I has here reproduced the SPR study day information on the forthcoming event, but having now rejoined the society i note one of the membership guidelines clearly states “Members of the SPR may not issue public notices or advertisements about purported SPR meetings or events either on behalf of the Society itself or in conjunction with other organisations (ref. Paranormal Review 23, July 2002), unless authorised to do so by the Council.” so I will not be publicizing or reviewing future events on the blog.
The relevant reference appears from a piece by John Poynton
“For this reason the SPR Council has requested members not to declare membership of the Society when issuing a personal statement of some kind, when advertising, or when promoting a personal publication.”
As a blog could be seen as constituting a personal publication, and although I always simply reproduce the SPR website text with a link to the website, I have decided to refrain from doing so in future.
cj x
Well at least you have read the guidelines Chris, which I suspect not many members do. Perhaps we ought to have a swearing-in ceremony at which new recruits have to recite them, before the President kisses them on both cheeks and declares them Associates of the SPR to general applause. We would need some kind of anthem to go with it.
I can understand your caution given past history (though you were never bracketed with H&D), but I think you are unnecessarily concerned. The resolution in John Poynton’s PR article is obviously about events to be held with the SPR’s name being used without that information being supplied to Council (hence the use of ‘purported’), not disseminating information about an event already arranged by the SPR itself.
You would be promoting the SPR via your blog, not using the SPR to promote your blog, so I can’t see you have anything to worry about.
Tom
Such a swearing in ceremony would involve the members of the SPR gathering, from the more spiritualist to the more, well, to the more vocally sceptical. That would be some initiation, presumably like the claims for the Mithraic one, the candidate would emerge doused in blood. Other peoples.
I jest of course — I have never seen any ill feeling or raised voices at any SPR event – though I missed the final episodes of the H & D story and still don’t really know what happened, apart from I felt very very uncomfortable after the questioning I received when I tried to attend the Cirencester conference – bearing in mind I knew nothing about what had transpired, as H&D were hardly going to tell me –and it has taken 15 years to pluck up the courage to return. However i think such a thing may be unique in the annals of the SPR, well since the 1888 annoyed exit of the spiritualists anyway…
OK, well I will return to just posting the SPR events of interest here, without further comment. DO people not read the membership guidelines? I thought it only polite to do so, and was really worried i may have offended!
cj x
So Tom, you think it’s ok to put it back up?
cj x
I certainly do Chris. I’ve flagged up the issue and hopefully we can get the wording of guideline 4 altered to reflect the original intention, but in the meantime it would be great if you would list events, and comment on them if you feel so moved.
Tom
Chris, the guideline has been amended.
Cheers Tom – much clearer now! I did get quite worried when I first saw the old wording. 🙂
cj x