We had a very useful branch committee meeting last night. Thanks to everyone who came.

One topic was the Grapevine, our email service to members. Some people apparently have asked for ’more jobs’. This is a problem with the industry not the grapevine. We publicise all the jobs we know about. If you hear of anything let us know and we’ll put on the grapevine pronto. What we can’t do - as the editor like everyone else on the branch committee is a volunteer - is seek out jobs for you and post them.

While jobs remains the grapevine’s primary focus we also use it to share information and network around all issues that may be of interest to members. I make no apology for the breadth of that criteria or the fact that this means sometimes you might get material that is not of direct interest to you personally. Just delete it. Much better that we occasionally see items we’re not interested in that that we miss something that we are - any form of triage would increase that risk.

Amongst other business we also came up with a way to deal with one of my guilty secrets: the branch questionnaires that so many of you filled in and which have been sitting on my desk for far too long. Watch this space.

Christmas Party

At next week’s branch meeting we will, amongst other things, be discussing the last Christmas party and what we can learn for this year. If you can’t make the meeting but have any comments let me know.