The meeting in May 2024 was the 497th meeting of Henley Men’s PROBUS Club and was its 44th Annual General Meeting.
The Chairman opened the meeting and welcomed everyone to the AGM. Peter Stone thanked the committee for all their support through the year, including Viv Emerson for taking on the role of speaker secretary, Richard Kingston for his work on the accounts, and Dave Murray for his
work as club secretary.
There followed annual reports from the President, Chairman, Treasurer and other members of the Committee. The club members then approved payment of monies to 3 specific charities which are local to Henley. It was noted that there was an increase in speakers’ fees (often in the form of donations to charities in lieu of speakers’ fees) as well as an increase in the cost of room hire at Badgemore Park. Bank charges have been successfully eliminated as a result of moving our account from HSBC to NatWest.
Nigel Balchin reported on the Club Website and explained some of the statistics regarding the website including the fact that it had had 1134 visitors who looked at two or three pages on average mostly from the UK but also some from overseas. Some interesting historical documents have been extracted from the archives and uploaded onto to the site. There are a small number of short biographies of club members on the site but it would be great if there could be one for every member in order to increase interest in the club by potential new members. There may be a sub section for the committee set up within the site for committee meeting minutes and the like. One member queried if the few visits to the site from Chinese accounts were of concern. Nigel explained that he did not suspect any suspicious activity (thus far).
A new President (Viv Emerson) and Chairman (Tony Brown) of the Club were then appointed and the election of club officers for 2024/25 were approved by the club members.
3 of the newly appointed members of the club David Booth, Peter Jones and Tony Cobb, then presented very interesting and enlightening briefings on their fascinating professional backgrounds.
