CORONA ON A ROTATING BOARD

The Coronavirus is a strain of the common flu virus. It has been developed by the biological warfare laboratories of the USA. For the virus to be effective, it has to be manually implanted under favourable conditions that would help spread the infection.

Another conspiracy theory? Well, if you are gullible enough to believe in the myth that box cutters and aeroplane fires caused the collapse of three New York skyscrapers on 9 September 2001, you would then be more gullible to believe that Zionist America would not unleash a bioweapon in the course of its trade wars with China.

It is laughable to see people wearing masks for protection. Any mask that would allow you to breathe air would not prevent a virus, or even a larger bacterium, from safe passage to your lungs. It is even more laughable to cancel a scrabble tournament for fear of an imaginary danger far less dangerous than a trip on a Melbourne train during rush hours. But then, stupidity is not a monopoly. Any person or group can elect to be stupid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJm4wu97tYE

HALF SOLUTIONS ARE BETTER THAN NO SOLUTIONS (PART 2)

I still maintain that half solutions were better than no solutions, but only marginally better so far. To prove my assumption, I will relate this funny incident:

My membership of ASPA(Vic) lapsed because of my failure to pay the annual subscription fee for more than 12 months. The rules of membership assumed that I had resigned. Therefore, I had to submit a new application for membership.

It took the committee of ASPA(Vic) several months to inform me that my application was rejected. In the past, when that committee decided to take a silly decision, I used to be gleefully told that the decision had been unanimous. That was not the case in 2020, the reason being that some members of the reformed committee are not just position fillers, albeit that several naive new members were victims of the continuing campaign of disinformation, obfuscation and character assassination persistently practised by two members of the old committee.

The silly decision of ASPA(Vic) to reject my application for membership would make the late Harry Malcolm roll over in his grave. He might also annoy his graveyard neighbours with loud laughter, if told that a couple of days ago my online application for membership of ASPA(NSW) took only a few hours to get approved by an efficient and sensible committee, not swayed by malicious hearsay nonsense.

So, my earlier assumptions about the stillborn Victorian committee were wrong. Several new members turned out to be uninformed raw nuts.

MISTAKES WILL HAPPEN

Mistakes will always happen, no matter how much you try to avoid them. Here is an example:

Click on this link to go to the site of scrabble Victoria. Get to the heading: "Final Saturday Session (#4D) for 2019 ~ November 2. There you would find a collective photo of all winners, under which you would find individual photos of division winners. For division D you would find the photo of my dear friend Betty Egan being the winner on 4 games. Under betty's photo, you would find a link that would take you to the official results.  This would tell you that Betty came second on three games only. Would this have any effect on my friendship with Betty? Nah! We will always crack jokes and banter each other at the Greensborough Scrabble Club.

ANOTHER COLLINS FUNNY

Kalium is the Latin scientific name of the element potassium (K). It exists in the blood of humans within a specific range. If it goes much above that range, the person might have HYPERKALEMIA. If it goes much below the range, it might be a case of HYPOKALEMIA.

Now, check the acceptability of those two highlighted medical terms on your magic Zyzzyva to find out that Collins accepts HYPOKALEMIA but rejects HYPERKALEMIA.

Not that it concerns me, for I never went beyond 8 letter words, but I felt sorry for players like Daniel Piechnick who was capable of stitching the 10 letter word BIOWEAPONS through three other words on the board.

A HEARTFELT THANK YOU

For many years, I have been a regular guest at most South Australian Scrabble tournaments (101 tournaments in 10 years). The problems of old age have eventually caught up with me, and I am finding it difficult to cope with frequent flying from Melbourne to Adelaide and returning on the same day.

An alternative had always been to play in Victoria. However, that was unacceptable to me for as long as the committee running the show had hostile or incompetent members.

An unexpected change of ASPA(Vic) leadership changed the landscape. It is not clear whether the change has been the result of a coup or a sudden realisation by the old guard that it was about time to surrender. Whatever the case may be, the majority of the current committee members are either friendly past players or sensible new players, some of whom have already welcomed my return.

The main purpose of this post is to thank all members of ASPA(SA) for the many years of enjoyable friendly tournaments, their hospitality and frequent lifts to Adelaide Airport.

I will certainly continue to make the trip for major SA tournaments. I already miss you all!

HALF SOLUTIONS ARE BETTER THAN NO SOLUTIONS

It is a well-known fact that not-for-profit associations are riddled with problems of power struggle and frequent aberration from logical solutions to their problems. ASPA(Vic) is a good example of such problems.

The position of secretary is crucial and more influential than that of the president or vice president. The secretary has the custody of all records and is the only liaison officer with the registry of incorporated associations. Having a secretary with a known record of obfuscation and cover-up of legal and financial records is detrimental to the future of any association.

However, the changes to the composition of the present ASPA(Vic) committee are welcome, but only as a half solution.

The new president of ASPA(Vic), Nick Ivanovski, has a hard task ahead of him, which should begin with a good inspection of the association's records in order to ensure their accuracy, especially financial and disciplinary matters.

I wish you good luck, Nick. The terrible gang of four on the committee is now down to only two. Well done!

WESPA SENIORS TOURNAMENT AUGUST 2019

Having seen the inappropriate laxity of bag and tile handling by ASPA players, even at my local club in Greensborough, I find it appropriate to bring the following to the attention of readers of this blog:

Players should feel able to remind opponents to observe the tile drawing rules as appropriate.

The relevant WESPA rules are:

3.9.1 Bag Position
When drawing tiles, a player must:
(a) hold the tile bag so that its rim is at or above eye level;
(b) avert his or her eyes from the tile bag; and
(c) keep the tile bag in full view of the opponent.

3.9..2 Drawing Protocols
(a) Players need not draw tiles individually.
(b) Players must not put a hand containing tiles into the tile bag. All drawn tiles must be placed on the rack or the table before further tiles are drawn.
(c) Players must show an empty hand both before and after drawing.
(d) Tiles must be drawn with reasonable speed.

3.9.3 Keeping Tiles Above the Table
Players must keep all tiles above the level of the playing table at all times.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Further Explanation for Dummies:

Keep the bag closed until it reaches the height where the rim is at or above eye level.

Show an empty hand before you stick it into the bag.
Take tiles out of the bag and put all those taken tiles on the table or the rack, there is no need to inspect them in midair. Do not keep tiles in one hand and proceed to take more with the other hand.

If you need more tiles, Show an empty hand and proceed to take those tiles. Show an empty hand after putting the tiles down and place the bag on the table.

ROTATING RUMOURS AND HEARSAY

A rumour is spreading fast among Victorian scrabblers, that NI is coming forward as a candidate for president of ASPA(Vic). But old chooks, who thrive on rumours and hearsay, are also spreading  another rumour that N, as a child accompanying his mother to tournaments, used to chuck toilet paper rolls into toilets with the intention to block them, which I find hard to believe.

If the plausible rumour, that N is coming forward to salvage that miserable organisation, then I should offer his supporters some advice that would help:

(1) A motion to ban proxy votes must be put to the vote before the forthcoming AGM. Members of an association, who are genuinely worried about its future, should make the effort to attend the AGM. This is not my invention. Many associations add this clause to their constitutions. This might entail a little extra cost to change from "Model Rules" to "own rules". Such a move should be urgent and may require a call for an early special general meeting. Read the relevant section of the model rules.

(2) All positions should be declared vacant. N should have a team ready to come forward and try to fill all vacancies. The majority of the present committee members are either rusty or inactive position fillers.

Well, the cause is worth fighting for and may result in the return of many players. I wish N luck with his overdue endeavour.

P.S.:
The same old tactics:

Squeeze the AGM between games, so that most gullible players would want to finish with the routine fast without adequate discussion, in order to quickly get on with the following game.

Minimal advertising about the AGM. It is impossible to conclude from the Tournament Calendar below that an AGM would be taking place during the tournament. The calendar itself states, "This calendar is usually updated weekly with the information supplied, last updated 4 August 2019"

Vic

Sun Aug 18 Check in closes 9.30am

The Ryman Classic 7 games

Bentleigh Bowling Club 1 Higgins Rd

Carol Johnsen

0476 639 195 caroljscrabble@gmail.com On the day: 0476 639 195

Expect to be drowned by hecklers if you start a worthwhile discussion.

A BID FOR SALVATION

While sifting through older comments, I found the following interesting one:

Anonymous said...

Why all the love for JH? As I've said publicly before, he is an annoying attention seeker who does everything for his own ego. He did not voluntarily stand down from power. He was forced to by the ACT constitution. There is a small item in the ACT constitution which states that no person can remain in the same committee position for more than three consecutive years. As JH became president in 2012, he was unable to continue as president past 2015. If you look closely, that's why most of the committee has changed.

From a historical perspective, I've been told by visiting ACT players that this rule was brought this in as when they became separate organisation from ASPA NSW they resented a certain NSW president who had been in the job forever and a day (and remained in power for a long time afterwards). From what ACT players have told me, this president was against ACT becoming their own separate organisation and wanted them to remain part of ASPA NSW.

It's an interesting part of the constitution, one that I don't think any other state has this.

SG from NSW

August 2, 2015 at 4:18 PM 

What attracted my attention was that part about setting a limit on the length of time for engaging an office. It might be a good recipe for the salvation of the decaying committee in Victoria, who are becoming too stagnant, thanks to the gang of four minus one. 

Would any Victorian member with some moral strength move a motion to set a specific limit on the number of years for continual engagement of positions? If anyone would be out there, go to GW for a seconder. Geoff would second any sensible motion!

OLD MEMORIES OF HARRY

Below is an excerpt of comments on an old post. I laughed after  many years when I  read Harry's last line, "5) and tell them Harry said so"!

I still find it hard to guess who "A' was, because a sizable majority of members were, and still are, so complacently hoodwinked by sly hearsay and obfuscation. 

Anonymous said...

Mohammed,

Although ‘legally’ you may have every right to do what you are doing, that doesnt make it ‘right’. No wonder trying to get volunteers to fill positions is so difficult and I wouldnt put my hand up for such a position for quids. Remember, these people are volunteers and I really dont think they deserve the pressure/scrutiny that you put them under. Why dont you put your hand up for a position on the committee?

December 10, 2013 at 3:04 AM 

Mohammed A. Hegazi said...

Dear A,

Thank you for your well intentioned feedback. I am sure that you want the best for the Association. As to serving on the committee, I would nominate for the position of “Rules Officer” iff nominations are ever called for in the near future. I believe I can do a much better job helping to simplify rules and make them clearer and less verbose. Personally, I would also nominate any passerby for president, to replace the present incumbent.

The reason vacancies on the committee are not filled is because we have a conniving quartet (M, C, T and N), who have a monopoly on decision making. This is why other dissatisfied committee members have resigned of late.

As far back as I can recall, the committee has always been made up of 10 members. The reason it has been down to only seven is because those four “permanent members” would like to cover up their tracks by hand picking six complementary members who are amenable to automatically put their hands up for passing costly wrong resolutions. Apparently, there is a short supply of such docile members. When did the committee last publicly call for nominations to fill vacancies? We had an AGM mark 1, and another so called AGM#2; did they ever ask for nominations?

I challenge the people you are so ardently defending to declare all positions vacant for a wiser new committee of ten. They can re-nominate if they wished. All positions would fill up in a jiffy. We might then be blessed with a few vibrant new young faces, rather than wait for natural attrition to take care of the problem.

December 11, 2013 at 10:10 AM 

Mohammed A. Hegazi said...

From Harry Malcolm:

Just tell A that:

1) their first sentence is the weakness of their argument, their premise is wrong.

2) that are they by implication accepting bullying (until they or a dear person are victims).

3) It's the committee that are wrecking ASPA Vic, not Mohammed or his supporters.

4) People like A are called 'bystanders" in bullying terms, often regarded as the most at blame for allowing bullying to continue.

5) and tell them Harry said so.

December 13, 2013 at 11:12 PM 

HARRY WAS A BRAVE MAN

I dug this post from my archives. It made me regret my low level of contact with Harry before he abruptly left our world. Yes, he was a brave man indeed, unlike some handpicked feeble characters serving under the depicted incompetent character. Will the incompetent voluntarily step down? Nah, business as usual until a face-to-face encounter with Harry.
-------------------------

Thursday, October 23, 2014

A NOT-SO-PRIVATE EMAIL

As a member of ASPA(Vic), I am in receipt of the email below. I usually comment on similar occasions. However, on this one, I would rather leave it to the reader, without any subjective comments from me.

Reference is made to certain occurrences that might be unknown to the reader. If so, please email me confidentially and I would be able to explain.

Mohammed Hegazi

mohammedhegazi@gmail.com

from:	carol johnsen <caroljscrabble@gmail.com>
to:	carol johnsen
bcc:	mohammedhegazi@gmail.com
date:	22 October 2014 21:46
subject:	Email to Carol Johnsen from Harry Malcolm

Dear ASPA (Vic) Members,

I am greatly disturbed by an email I received from Harry Malcolm on October 1 (below) after I had sought for the Moderator of Ozscrabble to ask Harry Malcolm to stop denigrating ASPA (Vic) and committee members on the Ozscrabble site.

I showed this to some members recently and they all asked that I should send it out to our membership as it was certainly not in the interests of the Association.

Carol Johnsen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From:  Harry  Malcolm                                                  Oct 1

to:        Carol Johnsen

Wakey wakey, its over

We have bit our tongues for best part of a decade

while you obfuscated and paid lip service to professional expectations,

unrolled the nightmare to us of realising an incompetent was in power,

and led the raining of abuse on us.

Wagged your misleading tongues in your favour and against us;

even while telling members not to discuss this sordid case..

but

We have endured, and been proven right all along.

Do us all a favor and step down,

leave quietly.

You and Marj have led Vic scrabble to a train wreck

It's not the fault of online,

or of members passing on..

The longer you maintain the facade over your utter incompetence,

now confirmed to me from unexpected others,

You have nothing left but to try and gag and control to the death,

and continue to besmirch Mo as you desperately do

trying to make the bizarre cheating claims stick,

in fear for your due and pending humiliation

which you can only postpone,

not stop...

trying to make some dirt stick,

hoping to keep some of the fooled membership remnants still sobbing for you,

the more is going to come out about your appalling performance and baseless supreme arrogance.

In time it's what you will be remebered for

despite your claques still half beating heart for you..

i will not stand by and tolerate any of what you did to still stand

unless as a monument to what future Committees will never do,

and memberships will be vigilantly watching out

and auditing contrived cases based on revenge motives

and using manipulation

and hearsay..

fabricating a house of cards..

a beat up

childish making of porky pies...

From the first chance at mature reconciliation of the matter offered by me confidentially

(when from first impressions I briefly trusted you were competent)

to which you responded with the haughty and inappropriate bullying response to me

I realised you were a bod straight from the antibully textbook warnings

and that you lived in blissful ignorance of your own unlawful ways.

Even if you survive November elections.....

or organise spot fillers like Arjun Haria

eventually the membership will put together what you did to Mo

how the race card was used to beat up on a perfect gentleman of integrity and generosity

well known and liked in other states he found decent leadership in

how you, Marj, Norma and Trever had the gall to misrepresent conciliation matters to the rest of committee

and your shocker "no agenda' meeting where mob mentailty was unleashed by you in your incpompetence

how a member hollered in my face

claiming outrage that I'd expressed concern for my kids welfare if this committee ruled scrabble

I'll say it again,

if any of the terrible 4 are out of control in this organisation, my children will not be members

and then altered minutes took 5 weeks to be released losing reliability and gaining more re-lie-ability.

....... a no confidence motion in the following months

in full glare of members reflection on what youse did

will make you do what you ought do yourself,

step down

or get thrown down

Think how you were alerted that Marj initially bullied by dumping on him secretly

when he was the one with integrity, refusing to name people...

she dumped on him to me

and then like you

playing the "poor me" card to set Mo on fire in a public pyre.

and leading so many who did not audit you or her

to mob mentality and severe injury and distress on an innocent person.

And now you have the hide to tell the scrabble world my disclosures are not right

and you want them smothered

(while you exact forced acceptance of cheating claims, which you will get over my dead body)

(and while you fake it long enough to fool the committee huggers that Psychologist tell us will never realise)

(even when you parasite my initiatives which is what your ilk does, being bereft of competent leadership)

Its over Carol, you have had 10 years, scrabble Vic is ruined, it’s just a club now, not an associatuion.

you have been an embarrassment.

Only a new broom can sweep clean

I am that new broom, and you won't find me ever seeking false sympathy

to excuse incompetence and arrogance I have never shown,

and which you will never recognise in yourself.

If you now persist with any of your manipulative, obfuscating and bullying ways

expect a personal legal challenge from me

and the emergence of documents from your decade of hell

for public scrutiny,

if that’s what it takes.

As Benjamin Disraeli quoted re bullying

"where there is smoke there is fire, the smoke is the bullies smoke screen, the fire is endurance until justice by the victim."

No one has made your position untenable except you.

No one has shown bullying conduct but the committee, in particular the lead 4,

the others now waking up to realise slowly the 4 fooled them.

If you mislead the members that I did anything unreasonable, I have all the documents to show how youse did not act reasonably and then conspired to bring disrepute on anyone assisting the fight towrads justice and integrity.

Have I made my opinions clear ?

Others have just left scrabble, citing your coven as 'the bitches'

or that scrabble is plunging towards just being your committee.

Wake up, time’s up.

You, Marj and Norma will remain welcome to run Box Hill events if you wish,

gratitude will be shown...

you can even be on the committee,

and learn what it should have been like all along,

restorative not punitive,

expanding not contracting

You can enjoy pub scrabble again

and not be pulling the plug on everyone's fun..

The Country Champs will boom again

and no unethical entries will sneak in...

I will happily refer you to multiple texts by psychologists of world class pre eminence

that will be used if you are unable to abate the bullying ways..

and to convince you that your behaviour has been of a classic bullying nature.

It”s over, better for all youse step aside and let new keen younger people revive scrabble rather than you being forced to do so, and maybe one day you will apologise to the other committee members for your utter incompetence and self preservation driven actions.

It would be far beyond you to ever apologise to Mo or myself,

despite the flagrant bullying you subjected us to while telling members who could not audit you that you were being so good.

You'll just trot out your accumulated smoke screen excuses and denial of responsibility..

I remind you of some classics..

"we are not legal people (Oh yes you are) , we did our best (for immature officers) , we followed the rules (lie)"

Tell everyone you need a break, blame us and expect consequences..., whatever...

I'm sure you can spin a hard luck story

and get the unknowing to applaud you wildly

while the knowing stay away and feel nauseated

Any way you look at it it's time to let others have a chance to resuscitate our great game.

don't bother putting together a puppet committee,

or a token president

you will only hurt more people when they realise

and it will collapse like the one you have just led to ruin.

I've written to you in confidence before

and you reacted immaturely

and I was proven 100% right.

I'm right again now.

Only a fool repeats mistakes.

The only two things you can do immediately to save any face is

1) retract all the cheating claims in every place where he was besmirched, world internet included.

2) Publish an unconditional letter to WA advising them that their actions against him cannot stand as they are based on Vic ASPA outcomes that are now considered utterly unfair, unreliable, invalid and of no substance.

These two issues will achieve that end, whatever it takes, and you will be known for not having the decency to know when you have been exposed and stop further costs, divisiveness and trauma.

I'm astonished Mo is not seeking his costs from your personal hides, have you no shame for your assault on him ?

Are we going to get an appropriate falling on your sward,

or is there going to be continued horrors until the same conclusion is reached anyhow,

and possibly much more costly for youse.

All that said,

I'm sure you can (all) continue to be nice people

It”s just the behaviour that has to stop

and your hold and abuse of power has to be ended.

It”s hurting too many people.

FREQUENT VOCAB ADDITIONS AND DELETIONS

In order to come up with the new CSW19, the total number of words added to CSW15 was 2862, while deletions made were 29.

Had WESPA or ASPA ever asked their collective members, not their representatives only, about accepting or rejecting the frequent periodic changes to scrabble vocabulary? Collins can make any changes they like, but do we as scrabble players have to accept applying them?

A change every ten or twenty years could be more acceptable. I believe that the community of Scrabble players have put up for too long with commercial exploitation, under the pretext of modernisation or moving with the times. Some cynics might think that kickbacks are involved in the chain of command.

I feel it is about time some splinter group would form and decide that Collins  2015 would be their last accepted change. They would continue to use it for word checking until the end of time! An end to scrabble vocabulary mutilation should be found before more players quit the game.

HARRY MALCOLM

Rest in peace away from them all

MALCOLM. Harry Neville Late of East Warburton. Aged 63. Passed away peacefully 7th May 2019. Private family service.

Obituaries

Published in Herald Sun on 11/05/2019

DAVID MORE IN THE NEWS

Scrabble veteran banned from playing board game in Queensland

Yahoo News Australia12 April 2019

A die-hard Scrabble player has been banned from playing the board game in Queensland.

Gold Coast man David More, 65, has played Scrabble competitively for nearly two decades with 5000 tournament matches but cannot play the game in Queensland, A Current Affair reported.

Mr More, who has Asperger’s, recently received a letter from Scrabble Queensland banning him from any entry in state tournaments due to “unacceptable” behaviour.

But the 65-year-old claims he has not done anything wrong, or been violent or aggressive and is not aware of anyone else in Australia receiving a similar punishment.

More:

“I’ve just got upset and it may have been misinterpreted by some people that don’t know me,” he told ACA.

He added he mainly plays with elderly women in their “70s and 80s” who might be scared of his Asperger’s.

He also says he has been antagonised with people “pressing his buttons”.

“They’d say something really nasty that they’d knew I would respond to,” Mr More told ACA.

Queensland Scrabble President Jane Brown did not give further details about Mr More’s ‘unacceptable behaviour’ to the Bulletin, but she said they did not have any personal problems with the 65-year-old.

However, a long-term Scrabble player, from the Queensland Association, told the Gold Coast Bulletin Mr More “can be a very difficult person at times”.

Scrabble’s Queensland Association handed the ban down due to what it said was “unacceptable” behaviour from Mr More. Mr More denies he has behaved badly.
(Source: A Current Affair)

More:

“(It got) to a point where his behaviour to other members was unacceptable,” the player told the Bulletin. But a Scrabble NSW player took no issue with the Gold Coast man and said while he was “a bit different” Mr More is “friendly”.

DAVID MORE IN HOBART?

I will not shy away from privately or publicly supporting David More, even though I am in his bad books at present. My resolve is emanating from my own personal experience with some lame ducks on the current Victorian committee, who made fatal organisational errors and still refuse to step down from their perpetual control of that committee.

David is perfectly peaceful if not intentionally stirred up. To illustrate this, I will give you an example of what I had to confront while recently playing in the Nationals at Hobart. There were minor issues that I would not mention in detail because they were too strange to be believed. Any of such deviously planned situations would put David's temper on fire if he faced them. The perpetrators were too clumsy and lacked the imagination that could have told them that Mohammed Hegazi and David More are two different persons who would react differently in any given situation. David might rave on about how some players are targeting him, while I would ignore the matter and deprive the offenders of the satisfaction of getting any reaction.

The incident I will mention here was created by a player that I would not mention by name, but if you are good at cryptic crosswords the clue is: A floating iceberg in the shape of a shoe. To be fair, I could have unintentionally stirred her up by failing to recognise her as I shouted loudly asking JH to help me find her! It was both funny and stupid by me. The last time I could remember seeing her was in 2011 at Lake Wonboyn in a four-day tournament organised by Kashi Ross (Thiris). Since then, time has added wrinkles to our faces that tide cannot fix. Only "Botox" can make costly temporary short-term repairs.

The lady (a figure of speech) in question accused me of cheating by making a tile on the board temporarily disappear in order to allow me to hook a last-minute bingo that made her lose the game. Furthermore, the magic tile (R) reappeared on the board at the end of the game, in six different locations. She called the TD who sorted the matter out, as he could see the impossibility of the ridiculous claim. The real aim of the culprit was to associate my name with a cheating incident. It would not matter to many that the accusation was false. They quite readily would prefer to propagate the lie as fact.

Now, imagine David More facing this type of situation. You would then understand why I would continue to support him against such devious creatures.   

HOW TO RULE SCRABBLE RULES

Some heated discussions do flare up every now and then, about whether to adopt WESPA rules in totality or to keep on patching up our Aussie rules. We have borrowed the "open hand rule", from WESPA, in order to make sure that a hand heading off to the bag is not carrying any unwanted baggage.

Unlike WESPA rules, our Aussie rules kept on rephrasing the simple rule of how high the top of the bag should be in relation to players' eyes. Instead, we related that height of the bag to players' shoulders, then later on to table tops, regardless of the fact that all players use their eyes to see, not their shoulders or table tops.

The funny aspect is that I cannot recall any time tournament directors started by pointing out a summary of essential practical rules, in order to save new players the embarrassment of being requested to observe some rules.

Anyway,  my contribution here is:

A new rule should be devised that would make counting the scores, and confirming aggregates, take place outside play time. Personally, I make this happen, under the present imperfect rules, by disputing score counts in order to stop the clock for the sake of relaxed accurate counting.

I admired the contribution of Adam Kretschmer when he chipped in, to resolve a slinging rules match, with his precise-concise quip, " Even if we assume that Aussie rules are somewhat imperfect and that WESPA rules are somewhat imperfect, surely it's better to be playing under and working from a single somewhat imperfect set of rules that we can work towards fine-tuning as a Scrabble community? Having a long discussion every few months to on-board WESPA rules one-by-one doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time."

THE DAVID MORE SAGA

According to David More, he had voluntarily refrained from participating in any tournaments since December 2015. I managed to convince him to resume playing in a pleasant and friendly SA tournament in June 2018. He was later invited by a few QLD players to participate in the QLD Champs that took place in August 2018, after being assured that it would be a new trouble-free beginning. According to him, " They were back to their old bullying tactics".

It is really strange that his unwarranted expulsion from QLD Scrabble took place in January 2019, after he stopped playing in their tournaments. Instead, he took part in 3 NSW tournaments, without any problems, as per the extract below:

Extract from  Scrabble tournaments records:

David More

most recent:

1. NSW Spring Marathon (13.10.2018)
2. NSW Champs (01.10.2018)
3. NSW Revesby Fundraiser (16.09.2018)
4. Queensland Championships (26.08.2018)
5. SA June 4-4 (16.06.2018)
6. December Midweek (10.12.2015)
7. Southport Summer (29.11.2015)
8. November FR (15.11.2015)
9. Redcliffe (25.10.2015)
10. Labrador 2 (11.10.2015)

Every similar story would have two sides.  I am not a member of QLD Scrabble. Therefore, I am not in a position to ask them questions. So, I asked David More the questions and got plausible answers.

It seems like a typical bullying story. The bullies override because of the apathy of the selfish majority, who don't give a damn as long as the bullying doesn't affect them. I have seen this happen too often in schoolyards. The only difference now is that the kids have grey hair on top of their small brains.

ANOTHER SCRABBLE SCANDAL SIMMERING

My Comment:

I thought the stupidity of scrabble committees was a monopoly confined to WA and VIC. I attempted to have a serious look at this bizarre affair, starting by examining the names of QLD committee members, who unanimously condemned David More:

Jane Brown

Judy Mason

Martin Waterworth

Karrin Henderson

Trish Brighton

Trish Reynolds

Roslyn Murphy

Julie Brice

I was further amazed by the fact that at least three members are known to me as sensible people, who should know better about the rules of not-for-profit associations. The mechanism of disciplining members is not that simple. You cannot base such a grave decision on the gossip or fake complaints of a few old women. If you are a member of a committee of a not-for-profit association you must understand that you are in the public domain. There are rules to be followed and serious inquiries to be made. Read the rules of your incorporated association and try to follow them in a fair manner. Also, remember that Aussie tabloids are keen on such sensational stories if you want to be defamed.

I know David very well. He can easily be stirred by a stupid remark from a silly old woman, but he would only answer back. He would never initiate such unfriendly arguments, but once started he would persist. His psychological fabric might be complex and difficult to understand, but he is benign and incapable of hurting a fly, let alone a sneaky snake facing him in a scrabble game, with the intention to put him off.

Maybe David More was caught by the Gold Coast police attempting to rape an old chook (O?!) that stopped laying eggs many decades ago!