a quick vitriole courtesy of the N.O.C

[frodo]

£20 per person for 5 days training on areas of that quality seems very reasonable. We were in aviemore for some training the week following the sheffield uni trip and i have only praise for the service provided by the National O Centre. Granted there was only 2 of us but we got a quick and helpful reply to my inital email and then maps of loch vaa, anagach, culbin and docharn and deishar at what i thought was a great price.

[Scotia]

Ba-Ba ya tight james blunt - a bet you guys spent more than that each on a night out in the Vault

Seriously though, £20 for a week of training there, is a bargain! There are a whole lot of other costs, some of which are mentioned, that need to be taken into account here and the NOC will certainly not try to make any money off you, neither will they help fund your training camp!

If you want to reduce your costs - stay at home. If you want to come and run on some of the best areas in the World - welcome and see you next year !

[Adrian]

"I will happily answer any forthcoming criticism with similar vitriole."

Your vitriol (sp) is very weak. Whoever sold it to you must've watered it down. If I were you I'd complain.

[mharky]

your moaning coz you have to pay £20 for a weeks worth of training on the best areas in britain???

why should someone being a beginner have anything to do with the price of training. if you want to make thinks cheap to encourage beginners, you should subsidise it as a club. this weekend EUOC took loads of beginners to the St Andrews race and the SOL at Tentsmuir. You know how much it cost them. nothing! the club paid for it...

[Blanka]

Nic,

I agree with what the others have said on here, paying £20 per person for 5 days of high quality training areas does not seem entirely unreasonable to me. I just looked over the old accounts from when I organised CUOC training tours in the Lakes (in 2003 and 2004, so prices will have gone up probably) and prices are comparable. (And on those trips, we planned our own training too, so not altogether different).

You may have been lucky last year to have got remains of old map stocks or something similar, but you cannot expect the SOA to subsidise a student club's training. I expect they are just covering their costs. If ShUOC wishes to subsidise the training from their own accounts, perhaps if they make money on their public event, then that is up to them. (CUOC used to, and I expect still does, subsidise the training tour and Varsity Match trips quite heavily for club members, because it made some money on the annual Icenian event).

[awk]

Having read the detail of your 'complaint', I have even less sympathy than previously. You got a tremendous bargain last year, and you got good value this year.

[Electrocuted]

I think it's time we stopped subsidising students to the extent that we do in entry fees. I was amazed that you could have entered the whole Lakes 5 for £20 when it cost me £39 for 3 days so I had a look at the entry fees.

Sure enough - cheapest adult rate was £12 a day. Cheapest student rate was £3 a day. While I can see the logic behind under 18s paying this sort of fee, surely students should be paying something in between, and not a quarter of the adult rate.

[andypat]

I dont know though....
When I was a student £3 was 6 beers in the student union at happy hour - thats a lot of beer youre asking the students to give up to come orienteering. (Its possible the prices may have gone up since 1985)

[Becks]

Speaking from an old student, post grad type, I wouldn't have been able to orienteer without the large discounts. I'm very grateful that BOF rules extend this to all students orienteering, and if you're talking about retaining young people in a sport that's seriously aging, increasing student entry fees would be a great way to go about it.

In September last year, as a young runner/orienteer, I could enter a World Class SOL for £4-6 or the Great Scottish run for £35. Not much contest there. And if we're kept in the sport, we'll pay plenty of full price fees in the future, when we're actually earning a wage and not dropping deeper and deeper into debt.

[HilaryQ]

I don’t have the option of hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, I see no point in answering vitriol with vitriol, and I don’t believe in saying in an e-mail (or other electronic communication) something that I would not be prepared to say to someone’s face.

I’ve been in e-mail contact with Kris Jones of ShUOC regarding charges for their recent training tour to Speyside, to which this rant clearly refers. For the benefit of others considering such a trip, I’d like to add a few facts and clarifications:

Copyright charges are a standard way of charging for use of a map, while allowing the user to choose their own approach to printing. As has been mentioned already, such charges help to fund regular updates of the maps.

The general running costs of the National Orienteering Centre are met purely by SOA and sportScotland. NatCen is expected to break even on its various activities and facilities.

NatCen has no specific remit to attract people to Scotland.

Last year the amount of the invoice to ShUOC was £193.93. This year it was £237.50. Last year ShUOC were not charged for the Achlean maps because they had offered/agreed to put out ROMP controls for me. Had that opportunity been on offer this year, it could have saved them £28.

For various reasons I chose to waive the charges shown on the price list for use of the OCAD file and for making arrangements for each area. Using the published price list, the amount could have been a lot higher.

[andypat]

Case dismissed! Thanks Hilary.

[Spookster]

May I just add that our freshers' week events have been exceedingly popular and successful, even without 3 of our most influential members. (see BOF's medal list for reasons why we are missing some of our most influential members....)

Great! Orienteering desperately needs to grow the number of university-age orienteers.

But instead of whinging about whether NatCen maps cost £8 or £20 (which is still good value), why not put your efforts into finding ways to fund this excellent training. Your local club SYO should support you, in exchange for you bringing some keen new people along to their club nights and events. SPOOK doesn't have much cash, but you don't need much! And Development Manager Ed Nicholas is in Sheffield, with a remit to grow HE/FE participation, among other things. Between that lot, I would have thought ShUOC could get at least the map costs funded, if not more. Just ask...

[PKJ]

Although I don't have much sympathy over the NatCen costs, I'm quite happy that my entry fee subsidises student entries. It isn't as though there's a lot of them these days.

[awk]

I agree PKJ - but then I've got offspring at university, so perhaps I'm biased.

[ba-ba]

hello everyone, it's your favourite hate figure again! And guess what? I'm not going away!

First of all: Hillary: We last went to Aclean in 2008 - 2 years ago. That year we hung a few controls for a P.O.C on Alvie and removed a few from an event the previous day on Loch Vaa, as far as I remember, in the mists of time. The cost off was very much appreciated. Last year (2009) we did neither such thing, and as such received no discount. We have invoices to prove no discount in 2009.

2nd: regarding the doubling in price: if you get on a bus on a Monday, you don't expect the price to be double than that charged on the Friday without prior notice. Effectively this is what we got.

3rd. Regarding Blanka, Awk etc. moaning about student subsidies: See spooksters'/Becks' comments regarding getting new people into the sport.

4th. Regarding Mharkhy's comments: tell me how many are still O'ing in 3/4 years time. If they are still going then, Kudos! It's a tough job selling Orienteering to newbies! How many newcomers have a 4th in M21L long at the British and a silver medal in the Short relay at the same event after only 2 and a half years in the sport? (actually, as far as relay is concerned, make that a silver for 1 person who has been O'ing for 2.5 years, and one for a person O'ing for 1.5 years). I at least expected support from a fellow Student Orienteer, and one who has been so for aeons.

The next thing I have to tell you is this, a repeat of something I mentioned in a post a while ago: EUOC may well be able to fund the transport/accom/map costs for 12 newbies for a weekend. Here in 'Sheffield' (as some have said ) we get very little funding from our union: BUCS entires a year and that's it. Bearing in mind that, as the university's' most successful BUCS/BUSA club in History, this is Jack all. We get nothing for running the club/running club training. By comparison, USfootball get £20k a year, and they don't even contribute BUCS points to the University.
Last year the University got more BUCS points than Hallam, who fund sport seriously as they are a "sports' Uni". You'd think that, in getting more points than hallam, the sports department in the union would get more money. Wrong. The Sports budget has decreased for the last x years due to the decrease in University funding. Sport money is the first money to be discarded here.

5th Lakes is much more difficult to get access and I've heard of people getting it for very very little.

6th I may be a tight James Blunt, but at least I rage against the machine when it is needed.

7th I'd like to believe that, in this day and age, a student club can stand on its own feet. Alas, it is a struggle

I realise that £20 for training is quite a good deal, but considering the unforeseen +100% increase in cost, I must object. We are quite happy to pay, but as we now have copyright over the maps... oops!

Oh, and as far as anonymity goes: My name is Nicholas Barber, more commonly known as Nic. I can be found on 07908115088, and nicbarber@hotmail.co.uk, and you can find me on attackpoint under my nopesport name. I Orienteered a bit before I was 10, but then my family stopped (BOF idea to maintain members...) but took it up again at uni. I currently drive the minibus for my club, so we can get as many members to events as we can.
I shall see you at an event near you soon, and be running one once I graduate and have the resources. I have many Friends of my age who feel the same as me who will, no doubt, be running the sport in a few years time.

and finally, in the great words of Malcolm Tucker:
"Fuckity Bye"