Exhausted

I'm too tired at the moment to give much of a rundown on the goings-on at the Folk Festival, but I'd just like to say what a pleasure it was to meet so many people interested in the workings of the Co-op Group, and committed to ethical purchasing. The response to the ethical quiz and the carbon offsetting was great - but I'm sorry that we ran out of the (much-coveted) festival dog-tags.

Off to the Folk Festival

I'll be off enjoying myself at the Cambridge Folk Festival from tomorrow till Sunday, so there won't be any more posts until next week. I hope to have as great as time as last year.

If you're going to be there, please do come by the Co-op stand and say hello. I'll imagine there'll probably be some free gifts or something, so it'll be worth your while.

All together now: "There was an old woman who lived in the woods. Weile Weile Waila..."

More Community Dividend

A Community Dividend grant the Area Committee agreed a couple of months ago has come to fruition, with the ceremonial handing-over of the keys to a minibus by Simon Sedgwick-Jell, a committee member. The minibus is for people in Fenland who find it difficult to get about, and is fully wheelchair-friendly. The application stood out at the committee meeting as an excellent way of improving lives in our local area, and we were pleased to be able to sponsor the project to the fullest extent possible: £5000.

Thanks should go to all those Co-op members and customers who donate their "odd pence" from their dividend payouts to the Community Dividend Fund, and make this sort of thing possible.

P.S. I really hate it when newspapers capitalise "Co-op" as "Co-Op". Not entirely sure why, but it looks very wrong.

Our Friends in the North

I was in town on Saturday, and had a spare hour or so, so I decided to visit a few of the Co-op Group food stores north of the river. I only had time to visit three: the ones on Chesterton Road, Milton Road and the corner of Green End Road, and in general things seemed to be fine.

The Chesterton Road store was quite busy when I visited, and I was pleased that the members' board is still there and has information about membership. This store has a slightly claustrophobic feel due to the tall shelving; the price to pay for trying to squash a large range into a small store, but there is still room enough to move around. The cash machine in store was free - this isn't the case with every Co-op, so this was good. I was pleased to see that Fairtrade bananas were stocked (as they sometimes aren't at small stores), and that the shelves in general were full, with very few items unavailable. Distribution to Co-ops is improving after a sticky spell a year or so ago...

Up at the Milton Road store, things were much the same: full shelves, fairtrade bananas, that same slightly over-packed feel. However, this place doesn't have a members' noticeboard - there doesn't seem to be any room for it to be honest though. A year or so ago the manager came up with the cunning solution of posting notices on the automatic doors, which slid away as soon as anyone approached close enough to read....

At the corner of Milton Road is our new, revamped Green End Road store. This place has a fabulous open feel, and it's still got that just-fitted look. Once again the shelves were full with fairtrade bananas for sale, and I particularly like the black-background cartoons around the place proclaiming Co-operative values. Unfortunately, there was no members' board, but there was a leaflet rack with fairtrade and membership leaflets.

Ladmags Trial

One way in which Co-operatives are different to capitalist businesses is the fact that they are owned, and therefore ultimately controlled, by their members - not their shareholders. In the case of the Co-op Group structure, there are tiers of member committees culminating in the Group Board. Since each tier is elected from the one below, and the whole membership can vote for the lowest rung - the Area Committee, the running of the Society as a whole is answerable to the wider membership.

However, it will not surprise anybody that with such a huge society, with many different businesses and democratic structures, the voice of an individual member can get lost. This is until they attend the AGM of their region of the Co-op Group and voice their concerns. Because the AGM is open to all members, and the panel includes various bigwigs from both Regional Board and the commercial side of the Society, it is an excellent opportunity to get your point across.

An example occured at the last AGM of the Central & Eastern region of the Co-op Group, where a member stood up and asked for the sale of so-called "ladmags", such as Zoo and Nuts, to be halted, as they were inappropriate items to be on sale in the view of children, and often contained offensive material. As a result, the region is looking at different ways for the sale of these magazines to be controlled. This includes the use of opaque shelving, opaque wrappers for the magazines themselves, extended height of the relevent rack of magazines etc..

I am unsure that these measures will fully satisfy the member who raised his concerns, as I think he was probably after an outright ban. But he can be proud that his concern in the regional AGM prompted action, and he can be sure that the Co-op will continue listening to its members.

June's Community Dividend Distribution

The Co-op Group differs from more conventional, capitalist companies in various ways, including the democratic nature of governance and the increased ethical emphasis of the organisation's actions. Just as important, however, is what happens to the surplus from trading. A lot of this goes into increased capital investment in the Society. Some goes to individual and corporate members in proportion to trade, and some in affiliation fees to Co-operative organisations such as Co-operatives UK and the Co-op Party.

This post is concerned with that part of the profit that is distributed to individual membersand customers, but then gets kindly donated to the Community Dividend fund, enableing it to be used for a variety of charitable and community schemes.It is one of the responsibilities of the Area Committee to decide which of the applicants in their area will recieve the cash.

Deliberations are made based on a number of criteria, including to what extent community issues are addressed, if the project is targetted to help the disadvantaged, to what extent the project is in line with the Co-op's Values and Principles, how imaginative the prioject is etc. We also consider if the area that the project takes place is close to Co-operative Group businesses of some kind. It can be very difficult to choose which project recieves the funds - especially as the fund available is usually considerably outweighed by the requested total. For example, in June we had less than 2500 to distribute, and £16,579 requested.

With the applicants being informed of the decision, I am now in a position to mention the successful projects.

We gave £500 towards the Haverhill Advocacy and Mentoring Services, which provides various arts activities for children in Haverhill over the summer. The money will go towards arts materials.

£300 has been given to the Brandon Friendship Group, in order to fund an annual bus trip after their normal source of funding was halted. This is a social and educational group for the over-sixties.

The Cambridge Music Festival was given £250 in order to support a visit of musicians to the Arthur Rank Hospice.

Another group was given a larger donation than any of the above, but have unfortunately had to return the cheque following other sources of funding failing to materialise.

Happy Birthday to Me

Only another 44 years before I fall foul of the age rule...

Pink Picnic

The Co-op Group Cambridge and East Anglia Area Committee will be attending the Pink Festival on the afternoon of Saturday 19th August. As well as the usual sort of membership activity, we will be providing a climbing wall to test your skills on, and offering carbon offsetting against the energy used by festival goers to get to the event. The global warming theme will be continued by the "Climate Commandos", whatever they turn out to be..... Sounds intriguing? Try and see us there.

Co-ops in the Countryside

This article on rural deprivation in the Peak District makes a couple of positive references to Co-operation: the local Co-op (owned by United Co-operatives unless I'm very much mistaken) has the nearest free cash machine, and is one of the last "real shops" in the area. And in the village of Castleton, where otherwise there is nowhere to buy fresh food, a small food co-op has been set up, run by and for the local residents.

July's Area Committee Meeting

Thursday's meeting of the Co-operative Group Cambridge and East Anglia Area Committee was unusual in that a member of the food retail operation was not present. This did mean, however that we could concentrate on the large number of membership issues raused. This included feedback on the Strawberry Fair membership stall. This was considered to be a significant success, with a considerable interest in the ethical quizzes on offer, and 30 brand new co-op members signed up there and then. It is to be hoped that we can repeat this event next year.

Future membership events were discussed, including a men's Health awareness day in Haverhill, and the Society's sponsorship of the Pink Picnic (an open-air gay festival in the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall). There are also tentative plans afoot to hold an environment conference in the centre of Cambridge for Co-op members, and an education conference in conjunction with schools in the region. I hope to be at all of these events, and will very likely be exhausted all summer as a result. I'll talk a bit more about these events on here nearer the time.

We also considered some applications for Community Dividend support. I have to be careful about what I say about this subject, as it is obviously not acceptable that applicants find out about the success or otherwise of their application from here before being formally contacted by the Society. In the next few days, though, I'll talk a little about the successful applicants from the June meeting.

In addition, there was the report back from the marathon visit of various food retail and pharmacy stores undertaken by several members of the committee. More information on this in the near future.

Tsk

I popped into the Mill Road Co-op yesterday, and while the place in general seemed to be doing rather well, there was still a distinct lack of dedicated members' noticeboard. I'll raise this (again) at tonight's Area Committee meeting.

Having said that, there was the "stand for election" poster displayed at the door, so there is obviously some willing...

Co-op Party Branch Meeting

Last night was an ordinary meeting of the Cambridge and Saffron Waldon Branch of the Co-operative Party. This was considerably more interesting than usual due to the presence of a guest speaker: Mark Ashton from Cambridge Daily Bread. He talked about the worker Co-ops' successes and challenges, and about the recent Cabinet Office / Treasury joint review into the role of the Third Sector in social regeneration, to which he was invited to speak. Although many at the meeting expressed a certain amount of cynicism of the level of government's true support of co-operatives and social enterprises, it is to be hoped that the current apparent interest will deepen into action.

There was also some tentative talk about trying to co-ordinate an event for the 2007 International Co-operative Day, bringing together the various co-operative organisations in the Cambridge area together.

Membership Relaunch

To go together with the new "Co-operative" branding, the membership side of the business is getting something of a relaunch this autumn. Away will go the "Dividend" loyalty card, and in will come a new, True Dividend, white membership card, where the level of payout depends upon the Society's performance, and due credit will be given for doing business with all parts of the Society

Along with this will be what is being described as a new membership "proposition". Although this is a souless phrase, the actuality of what will happen promises to be quite impressive. The campaign will revolve around the nature of Co-operation in its widest sense, with various examples of what good can come of working together. The symbol of the Co-operative membership will be the bee, harking back to when a beehive was seen as the most appropriate symbol for an organisation of Co-operators (and reflected in the name of Cambridge's own ex-Co-op Beehive Centre). The material used to support this relaunch promises to be both modern and relevant, while still being rooted in our Values, Principles and history.

Co-op Pharmacy expansion

The Co-op Group have announced the purchase of a total of 41 pharmacies in the East Midlands and the North East to take up the total number of Co-op Group pharmacies to 429. This makes us the fourth largest pharmacy operator in the country, after Boots, Lloyds and Moss Chemists.

While none of the pharmacies are in the Cambridge and East Anglia Area, the strengthening of the Co-op pharmacy network can only be a good thing for Co-operators in this area. Pharmacies are businesses that are vital for the community, bring in a good return on the society's investment, and have potential for showing a significant "Co-operative difference" as we further develop the healthcare advice and consulation side of the pharmacy. It's great that the group is building a large network of community pharmacies throughout the country.