Everyman Theatre on Friday evening where the Cheltenham based amateur troop the Cotswold Savoyards performed Titanic The Musical – commemorating both the centenary of the sinking of the ship and the society’s own 50th anniversary. Based on numerous actual characters aboard the great ship, the show focused on their dreams, hopes and aspirations – as the story of the launching, the collision with the iceberg, and the sinking was played out against the background of the rigid class-distinctions of the Edwardian Age.

Members had the opportunity to learn a little about the town’s history during a walking tour of the town on Saturday morning. Cheltenham has been welcoming visitors for nearly three hundred years, ever since the discovery of the first natural spring. The very first Cheltenham Guide on 1781 described a visit to the town as “a journey of health and pleasure”. According to legend the first medicinal waters were discovered when pigeons were noticed pecking at salty deposits which had formed around a spring on the present site of Cheltenham Ladies College. The transformation of the town into a fashionable resort began a few years later when in 1788 King George III visited the town to take the water cure.

The weekend was topped off on Saturday evening with our traditional black tie dinner featuring magical table-side entertainment from Les the Fez.  The toast to the Ladies was formally proposed by President John who thanked the ladies for the support and forbearance which they give to the members of the Club during the year, the reply for the ladies being made by the Presidents Lady, Linda, who toasted the members of the Club.

Our thanks go out to Peter and Pat Maddox who put a tremendous amount of time into organising the event for making this such a great weekend.

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Defence College Visit

The Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering provides high quality and up-to-date aeronautical engineering training to members of each of the three armed services in order to meet the needs of tomorrow’s front line. Headquartered at RAF Cosford in Wolverhampton the City can be proud of this world class engineering facility. Today the members of the Club had the opportunity of visiting the College to see the work which is being carried out.

The sight of twenty Jaguars, single seat attack-bombers, lined up under one roof was one to excite everybody, especially schoolboys and Rotarians, young and old.  Aeroplanes, which also included Sea King helicopters and Tornado fighter-bombers, serve as a classroom for RAF students where they are taught avionics, weaponry, air-frame and jet engine maintenance. Students, who come from all over the world, can also have a cockpit experience: climb into the mock-up plane, settle in the  cockpit, start up the engines (with sound effects) taxi then take off while all your actions are viewed by instructors on two very large screens. There was a long queue of Rotarians dying to have a go!

Cosford was originally built as a disposal field and assembly plant for planes built in the Midlands but sent out to Shropshire to avoid concentrating too many assets in one place during wartime. RAF Cosford is now the principal centre for flight engineering training in the UK. There were plans to move it to South Wales, since shelved, but now a move to RAF Lyneham is mooted.  The CEO of Wolverhampton Council, an ex RAF man, said that it was daft idea. So let’s hope the politicians both national and local can prevail so that it stays put, is expanded, so to reinforce the manufacturing presence and prestige of our City and surrounding area.

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Howard Drury – Garden Time

A couple of weeks of wonderful Spring weather has got most people thinking about what to do with their gardens this year so it was excellent timing to hear from an old friend of the Club tonight, TV gardening expert Howard Drury.

With the weather due to turn however and snow about to hit the region Howard explained the steps we should take to protect plants which had been fooled into an early start and which could be damaged by the cold snap.
Howard – who can be found at Ashwood Nurseries most Sundays – is convinced that we are in for a dry spell this summer and in years to come and he encouraged people to do their bit to conserve water by adopting traditional watering techniques and to start to change the way that they plant their gardens by introducing drought tolerant plants.
Rounding of the evening with a question and answer session Howard gave us all some great ideas to take away.
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Geoff Hill MBE

Its always a pleasure to meet Rotarians from other Clubs and this evening we were joined by Geoff Hill, a member of the Rotary Club of Stourbridge.



Geoff’s electrical store in Amblecote is a local institution and he shared with us the story of how he had made his start in retailing and how he was eventually able to use his lifetime of retail experience to launch a chain of retail shops on behalf of The Mary Stevens Hospice in Stourbridge.

The Hospice provides free specialist palliative care to the people of Dudley Borough and surrounding areas of South Staffordshire, Wyre Forest, Hereford & Worcester and Sandwell who have a non-curative illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s disease, end stage renal or cardiac disease, HIV / AIDS.

Over 80% of the Hospice’s annual running costs are generated by donations from the local community including the invaluable contribution which the retail outlets which Geoff established continue to make.
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Rotary One

The world’s first service club, the Rotary Club of Chicago, was formed on 23 February 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wanted to capture in a professional club the same friendly spirit that he had felt in the small towns of his youth.

One hundred and seventeen years later that Club – affectionately known as Rotary One – still meets in Chicago and is visited by thousands of Rotarians from around the world. Our Club Secretary John Margetts recently had the opportunity to join them and to bring back one of their Club banners which he this evening presented to President John.

“A trip to Chicago to attend the US Housewares Show offered me the opportunity to visit the club where Paul Harris founded Rotary in 1905.

Today the club meets on the 5th floor of the elegant Union League Club, a low rise skyscraper, close to City Hall and west of State Street. Although they have 400 members meetings usually generate just 40 or 50 attendees. There is no minimum attendance attached (sic) to membership. It has not affected their giving as Chicago One has raised over £733,000 for Polio eradication since 1986.

There are differences to Tettenhall, grace is replaced by a ‘thought for the day’ and the toast to the Queen by the assembly standing and reciting the objects of Rotary.  An excellent three course cost $34 (£22) at a round tables and coffee is available throughout the meal. Their hospitality was generous and I ended up talking to many people but not one had heard of Wolverhampton, so it was ‘a club near Birmingham’. Members wear large round badges 4”Ø which await them on arrival. All organised by a full time secretary and assistant. Photos are taken of everyone as they arrive which are projected throughout the meal on a large screen on the dais; you can see mine with their President Barry.

It was an honour to have been where it all started and I shall not forget my lunch with Club One.”

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Keith Berry MBE

It was great to catch up with Keith Berry, an old friend of the Club, this evening.

Keith has recently been honoured with an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in June 2011 for services to Young People in Wolverhampton.

Keith was joining us in his role as representative of Power Pleas the Wolverhampton charity which provides powered wheelchairs to local disabled youth to help them live a fuller life.

Power Pleas is about to celebrate its 25th year of operation and the Club has been raising funds to support for their work for most of those years.

Most recently members of the Club were invited by Wolverhampton Wanderers to collect outside the Molineux stadium before the Baggies derby and we were pleased tonight to hand Keith a cheque for £1,003 to allow the charity to buy a mobility tricycle for a local youngster with mobility problems.

Keith is active with a number of local charities and the award of the MBE is richly deserved recognition of his work.

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Roger Wilkinson – Monty had the right idea

We were joined this evening by Coach Roger Wilkinson formerly a player with Plymouth Argyle and Luton Town, a coach with Crystal Palace, West Bromwich Albion and the New Zealand under 17 and 20 teams and director of coaching for the New Zealand Football Association.

Now living in Wolverhampton Roger explained how a shared coaching ethos with John Cartwright led the two of them to found Premier Skills – a local not for profit company with a worldwide reach – where he is now a Director of Coaching.

Roger and the team at Premier Skills are convinced that the current FA approach to the development of players and coaching staff simply does not work and through their development of their Practice Play system they have sought to replicate the conditions which made the street football of the 50’s and 60’s such a great incubator for British footballing talent.

Its not surprising that the team at Premier Skills take part of their inspiration from the great Liverpool sides of Shankly and Paisley but it was a little more of surprise to hear how important a role Field Marshall Montgomery has played in the development of their system.
Roger explained how Monty had understood the need to focus on the job at hand, the need to get the morale right within the team, the importance of knowing your enemy, of surrounding yourself with good people and of clearly communicating to all both the culture he expected of them and their objectives.
Premier Skills have translated this onto the football field by ensuring that everyone understands the game style which they are working towards, the importance of governing the ball, the need to go forward with purpose, to create clever chances and to maximise finishing opportunities. Training is focused on playing football rather than ball games.
Roger stressed the importance of not only winning but winning with style and the Club wishes him and the rest of the team at Premier Skills every success in bringing about their coaching revolution.
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GSE 2012 Canada – Jayne Lawrence

Rotary’s Group Study Exchange (GSE) program is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for business people and professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 who are in the early stages of their careers. The program provides travel grants for teams to exchange visits in paired areas of different countries. For four to six weeks, team members experience the host country’s culture and institutions, observe how their occupations are practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas.

October saw the visit of the visit GSE team from Rotary District 5550 which spans Northwestern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. As their visit to this country drew to an end Tettenhall had the great pleasure of hosting a Farewell Rally for the team.

As part of the GSE Exchange program a team of young professionals from within our own District 1210 are currently preparing for their own visit to Canada where members of the Canadian team and of the Clubs within District 5550 will give them a taste of how life is lived in Canada and an insight into how their occupations are practised.

The Tettenhall Club is proud to be the sponsoring Club of team member Jayne Lawrence, Head of Information at the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals Trust, who joined us at tonights meeting as part of her preparations for the visit. Jayne will make a wonderful ambassador for the Club and the City. We wish her well in her travels and look forward to hearing from her when she returns.