Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining - International Clay Technology Association

Chairman's Message - January 2006

Dear All

First of all I would like to thank all who attended the annual dinner and hope you enjoyed it. I am sorry the guest speaker was not as entertaining as might have been expected. Richard is a personal friend of mine and I have heard him speak on many occasions at Law Society dinners and the like when his theme is usually "My Life and Times as a Judge" he is very well received and very funny. This time I do not know why he departed from his tried and tested formulae but he did and it didn't work. Once again my apologies.

Those who attended the dinner would have heard my appeal for support for the branch and its activities. We can usually turn out very good support for visits and the social events but recently our technical speaker events have been very poorly attended even not at all other than a few committee members. A reflection of this and an attempt at reducing costs was to move our meetings to Ibstock Brick Chesterton conference room, for those that may not have picked the change of location up!

We now have a number of events with speakers travelling in excess of 100 miles round trip, not only is it discourteous to them but also a poor reflection on  the Institute and branch if very low numbers turn up to their lecture. So I take the unusual step of asking people to confirm their attendance by phone or e mail for next event on the 02/02/06 and subsequent talks, should their be insufficient response I propose to cancel the lecture. I hope that people will respond positively and support the branch and its calendar of events, if its not what you want let us know and we will change it.

If anyone knows someone not on the list or who would like to attend please let them know and either include them in your response or ask them to contact me.

Peter Haslam-Brunt

Chairman NS Branch (2005-2006)

Tel. 07785537608