GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

at Yarnfield. Ben always ensures that everyone has a voice. That is important.

He ensures that all opinions are valued. That is vital. He encourages

everyone to contribute, providing a safe space for debate and discussion, even

through the most contentious of issues, and there have been many. Ben can

condense lengthy dialogue into key points without losing either context or

content and this itself is a great skill. Forensic in his scrutiny of figures and

accounts, he has been a valued member and Chair of the Finance and General

Purposes Committee as well as a trustee on the pension scheme and, of

course, he has already alluded to the difficulties in navigating and stabilising

the GFTU pension scheme.

Socially Ben, as I have said, is one of those people who can converse on

virtually any subject. A few years ago at the GFTU annual dinner my wife and I

had a few beers with Ben and then found ourselves sat next to him. I think it

was probably about four years ago at the meal. Conversation flowed, we had a

fantastic night, it was great. The following morning my wife said, “Ben, he is

really interesting and knowledgeable” and that would have been a compliment

if I had not realised that she wanted to add the words “compared to you”.

(Laughter)

But coming back to my original internet search theme and that was a little bit of

construct you might not have realised. There were a number of articles

featuring Ben, but they did not feature Ben, they featured Ben talking about

issues, describing issues, raising important issues concerning the trade union

movement, concerning his own trade union, the merger with BECTU.

Obviously, we know about his history in terms of the privatisation of what was

the Post Office, Royal Mail, movement of BT. So there were all these things out

there. He is not the sort that sits on Twitter putting out tweets “Chilling at home

watching Game of Thrones”. It is always about the issues. It is always about

the things that mean so much to him.

Ben, probably the last compliment I could pay you is that you have an

incredible ability to adhere to schedules and you are renowned for brining

meetings in on time, so on Tuesday just bear that in mind. Within the trade

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