How to make friends and influence people - or not!

As regular as clockwork somebody somewhere will write a lengthy grumble about the way that the Former Care Kids community is organised. The moaners and groaners suggest that if only they were put in charge everything would suddenly be wonderful and that it is the hard-core that is blocking all progress. We get bored writing the same things again and again so the next time it happens please direct the guilty party to this blog entry where our position is explained.

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You cannot get elected or appointed to be part of the hard-core of activists. You can only become hard-core when the large majority of the other members of the group regard you as such. This tends to require some combination of regional events successfully organised and/or attended plus the length of time people have known about you.

EVENTS ORGANISED - Ella and I would guess that for every event casually proposed about 5% actually happen. People that just attend these events probably never think about all the work involved in organising anything but the most informal and small-scale gathering. Any successful organiser absolutely deserves to be labelled hard-core and that, pretty much, seems to be what has happened.

TIME SERVED - One of the reasons that people will not regard you are hard-core until you have been around for at least a couple of years is the often told story of Mike S. For about three months Mike was one of the most prominent members of the Care Kids Community. He contributed articles to our newsletter, he organised a couple of informal pub-based meetings in Cardiff and in Penarth and he proposed, and also started organising, a proper conference to be held in the Welsh capital. He even attended one of the first "Boxing Day Bashes" and for many he was well on his way to being thought of as one of the hard-core. But then he discovered the wonderful world of a stable relationship with a long-term girlfriend and his involvement with the former "care kids" community gradually faded away. Ella and I haven't heard from him since before Alice and Nicola were born - so 3+ years - although Paul E still sometimes sees him at Barry Island.

HARD CORE DOESN'T EQUAL INNER CIRCLE - Quite often people moan that the hard-core are "just the same as Eve and Ella's inner circle of close friends". This is rubbish! People like Didi and AC/DC are close friends but nobody I know suggests that they are hard-core activists. Paul E is 100% certainly hard-core but we have met him exactly twice so he obviously isn't part of our inner friendship circle. The facts do not back up the allegations.

SO WHO ARE THE HARD CORE? - Five of us are generally accepted as being "Hard-core" activists:-

• 38DD - Organiser of at least 6 Blackpool or Preston gatherings and has attended many other meetings around the country.
• Lulu Big Tits - Organiser of Birmingham Mega Meet and the Birmingham Conference.
• Paul E - Runs the Barry Boxing Day Bash and authored the Red Griffin Newsletter.
• Eve and Ella - Organise the Christmas Open House and are long term bloggers and newsletter editors.