July 2025

In this newsletter we have Graeme’s last report and my first one:

President’s Report June 2025

From The Flight Deck

The first line of my President’s report for last year’s AGM could be easily regurgitated for this

year’s report, just with a change of date. “I have managed to put off a President’s report long

enough so that now the report for our Annual General Meeting to be held on 24 June 2025 can

double up as a newsletter as well.”

In recent years there has been genuine concern that membership numbers were gradually falling

without many candidates for admission to the Club who met the requirements of our current

arrangement with the Air Force Museum. Recently there have been several new members and

long may this last. It is almost time for the next generation of post wartime members of the

Club to take over in the running of the Club going forward. Consequent to this two of our

members who have given a tremendous amount of time and energy to the operation of the Club

in recent times are stepping down from the committee at the Annual General Meeting, Kevin

Jones and John Lay. When I took over as President in 2023, I said at the time that I did not

intend to be the President when I turned 80, and as that occurs prior to the AGM in 2026 I will

be stepping down although I will still be part of the committee as Immediate Past President.

For the first time that I can remember in recent history there have been no members who have

passed away in the last twelve months.

During the last year a significant amount of time was spent on our submission to the New

Zealand Transport Authority to have the bridge on State Highway One named after Sir Keith

Park as all members will be aware. This process of naming something after Sir Keith Park has

been a topic for The Brevet Club since 2018 when Gary Wright made a proposal. To say that

NZTA were difficult to deal with would be an understatement and unfortunately very little

progress has been made. They hang on the fact that it already has a name, “The Gateway

Bridge” but we can find little evidence that is a fact. Although at the last meeting held with

NZTA officials they said that although renaming the bridge was not a possibility as far as they

were concerned, they would within a week advise us of any assets they had which we could

look at naming. A month later a reminder was sent to NZTA, and the response was a rather

terse short message stating that they would not carry it any further. At this point I advised the

membership at a Sport’s Afternoon that I had reached the end as far as I was concerned. Gary

Wright has very kindly undertaken to make an approach via a different direction, and we wish

him good luck.

The Club website would appear to be operating in the way it was intended, and any new

member applications are being processed correctly. I will maintain the operation of the website

in the meantime until we have some sort of “idiot’s guide” written. The website is in a

WordPress application which is very powerful, but we only use a minute part of its capabilities

so I would like to see if we can abbreviate the application for our use and make it relatively

simple for someone else to take over in the future.

The social programme would appear to have been generally accepted as being a good idea to

have the whole annual programme established prior to the beginning of each year. Requests

from the Air Force Museum to move our scheduled club days to assist them in bookings have

been few and far between and the Air Force Museum is cognisant of the fact that they would

like to keep any of these changes to a minimum. However sometimes there are directives from

“above” to the Museum Director and we should accommodate them if possible. After all we

are really in the Brevet Club by the goodwill of the Air Force Museum, and we should keep it

that way.

Following the last AGM Peter Foster retired as the Treasurer and Kenn Cox took over. Our

finances are in good health and as a committee we have approved the funds which were in a

term deposit have been allowed to mature and are now in balanced funds 50:50 with Craigs

Investment Partners and Milford Asset Management.

I have enjoyed my term as President and wish to thank executive committee members,

committee members and members generally for making it relatively easy.

Kind regards,

Graeme Thomson

President

From The Flight Deck

Thanks to Graeme for his very informative President’s Report,  and thanks again Graeme for all your hard work during your presidency.  We live in changing times and we have to adapt to new ways of doing things and this all takes time and energy.

We have held our first committee meeting since our AGM.  It is great to have new blood with John and Roger taking an active part. The dynamics of a new group are always interesting and I am sure we will work well together.

The way things are shaping up with Russ Cross and our outings I think we have a new position being OIC of interesting social visits!  Thanks Russ.

Mark has done sterling work with the Club’s Constitution.  I am impressed with speed at which he churns out our agendas and minutes etc and looks after all of our admin stuff so professionally.  The work on the Constitution is beyond good stuff.  We now comply with the current requirements of being an Incorporated Society

As always the elephant in the room is recruitment and I have been tasked with consulting with our website expert to elicit a proposal aimed at taking our website to another level specifically to seek out new members.

In his new position of Patron, Kevin has agreed in the meantime to continue arranging club catering.  Thanks Kevin.

Note the change of date for the Battle of Britain service, now the 21^st September.

This will be my last newsletter, Graham Bethell has kindly agreed to take over and I wish him well.

Keith Jolly

President

Brevet Club Social and Meetings Programme for 2025

August          

5          -     No Club

20(Wed)- Lunch at the Chateau

September   

9          -     No Club

21 (Sun)-  Battle of Britain

23        -     Club Day – (Committee Meeting)

October

8          -     Lunch at Chateau on the Park

21        -     Club Day – (Committee Meeting)

November

4          -     Club Day

18        -     Club Day

December

5 (Fri) -     Lunch at the Club

16        -     Club Day – (Committee Meeting)

2026

January       

20        -     First Club Day for 2026

And for a lighter note:

A woman sees this beautiful blue and gold parrot in the shop and she says to the man, “He’s gorgeous! How much?”

He replies, “Twenty pounds.”

“Really? He’s beautiful.”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry but he’s got form. He’s got a history.  He was in a brothel, you see. And to put it delicately, he’s got quite a colourful vocabulary.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. I’ll take him now, if that’s OK?”

So she takes the parrot back to the flat, takes the cover off, and the parrot looks around and says, “New place. Very nice.”

And the woman’s two daughters walk in and the parrot says, “New place, new girls. Very nice.”

And her husband walks in and the parrot says, “Hello, Charles.”

The Price of Freedom

is Eternal Vigilance

Keith Jolly, Editor