'The plan to sell Cecil Sharp House and use the cash to set up a new EFDSS HQ somewhere else would have made sense if that new HQ would have offered better facilities.'(Richard Mellish 27 July). Sorry, I've only just noticed this. The reason (a far more pressing reason) people like me voted against - I mean railed against - the idea of selling the House was that most of the money would have been used to get the Society out of its then serious financial difficulties. Selling the Society's biggest capital asset, a freehold in one of the most expensive parts of the capital,in order to solve a problem of bad management,would have been crazy, a self-inflicted wound from which the Society would never have survived and would not have deserved to survive.

Te fact that we have a strong, successful Society today, able to take part in arguments about what more it could be doing, what it could be doing better and where, geographically, it should be doing it, is down to the fact that we decided in the bad years, not to commit suicide.