I joined CAMRA last August. I paid my £25 online and received my membership pack in three days. All well and good. I also received my membership card. It looks something like this :
It was a plastic covered adhesive sticker thing attached to my welcome letter. I presume it had all my details printed on it at the same time as the rest of the letter, using either an inkjet or laser printer. Also all well and good. Until, after a couple of weeks of carrying it around and producing it for various events, the details started wearing off. Seems the surface is too shiny to hold printing ink for long. Hmm. Well. Slight flaw there. Did the Sages of St. Albans expect it to hold the letters for a whole year of usage? "How do other members of the Beard Club deal with this issue?" I wondered. Until one day, I was in my local CAMRA discount pub and saw some people flash this for money off :
This one looked much more fit for purpose. Solid plastic, firmly printed with non-wearing ink. I thought "I paid my money too. Why do I not have one? I presume there's a reason. So where and how do I get one?"
A short time after this, the words on my cardboard/plastic card finally became illegible. I emailed CAMRA and told them their printing of my card was not much cop and nobody could read whether it was valid or not. They emailed back promptly thanking me for my input and three days later my replacement arrived :
This time I realised I had learned my lesson. I had it laminated.
Are there conditions attached to the silver card? I couldn't find them on the Beards' website. Do you have to pay several years in advance? Be a member for a decade? Be over 40? Know Roger Protz personally from being on the SWP Central Committee with him?
Or am I displaying the archetypal characteristic of the CAMRA member - that of
entitlement?
