Ringing Forums

Can a 'peal fee' be described as a 'subscription'?

ODG does. AFIA it supposedly pays the cost of printing the peal in the report, but I've no idea whether the cost is comparable to the fee. I don't know what the print run is, we haven't provided a report for each member for many years.

But if a report is supposed to be a record of the year's activities, why should peal ringers pay for them to be published in it? Especially if the rules require peals rung for the association to be published in the report.

WDCRA peal fee is £0.00
It was reduced from 30p to zero per ringer about 10 years ago; it was too difficult to collect for the value raised (as far as I recall).

Yes, there was something about covering the cost of printing in the report but the economics of report printing is driven by several other factors.

Truro DG £zero peal fee….currently no written report for them (not many) to be published in.

Did you have a peal fee when there was still a written report? For how long has there been no written report? Are the peals available in whatever online report you have?

When the St Martin's Guild abolished peal fees, one of the arguments for doing so was that peal fees seemed to be a tax on peal ringing, and given peal ringing was something we wanted to encourage just like all other forms of ringing, it didn't seem right to levy a charge just on that.

The fees had originally been to pay for illuminated peal book writing but that is done electronicaly now. and the printing and binding is just seen as a Guild overhead.

When my firm printed annual reports for a score or more of the country's guilds and associations, I noted the relative costs. Oviously it varies with the number of copies - more copies reduces the cost per report - and the number of pages - more pages increases the cost. There is a correlation between membership and peal pages; more members usually results in more peals.

The Scottish Assoc was the most frugal (naturally!) with only a dozen or so towers and a comparatively low membership their report was low on numbers and low on pages. At the other end of the scale, the Yorkshire Assoc's order for 1500 reports of around 100 pages was one of the largest.

I recall that the average price per page in a report ranged from around 80p to £1.20.

G and B charge 50p, which is collected by everyone giving the conductor the cash then each conductor is billed by the peal sec at the end of the year. All very archaic. Most towers have their own peal fee per rope which varies from £3 to £10, not always related to the quality of the bells! The G and B advise that peal fees make up a majority of their income, much of which is used to for the bell restoration fund rather than the cost of a report. I have been suggesting for years that a significant raise in subscriptions would be a fairer way of achieving income, particularly given the aggressive anti-peal stance of some association officers but I think the association see taxing peal ringers to fund the non-peal ringers activities as fair!

That all sounds horribly familiar

I don't understand the taxing peal ringers thing. Well I do, but don't agree. It depends what you think peal ringing is for and what it achieves.

and comments along the lines of "x is a tax on y" generally seems to be assuming that taxation is inherently bad and something to be avoided.

When I studied Economics I think we were taught that taxation should be 'fair'. A small number of ringers contribute a far higher proportion to the Association funds than others. Also, a number of those ringers paying the peal fee will not be resident in that association. Is if fair for them to contribute, when they will also be contributing to their own guild?

Have just had a Facebook 'discussion' with 2 non peal ringers. late learners, who just don't understand a) why we object to paying 'just' a £ when we pay £5 to towers and b) why it is important to some of us to ring peals for our home association. They think that if we chose to ring peals then we should just accept the peal fee, regardless of the fact that a small number of ringers are paying a disproportionately higher amount than others. Income from peal fees can go down as well as up if ringers chose to ring them for other associations with no peal fee or no association at all.

Guild of Devonshire Ringers (GDR) charge £0.60 per rope. This is to cover the cost of writing up the peal book. It actually pays a proportion of printing the annual report as well.
Bath & Wells collect a donation, amount at the individual's discretion.

Peal ringers are enthusiasts, as are motorcyclists. If the government or local authorities wanted to raise more money to repair roads, they could do so by charging motorcyclists a fee whenever they rode their motorbikes on a journey of over 100 miles. Car drivers would not be charged this fee. This would achieve the aim of raising more money for roads, everyone would benefit, but at the expense of the long distance motorcyclists. Would that be seen as an acceptable method of raising money to cover road costs?