Nick

Its in the supplement

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/41357/supplement/2270/data.htm

Call me a cynic or perhaps disillusioned if you want. But the problem with the UK, as proven time and time again is that the criteria for awards is governed by archaic rules and process, set by faceless unaccountable individuals who don't want to step away from tradition steeped in class and privilege. Unless you are a celebrity, sports person  or part of the establishment, the criteria that governs who gets what is biased, and restrictive. Time and time again years and years of campaigning is required to get recognition for many individuals who are deserving of some kind of award, and by the time the award is approved, conveniently many of the deserving have already passed away. This has alway been the way, the Military General Service Medal being a case in point. There is certainly no will or desire to recognise anything undertaken within the police or other civilian services, many campaigns for recognition have fallen on deaf ears over the years. Too busy looking after their cronies in the establishment and other undeserving cases. 

No you can search for free as far as I am aware

it is a bit clunky though

Try the Gazette 11th April 1958 mentions Imperial Service Medal Edward Henry Wingrave Engine fitter HM Dockyard Portsmouth. 

Glad to announce that GMIC Pin Badges will soon be available again. They will come in two types a Blue and a Green enamel pin badge. the Blue is available to all members. The Green will only be available in limited numbers to members who have supported the forum. Watch this space coming later this week.

Nice collection of medals there. Nice to see the boxes which are much harder to come by. Thanks for sharing. 

I have been doing lots of work on the forum so there may be some temporary anomolies over the next few days. My preference is to keep the website online, rather than take it offline for the changes to take place. So this may result in some temporary changes to skin colours etc

Hi Rick

Great to see you on here !

Thanks guys for the input and patience, hopefully will get something together over the next week or so. I have been really busy lately and I am away from my GMIC Ops room at the moment. 

I am certainly considering selective advertising, just do not currently want to go down the route of Google Adsense or Amazon as I can see issues with that route. 

Thanks for the continuing discussions. I am not looking at blocking anyone from viewing posts or information as I too believe that should be free.

I will be implement some kind of membership plan that gives benefits to members who pay or donate.

Thanks for the support and donation much appreciated ?

3 hours ago, BlackcowboyBS said:

 

Okay Gentlemen,

time for pants down! I just donated 50 Pounds to the GMIC account, pretty easy, just use the button on the landing page of this side. Nick, if you don't recieved it, just let me know. My paypal account says pending but I guess it will work out fine! 

So take it as my first yearly fee as golden status promoter or what ever! Gentlemen, time to act, we discussed enough. 

 

 

Ads I am going to tread carefully here for a few reasons, so I don't anticipate a huge upsurge in Ads and banners any time soon.

I am doing some updating which will require me to do some modifications around the themes. Just so I know what members think can I ask you to vote on what your preferences are in terms of theme colours.

Problem with the text now sorted. Cut and paste from a doc caused the issue. Thanks again for th support and ideas. Will be laying out some ideas in more details for further consideration.

Keep the ideas coming. Many thanks.

Quote

I cannot support the idea of only letting those who pay see the images for ethical reasons, alas. I really don't want to have to delete all my posts!

Why would I do that ? It would rather defeat the purpose of me funding this website for the last 18 years.  I am really not out to make money, just want to cover costs. But of course if I can recover some costs, that would obviously be an unintentional bonus.

I have looked at Amazon links really not enough in it to make it worthwhile.

Still exploring the hosting, but I do like the suggestion of ad free for subscribers thanks,

Will be posting some further questions/ polls to try and get a feel for what members want over the next few days.

Thanks for the input guys. Its appreciated and lets me gauge what you, the members think. Advertising is certainly a feasible option and one I am exploring.

As per my announcement some things I am considering:

Advertising space 

I have previously not been very supportive of advertising for several reasons. I don’t personally like reading pages with lots of adverts on them, and I am also wary of supporting individuals who think that by paying for advertising, they have some influence or control of the content, especially if that content relates to them personally, i.e. businesses. 

However I am considering offering advertising to members. I know quite a few of you have a related business or have written books on subjects which could be advertised on GMIC (as long as it was related to military history or military collectables). 

Membership 

In the distant past I did play with paid membership and some of the old hands will remember this. I stopped it as it was getting difficult to manage. This again is an option I am considering, especially for new joining members. 

Server Options

The bulk of the annual running costs (apart from software licensing) is down to hosting. I was with a good hosting solution for many years and they were excellent. This unfortunately was recently bought out by a bigger provider, and although they are still providing a good service, costs have increased. I could downgrade the service, but this will impact on you, the members most. Nothing more frustrating than a slow loading webpage or limiting image size for uploads. I would rather continue with what we have, as it works. But it is costly and having shopped around, I am not going to get anything significantly cheaper at this time, and maintain the current level of service.

Merchandise

Again something which I played with in the past with varying levels of success. I am again looking at a manufacturing a run of membership pins. Anything else that people might want? Not sure if this really works, but I am willing to explore it further. 

The tunic sleeve has two cloth loops. The top loop on the sleeve is the one to fix the armlet to the tunic. The other loop is just used underneath to pass and hold the armlet to the tunic. The metal buckle may come with two prongs affixed to the centre bar. The prongs were used to grasp the armlet and hold it on the top loop. The modern buckles came without prongs probably as the prongs damage the armlet over time.

This buckle is without prongs but the method is the same to attach the armlet. When the armlet is removed from the buckle you will see that the centre part of the metal buckle has a gap to enable you to slip the end of the armlet onto that part of the buckle. Both outer bands of the buckle are solid bars.

Loop the other end of the armlet through the cloth loop on the underside of the arm. Bring that end up to the top cloth loop. Position the metal bar under the top of the cloth loop so that one metal bar is exposed and you can slip the loose end through the gap but emerging on that side of the cloth loop. Having passed the loose end between the metal b ar and the cloth loop bring it across the top cloth loop and pass it under the unused metal bar. If you have it right the loose end should lie beneath the armlet and not flapping free. Tighten the armlet thro’ the buckle to suit your preference.

Someone has sent me some guidance on how to put on the duty armbands correctly. I will post it shortly.

But why do emergency services deserve an official Queens medal and a supermarket worker have to make do with some piece of corporate junk that is not worth anything ? Seems unfair when the risk of exposure was just as great. For example UK Border Force were issued with some cheap challenge coin which was considered pretty worthless by most recipients (and they didn't qualify for the platinum  jubilee medal either). 

 Lots of inconsistencies in how the UK Government decides who gets awards and rewards. I am sure many NHS workers have preferred the bonus payment to a medal, but don't see why receiving this should preclude them from a medal if it was to be awarded. 

At the end of the day I will be surprised if such a medal happens. You have to weigh up who was deserving and this is a difficult thing to assess. Just because someone works for the NHS shouldn't make it an automatic award criteria, any more than someone who is military unless deployed in direct support of the pandemic. 

Trouble with such an award is who actually deserves it. ? Yes some frontline NHS staff working with sick COVID patients indeed deserve it, as do other care workers working in the community. Some emergency services and some military personnel who assisted medical services also deserve it. But what about the host of other essential workers that continued working in frontline public facing jobs in the darkest days of lockdown, pre vaccination. Just take supermarket staff who continued to serve the public keeping shops open for essential goods putting themselves at risk during those dark days. Just too many people to count and I think it would be wrong to just reward those that wear a public service uniform. Makes the whole thing unfeasable.

On your picture he is shown as serving in the Met Police from 1919 to 1946. The Police LSGC medal was not instituted until 1951 so he would not have qualified. 

This is a difficult one to achieve. Police collecting is very niche, I would love to be able to oblige but for it to work it would probably need some separation form the main server/club. Would be interested to hear if there is any appetite for it ?

The rules are quite clear politics have no place here. This includes political memes and photos. As proven time and time again, all it leads to is discord, arguments and problems.

It makes a change to see someone get a knighthood which actually demonstrates what the award should be for. It's not just for those that have a measure of personal wealth, sporting achievment, privilege or celebrity, which seem often to be today's criteria for such an award.