The 12 Concepts at the Road To Recovery 12 Concepts Workshop in Plymouth, UK

Hi, I'm Alexis. I'm an Apple

and thanks for coming to this workshop.

As Richard said, what I'll do is I'll speak on each of the concepts and then I'll basically we'll have any questions anyone has about the 12 concepts.

So the 12 concepts, it's they actually, in my experience, they can be applied to kind of all areas of my, a, a service work. And even in my, my 12 step work, some of them can be applied there. And with to give a bit of background on the concepts. I think it's quite important

for me to kind of under, that's where one of the things that I really help me to understand them is to realise the historical background really and where they came from. And I'm sure everyone's aware of the the 12 steps and the how those were kind of the experience of the 1st 100 Alcoholics and how they recovered. And some some years after that, Bill Wilson realized that

all of the, you know, AA12 sets working, these people getting sober and,

and these groups forming all around the country. But he was getting, Bill was kind of doing a lot of work in the central office in New York.

And he was getting a lot of letters from people saying our groups having problems are having controversy, we're having arguments, you know, where the groups going to fall apart, people are drinking and so forth. And, and he, he realized with the help of one particular letter that he was saying, he was basically sent a letter about another organization of Alcoholics called the Washingtonians from 100 years before A A who helped each other to stay sober. And,

but they got involved in controversy and, and, and internal arguments and politics and all of these sort of external politics and all those sort of things. And they'd fallen apart and they'd all died drunk. So Bill realised from all this stuff, he was going from the, the groups, from the experience, historical experience of the Washingtonians, that A A was in danger of falling apart basically. And he condensed this together into another 12 principles, which with 12 traditions.

And it took a while for the fellowship to accept that these were important, as important to a as the 12 steps. But they did in the end. And

these principles are now, and we have them up during our meeting. We have the traditions and the steps stuck up during our meetings.

Now as time went on,

a as General Services grew and grew. When a a first started, it didn't have these these General Services and essentially it was one alcoholic talking to another and that was that was really it. But eventually as time went on,

people started to realise that it would be helpful if you they had literature like the Big Book, if they had phone lines that people could call. And

basically these what, what Bill realized there were some people who were saying, well, we need to keep it simple, you know, just white colic talking to another. But Bill realized that if there is any service we could be doing for the still suffering alcoholic, is there anything we do to better enable the carrying of the a, a message to the still suffering alcoholic? And if we don't do that, we're letting down the still suffering alcoholic. And this was a vital insight. I think that's like the fundamental insight that Bill had for our General Services. And from that point on, our General Services just grew and grew and

the group started to realise the importance of contributing to these General Services. And as I mentioned earlier, the central office in in New York appeared and we have a central office in the UK as well in York.

Now the point came where Bill felt that the principles which had worked in the running of these General Services needs to be codified as well. And that's where the 12 concepts come from. Just as the steps came from the experience of what does and doesn't work and people lived and died based on learning that experience, the tradition, same from the experience of, you know, what doesn't, doesn't work in with a groups

and groups played as a result of of learning that experience. So the concepts come from the experience of what works and doesn't work in the General Services. And as Bill said, if we don't, we don't ensure the survival of these jam services. Working down the newcomer. Now

the

IT actually in the 12 concepts, well, there are many, many things which can be applied at all levels of service. But when he really wrote the 12 concepts, he was thinking about what he called world Services. And I think he had this vision at the time of kind of the world office of GSO in, in New York, kind of, you know, an, a, a worldwide, the general service is being coordinated by this World Service office. As time went on, they realised countries could in fact have their own central service offices which were answering mail,

distributing literature, helping you groups form, so forth like we have in this country. We have a general service office in in York and

so these, although in the 12 concepts he talks about the world services,

you can also kind of replace that with the phrase

national services, which I often think when I'm reading them.

OK, anyway, enough, enough background. Let's just give you some historical background. What I'm now going to do is go through the concepts 1 by 1 and give a little bit of my experience with the help of a brilliant concepts checklist. Here I just have given give a name check to my sponsor who came up with this which gives some great ideas of how to apply the principles of concepts

to to my my Home group work and mains group work and so forth.

So starting with concept one and bear in mind as I as I read concept and you hear the phrase world services, you can replace that with national services

concept one.

OK, quick one last thing for us, a concept one. This book, the AA service manual combined the 12 concepts World Service when I wanted to really learn about the 12 concepts, like if I want to learn about the 12 traditions, I can be 12 steps and 12 traditions book and traditions illustrate. If I really want to learn about 12 concepts, This is the book to guess and it has the concepts each have an essay attached to them in this book and those that they're brilliant essays are brilliant. I've read them again and again and again. They're really good. But that's how I've learned about the concepts in theory form anyway,

and I'm reading from the short form of the 12160 concept. One final responsibility, Ultimate authority for AA World Services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole fellowship. So this came about another realization that Bill had that led to Concept one.

I think Doctor Bob. I can't remember what precise year it was, but essentially Doctor Bob the Co funds of a a bill W Doctor Bob. Doctor Bob died of cancer

and

Bill had a a very deep realization of his own mortality, I think, and how that affected Alcoholics Anonymous because at that point, the people could always run to to Bill and Bob when things were going wrong with AA. And so particularly with the World Services could Bill was, you know, intimately involved in in the general service office in New York. If things were going wrong, who could always run to Bill and Bob and say, what do we do? What should we do? And,

and generally people would listen to them. They were well respected throughout the fellowship. But then Doctor Bob died and it was it was just Bill and Bill

also think what happens when I die? You know, I want a a has got to survive. I mean, it's all about letting down the new cover. If you like a a General Services die off these services that distribute the literature that organise the phone lines that help a a start in other countries vital services. What happens

when I die? How can I ensure the supply of these services? What happens if the general service office in New York

makes some financial blunder? They make a screw up, There's a miscommunication

and the group starts to think what's this? Who, what is this office acting for us? What are they? What have they done? They made this big mistake and they basically lose, lose faith in that, that office. And suddenly and that office, all it's funded by is the money that we put into the pot at the end of meetings. And then we we vote and we'll send a contribution to integrate that contribution to region and so forth. At the eventually that contribution reaches to the general service office and pays the salary and pays for office to run

and bill thought. What happens if the groups think well, stuff you lot

you know, don't don't kind of

OK, can I continue?

OK,

where was I? Yes, General service office. Yeah. So the group's thinking right stuff you general service office. Who are you to spend this? I mean, just so in in in York, largest quantity of Royal Mail in York, £1,000,000 a year to never GSO in New York.

I mean huge cork size of a corporate office, $10 million turnover. As if the groups one day, one day turn around and say, who the hell do you guys think you are spending all our money? How do we know you spend, you know, all of this? And now when Bill and Bob were alive, even when Bill was alive, Bill said, listen and he could have explained. So we need all of these. You could, you know, this is how it's all built up. This is why we need it. And people would have trusted and listened to him. But once Bill was dead, who would explain all this? There is an executive committee, the General Service Board, that has trustee responsibility

bit the steering committee for this, for the General Service Office and its AA members. And but who who knows any of those members? No one knows the name of the members of the General Service Board. Well, I mean, people do, but I suspect most people in this group, you don't even know the names of your General Service board's.

So Bill was worried the groups would stop sending money and these services would fall apart. The phone line would fall apart. The literature would no longer be published and distributed. New groups in new countries or new cities or new towns. You know, where would the service manual come from, where the guidelines come from? And very slowly, a huge effect would filter down into all the groups and finally to the newcomer and to saving lives, you know. And so this was

he knew he had to protect this somehow and he saw it was A and the first thing was, well, who's going to when I die?

In fact, he handed over, he didn't wait, he died. He he's, he waited when a a came of age when they had that big meeting in Saint Louis, in Saint Louis,

Bill essentially said the a a groups. You are now responsible. You now have to take responsibility for your services. You have to you, you, you have to

and you have to have the ultimate authority and this is what concept one is essentially saying. He explains the mechanics of how they do that concept too.

But it's very important. It was important thing for me to realise what he was saying is you can't come running to me all the time, he says. I just wanna become a normal member of a A. You have to take responsibility. You can't, you know, it's like a father sent a child takes probability of your life. So

that was that was concept one and the you know. So he talks about the the group conscience now, not just of a single group, but a group conscience of the whole country

of the whole world to be extended. What is with a lot of these? It takes a tradition. He extends it into a much larger and gives it gives it more detail, goes into more detail. But here's he's extending the group contraception. Don't don't just run your groups by the group conference. We run the whole of a a by the group conference.

Now, some,

some ways in which this can be, you know, on a, on a simple group level, how can I apply this concept? One, and one of the simplest things is

first link in that chain of the Greek conscience from a group to worldwide to nationwide. A, A what is it? It's the GSR. GSR represents my group in this country. GSR used to be called general service representative and some bright spark decided to change name to group service representative, totally missing the point. Essentially GSR is a general service representative, represents my group

and so does my group have a GSR? It's a simple question. Is my group following concert one? Does it have AGSR? Does my GSR go to pre conference,

see the point of that as I come to concept two and and then looking just within the group, you know, do all members of my group contribute to the group conference? So this concept can be applied in in a number of different ways, a national level and even on a group level. So now of course the question is okay Bill, you said I tend to use the name Bill quite freely. I really look up to the guidance like Bill said this bill did this, Bill did that. And anyway, so bill says

you guys have responsibility, you have authority and then you know, you might say well, all right, So what is it in this country? I think we've got 25,000 members of a A in worldwide. I think we got over 2 million members of a A. Now obviously it's a bit impractical for 25,000 people to get together to have a national group conference meeting and it's a little in ineffective for the world conscience to be have a meeting with 2 million people somehow fit them into a large hall somewhere. So

Bill, solve this problem with Concept 2

and with, with basically the idea of representation. What he said is that we have a, we've already got, we got our national services in York and world services in New York. We have a general service board which like a national steering committee who essentially have oh, sight of that of that office.

Now what what will also be put in any other groups and GSR and you put it and then he thought there's a gap. He saw there was a gap,

and that gap he filled with a new very large committee. In fact, he didn't call it a committee. It was so large he called it a conference. 100 people, basically, give or take 20. I think at the last I went to those, about 110 people. That's it. And these 110 people would be delegates from all around the country

together with the members of the General Service Board, the National steering Committee, and then meet once a year. And that would fill this gap. He saw that that would fill this gap between the groups

and the Gem Service Board and the General Service Office, IE these very important national services. Something else I just want to slip in here as an aside, the national services, there's something else about national services which is easy to forget.

Obviously we have things like literature that needs to be done nationally. We have the, the, the, the unit, the unified phone line that we need to done nationally. But there's the other thing is we have national newspapers. The probation service is, is run nationally

as I think is England and Scotland, but but nationally for, for to keep it simple, we have, you know, government offices run nationally, a lot of offices who essentially create the policy for the people that have first contact with the still suffering alcoholic probation officers, prison officers. These, these national officers create the policy for,

for doctors and nurses and national professional organisations, for psychiatrists, national newspapers and television stations who kind of have the majority of the communication lines

know between individuals and, and they can reach out to people like no one else can. This national media, how do you interface? How do you, how do you communicate with national organisations and national offices? National media, you do it on a national level, you do it in a coherent way. So as well as these other General Services that I've talked about, which you know, publishing, so forth, you need, if you're, we need to be communicating nationally with the media and with, with these various organisations. So that's just slipping that in. I should have said that at the beginning.

So anyway, we have the conference filling in this gap. And why does the conference fill this gap? Well, this gets This is an interesting point here and has caused much discussion and debate over the last two years. The GSRS vote in the delegates, simple as that. The GSRS decide who the delegates are for their for their region, in our case in this country.

That's what Bill said. That was the spirit of Concept 2. The GSRS choose these delegates. They hold the delegates countable. If the delegates don't go and carry the conscience of the GSRS

to the conference meeting, when they meet with the General Service Board and representatives from the General Service Office, then GSRS can vote out these delegates. That's how the direct accountability comes in. Now unfortunately not going to be controversial, but in this country the GSRS don't vote in the delegates due to a misunderstanding of the concept, particularly the spirit of the concept. And for what? I can only think of historical reasons and reasons. Ignorance really. One region, London region N the Jesuits voting the delegates. There are other regions who are looking into

PS Rs voting in the delegates as well. But this was Bill's vision. And I'm sorry to start. Well, not stop. I'm sorry to reach concept to and already give a negative point. But in this country, we haven't quite caught up with the spirit of the concept. But this is isn't it? That's why it's so brilliant that Bill wrote these down. If he hadn't wrote down his concepts, if he'd have just thought some people were saying to him, we've done the stats. Then he said let's do the traditions. People said, no, we don't need traditions. Let me write that down. Don't we just shut up. Come and talk about your experience. Don't talk about,

don't talk to us about conditions.

And then concepts wrote the concepts. People say, well, do we need to write all this down? And it's too complicated. You know, it's not simple. You can't write. But if he hadn't wrote this down, we would not be having the current debate that we're having in this country, which was why are we not following the concepts? So, you know, thank God, he wrote it all down and made it clear. So that's, that's concept 2, The General Service Conference of a A has become for nearly every practical purpose, the active voice and effective conscience of our whole society and its world affairs.

And at this point, the principle of delegation comes in, which is fundamental to, to the concepts. And it's, it's talked about in the traditions. Bill Bill talks about the trusted servants. So what he's doing is he's taking the idea of trusted service and starting to expand on it here. He's saying that, all right, we give ultimate authority and final responsibility to the group, but then the groups have to delegate some of that to their conference delegates. And I've just actually, I'm just about to rotate out as a conference delegate. There's there's six in the Southwest region and there's

15 UK regions, each with six delegates.

But yet the groups delegate some of their authority and responsibility and that's how the conference is formed. And each year the delegates can question and debate with the General Service Board up in York and find out what essentially our national steering committee have been up to.

So

that's concept 2.

And I guess in terms of what individual groups can look towards, as you know, are we taking part in conference? Do we understand what's going on at conference? Do we know what the the agenda is for conference this year? Do we know what the conference decisions were because conference discusses things like what new literature should we do? Are we happy with this piece of literature? The national phone line came as a result of conference discussion and debate. So the decisions at conference

directly affect the new gun.

And I'm

that's concept two. And I guess the parallel, the nearest parallel I could think of this if thinking of our, our steering committee at this group, you could think of a little bit like the general service board. And then each time we have a group conscience, it's a little bit like a conference meeting, but we can all go to that group conference. We don't have to send delegates because there's, it's basically it's, it's if we had 25,000 members in our group, we could have a group conference. But because we're, you know, 100 people, we can twice a year.

We all meet and we can hold our steering committee to account. We can take votes and talk about the decisions during the year.

Concept 3. The next three concepts are all

they're all rights. Instead of three rights concepts, there were bill makes statements about 3 very important rights actually for rights and they are the first concept. Three is the right of decision, Concept 4 is the right of participation, and concept 5 is the the right of appeal and petition

and concept 3.

To ensure effective leadership, you should endow each element of AA, the Conference General Service Board and its service corporations, Staffs, committees and executives with the traditional rights position. Simple question here. OK, how? How do we define?

Maybe there's a better way to come at this. Suppose you've got a TLO at an intergroup. Well, suppose even simply you've got a secretary to group.

OK, a new situation.

I basically, something comes up at the beginning of the meeting, before the meeting starts, when the service office comes up and asks the secretary a question. Secretary has never come across this before, but feels that they have enough experience to answer the question, to give a direct tip. Yeah, like, yeah, do that tea personal. Yeah, do that literature person. That's fine. Now, what they could have done, they could have actually gone up to the GSR and their sponsor and the group chair or whatever and said, you know,

what should I do about this? What should I do about that? But what they did is they they used their right of decision. And what the right of decision says is that each service officer

when they should ask people what to do and when they actually when they just do it themselves,

because otherwise the way that what bills are particularly in as the service positions were kind of more and more national got larger in scale. Defining these service positions get very complicated. You can end up having loads by laws defining this service position. And, and and he saw that the simplest thing to do and this this is

this is an expansion on the concept of trusted, on the idea of trusted servants saying we will trust our servants. We will give them the right of decision to decide when they should ask what to do and when they should make decision themselves. In fact, that example I gave this isn't a great one because really the correct example would have been that secretary saying, all right, everybody shut up. I just had a tea person ask me if he can go and buy some more milk. So I'd like everybody in here in the group vote. Can the tea person go and buy some more milk? It's, it's

7:00, we probably need some more milk. And like everyone's like, what? But basically we expect the secretary to use their right of decision at that point. And just to think, yeah, I can decide to go and buy milk. And then if we all had a really big problem about them buying milk, then a group conscience, you know, Johnny, I shouldn't mention any names, but Johnny could have decided to say, I don't think we should have bought milk on the 21st April at 7:00. That was a really bad idea. And this is the other side of the right of decision. You know, we trust our servants, but trust is earned

and the way it's owned is we are able to hold our servants to account.

So we can say so with a conference delegate, a pre conference, the GSRS go and they said all the delegates, right. Regarding that new piece of literature, we don't like it. Regarding that idea for some new national phone line initiative, We we love that regardless that and the other we're all into that. The delegate goes up to conference, passes on some of the stuff that the stuff that he's heard. And also, but then the decision comes up a conference,

an urgent decision.

The Charities Commission have just said to us that blah, blah, blah. Some something that basically has to be done and within within a period of a few weeks or something. And the delegate then the delegates can could then choose to just to vote on that basically and not to have to go back to the groups and say, what do you think this? What do you think of that? And then when they come back to the post conference meeting after conference, if the GSRS don't like what the delegates done,

they can rip them to shreds.

You know, that was an exaggeration. They they can lovingly question and hold into account and hopefully one day they should be able to vote the guy out. You know, but that's, that's the ideal. That's what Bill really saw in the right decision is that that GSRS could actually not re ratify a delegate. So that's right, a decision, the right of participation. This is, I mean, this taught me so much when I started reading about writer participation a few years ago,

as as this group kind of grew and everyone's doing loads of service and people start to queue up to do service. And like actually wasn't that long ago now I think about it. No, no, the first time this happened was a while back.

There were lots of members of this group in service intergroup. And the intergroup turned around and said, well, you've got loads of people doing service and every time there's a vote, you know, it's like half the hands going up from the same group would have. And of course, if that's totally irrelevant because everyone votes in their own conscience, you know, people don't block vote, they vote on their own conscience. But, and one of their suggested Sushi's actually, I think this was a region, one of their suggested solutions was take away votes from liaison officers.

So basically on a region, liaison officers can't vote. The chair and the secretary and treasurer can vote, the region reps can vote, but not those liaison officers. Now somehow Bill foresaw this problem. You know, he, he saw this coming and he, he kind of focused on the conference level. He said that the, the, the, the general service office staff, the main general service office staff and the general service board should always have a vote of conference. But he, this, this principle applies as Bill says, to all levels. He basically said you don't take away,

but you don't take away people's votes on a committee. I remember thinking about this and suddenly I, I realised, of course a committee act by voting. It's no point in going in as a committee together. You have a meeting and then everyone goes off and there's twenty different things. The point is everyone comes together, they have a discussion, there's group conscience, everyone votes, the committee acts as one. As a result of that. Why? How does the committee actors want? Because of voting. So to participate in a committee I have to vote and I've heard no end of rubbish.

I was up at conference recently

and I, I won't say it, but I had some saying to me, Oh yeah, our GSO staff get to participate on committees and I said, do they have a vote? And they said no. I said, well, they don't participate then,

and that's the right participation and and it comes down. Bill brings it at the end of his essay on concept three, brings it down to some on concept four. He brings it down to some very simple, which is spiritual need to belong, you know, and

yes, somebody simple thing, people will be demotivated. It doesn't make it just make any sense to have somebody who is a integral part of that committee and to waste their experience and their knowledge when they're on that committee. So you'll be pleased to know that it didn't happen at Regent. They didn't take away the liaison officer's vote. And another thing came into group and they didn't take away liaison officer's vote. Once again, thank God Bill wrote these down. It's just it's amazing.

So

the, the other right, the right of appeal, the right petition, I mean, this is, this is brilliant.

OK, basically voting's all very well and it's very important,

but sometimes what can happen is people get assessed with this idea. Well, if a majority have voted for it, then it, it goes through and that's it, you know, and this is, this is, this is something that in fact political activists and theorists realise ages ago was a load of rubbish that you don't. And, and, and you know, I mean, the idea obviously back in Greek days, ancient Greece,

all right, that's when they used to consider democracy meant that, Oh yeah, the majority always get their way. But like in the last, however many hundreds of years, people realised that democracy on saying is very dangerous because you get a majority just repressing minority entirely and crushing them and majority gets angry. And we all know like the effect of crowds when they're all getting wound up or, you know, whatever. And, and essentially this

a long time ago, people saw the danger of just giving total pass the majority. And that's where the concept of liberal, the idea of liberal democracy came from,

which is where you you still give power to the majority, but you protect the minority as well. You put in checks and balances to protect the minority. And Bill talks about some God never heard of before. I mentioned before I read this essay, but Torqueville and he how he talked about the dangers of that. But so Concept 5 essentially there to protect the minorities

and that when there's been a, when there's been a debate and, and a vote

on some issue, whether it be a conference, whether it be an intergroup. I mean, I was at a conference recently and unfortunately at the moment, conference in the UK is very short. We're only with like two days long in terms of time in the US there for five days. But we got it all crammed into a short time. And I mean, there just isn't a lot of time. There isn't enough time for debate and you really have to, but, but I've, I've used this before when, when the debates happened and it's been a vote. And then I might put my hand and say actually, I've got a minority opinion.

I think he's talking rubbish or something like that. Got minority people then put put the put the opposite opinion and just try and get this over. And I've seen, in fact, at the last conference there was some literature that's blocked from being published and then late and there was a vote that stocks were being published. Then the next day, a minority opinion was stated and a new vote was taken and that literature got through.

And basically that's, that's the way it works. And it also

the other thing about the minority, a lot of the time the minority can be right. You know, there's not necessarily a link between who's right and how many of you there are. Just because there's 51% of you think so, it doesn't mean it's the right thing. And quite often actions and the right actions and things that have moved this fellowship forward have come from minorities. So Bill knew that not only and it helps unity as well, because if you have an active minority

being just crushed down by whether a conference or intergroup just being ignored and crushed out by the majority, you get disunity because they get annoyed. Whereas if the rice of appeal,

the rotation are used to let minorities have their say, then they'll feel at least I've, I've had a chance to give my arguments. Everyone's heard my arguments, you know, so I'm, I don't feel so bad about it. But I've been in situations where this has been followed at conference and where and you can just feel, I've just, you can just feel people sitting there just thinking this is a joke and all that would have happened to take away that feeling. Another 10 minutes, another 10 minutes discussion. You know, that's how simple this is. And that's the big difference it can make

can have delegates leading conference thinking. Yeah, I've, I've, I've heard my say I've done my best and all someone leaving conferencing in that they didn't listen to me.

So that's concept 5

and concept just actually cross reference this minute.

I mean, actually I've noticed in our group conference meetings that and at the that that the chair will often say before a vote, are there any minority opinions? So this can apply to at any level of service.

And

that's that's concert 5 anyway,

concept 6, right. So we've done concept one groups of the boss concept two, they delegate most of authority and responsibility to the conference delegates. Concept 3-4 and five, the rights, the three rights. Concept 6 is another piece of delegation. All right, 100 delegates that meet once a year. They can't run a as General Services.

This is. This is what Constant 6 is recognised and it says

the conference recognises that the chief initiative and active responsibility in most World Service matters should be exercised by the trustee members of the conference acting as the General Service Board. So what's that saying essentially is this steering committee that I mentioned National Steering committee on a on a day-to-day basis really the conference have to give that committee their right of decision and let them get on and do the job, you know. And one thing about the General Service Board National Committee, it's a registered charity

and it's incorporated and we don't want to start doing stuff like incorporating 110 delegates.

And you know, you don't want a letter sent out by the general service office every time they've got some something they need to do. Every time the General Service Board wants to do something, they have to send a letter to the to the conference. So essentially Concept 6 says that the conference will, you can hold the General Service Board to account once a year at conference. Beside from that, you know they need to be able to get on with their job.

So

that's as simple as that. Now concept 7 talks about the relationship between the board and the conference. The charter and bylaws of the General Service Board are legal instruments empowering the trustees to manage and conduct World Service affairs. The trustees are the members of the General Service Board. The conference charter is not a legal document to relies upon tradition in the a personifying effectiveness. Now this is this. I think this is great.

I, I think this is, this was, this was a really clever bit of stuff by Bill

right got general service board who have legal control over our general service office, £1,000,000 a year turnover in the US, $10 million a year turnover. The general service board in the UK and they are legally empowered to do what they like to that office and to all the funds that go to it. And that's their legal situation. The conference charter says

that what Right. I'll just explain the conference charter. It's in the it's in the UK service literature

and it and it defines the, the conference. It also says things like a 2/3 vote if if a 2/3 majority of a vote in conference is binding on the general service board. So 2/3 of delegates in conference say for 2/3 of the voting conference say to the board do this, they have to do it. A simple majority votes at conference is just a a suggestion to the board

and a three quarters vote of conference. They can, they can fire all the board, they can rearrange the board. That's where the conference chancellor said,

now one of the questions is, well, if the board illegally allowed to do what they want with the General Services, with our national General Services, but the conference have this 3/4 and and 2/3 voting rights. And so well, how how does that fit? Conference has no legal power over the general service board. And what Bill said is there's two things that basically give conference that power over the general Service Board. And

the first one is tradition respect, basically the general Service Board respecting the status of conference

and and the second one is the power of the a, a purse. Now this seems like it's quite a blunt instrument, the power of the air purse, but it is ultimate authority

because the general service office can only run because the staff are paid, because the the office rent is paid. You know, it it it needs money every penny. Well, the a large quantity of the money to run that comes from the groups putting money in the pot and that money being passed up through. And what bills essentially saying is saying to the groups

she don't like to the conference. And the groups, if you don't like what the General Service Board are doing, if they're ignoring you because they've got a legal right to, if they're ignoring your conference, that you've delegated

authority to stop sending the money,

simple as that. Now they've got a year's supply of money up in York to keep running the office. They could keep going for a year, then after a year, slowly the whole thing would just fall apart. You know, there wouldn't be money to run the office to pay the staff, wouldn't be money to hold the Jess B meetings for no General Service Board initiatives of meeting with national organisations or the media. None of that could happen. There'd be no money for it. And this is the ultimate power. This is the this is the kind of ultimate authority that the groups have or most of the money comes from us.

So

that's what what concept 7 is saying is that the relationship in the end, what guarantees the relationship between the conference and the general service board is money and tradition. It's respect and and and the power of the a, a purse. So

there is a pattern in these concepts

as there's this person of delegation, what they're essentially doing is they're moving up from, from the groups to conference to the board to have board relates to conference.

And now it's gonna talk a little bit in Concept 8 about the the relationship between the board and the general service office. We all felt he needed to say something about that and concentrate the trustees, the principal planners and administrators of overall policy and finance. They have custodial oversight of the separately incorporated

and constantly active services exercising this through their ability to elect all the directs of these entities. I just have to step back. One concept parody. A purse doesn't just apply to the general service board. It applies to any part of the a service structure. If you don't like what your intergroup are doing, if you don't like what your region are doing, don't send them money. If you really, you really, you know, if it's that bad, if you feel, or if they're wasting money or whatever, this concept as you just just don't send the money.

So anyway, but that was just another thing about concept server concept 8. The, the trustees have this described as custodial oversight to the general service office. Now the general service office has a manager called the general secretary and she's a professional manager. She's I mean, I've met her a few times. She seems very professional and efficient and, and, and hard working. And I mean, these, these people at the general service office, they work, I mean, the hours they work bloody out. They're there, if you think about it,

there at like a lot of our committee meetings are at weekends and these people go to go to the national committee meetings. Often our conference is a weekend. They go to these. I mean, it's not a nine to five job. It's hard work working the general service office. And anyway, so this is all managed by the general secretary and she does the day-to-day management. Now, obviously, I don't know how many of you are aware of the dangers of micromanagement. I don't know if you've ever had a boss who's always over your shoulder like saying do it like that. Now you're doing it like this. You just said, look, tell me what to do, go away. Let me do the job,

you know, and I'll deliver what you, what you need, you know, and what this kind of thing is. The general service board have custodial oversight. They don't ring up general service office every day and say, right, has everybody got in time? Are they working hard enough? You know, all of this. It's, it's not, it's a custodial oversight. And they do. I know that the chair in the UK, the chair of the General Service Board, is in fairly regular contact with the general secretary. But that's but it's not.

To constantly manage the staff there

and