Communication

CONTACT BETWEEN NEC AND PARTY The NEC has sometimes seemed a bit remote. And it has been hard to see how UKIP works. They say that on a clear day you can see General Motors. But even on a clear day you cannot see UKIP. Somewhere over there are the NEC, the MEPs, and the leader’s committee, and the meeting of the regions. What are they doing?! To reduce remoteness, I have introduced an NEC stall at conference. It appeared at Frimley and will be at Birmingham. Let us hope that NEC members will appear on the stall. They have all enthusiastically said they want to. Personally I cannot get to conference. I am too busy helping to run a campaign in Chertsey Meads.   NEC GUIDE To improve our understanding of how UKIP works, I have produced the NEC Guide. I constantly update it as I learn more.   ORGANISATION CHART People often think that a company should have an organisation chart like that of the army, where each person has one boss and communicates only along the lines of the chart (the hard line chart). But no company operates like that. And certainly NOT UKIP. UKIP is more like the human brain where each cell communicates with 50 or so other cells. You can draw the hard line chart with branches under counties under regions etc. And BTW the contact between the meeting of the regions and the NEC is tenuous; that needs attention. You can then draw the functional charts, whereby the treasurers report up the line to the Party Treasurer. And the producers of UKIP newspapers interlink. Press officers interlink, etc. You can detect some project charts, such as the annual conference chart and by-election campaign charts. And then we have the real chart. Who is really running the show, and who is talking to whom? This can only be detected from the phone bills. It took me ages to almost understand how it all really works and we must help our successors get up to speed more quickly. I hope that people will find the NEC guide useful. In addition I always stress to new joiners from the Tory party that we are building a party. The Tories are running a party. Big difference. Much more fun to build a party!