I'm a dinosaur. I've got old fashioned attitudes and values and really object to the trendies who seem to run the various organisations I belong/belonged to.

I've left the union (here in the UK) because they cannot understand how self-employment finances work. Membership fees are based on a percentage of your income. Very sensible - however, they define income as turnover - so for me this is the value of invoices I produce for clients. A typical invoice might be three people's pay - sound, video, lights etc, and then the hire of extra kit like cameras, video screens, cabling, lights, even payments for copyright. Out of that, I pay out money to the other two people, and hire fees for some of the kit hired in to me. I have the usual running costs too.

Her Majesties Revenue and Customs see the money coming in, take off the genuine expenses going out, and then the difference is my income, and I pay my correct tax percentage. So the Taxman understands my total invoice values are not my 'wages' - the union insist it is!

I'm a member of a video association, now de-gendered to make the trendies happy, despite the huge majority of members being men. I upset them today by making a comment about some live coverage of an event in England. The moaners jumped on me because it's bad form to complain about bad performance because the operator could be a member, and it would be upsetting.

Another association I used to edit the magazine for - I often did articles about the work the folk in the smaller venues did in the regions. I got complaints that there were too few articles about the industry heavyweights, centred on work in London. I felt London was not the centre of the universe, but we'd all have to travel to London to meet in a trendy bistro/pub, and often it would be cancelled if one of the headline international members couldn't be there because it was important he didn't miss a meeting.

Is this kind of thing the same in the US, or are your clubs, groups and associations more open and friendly.

There are two things that come to mind:

1. Membership of this guild probably doesn't mean much on a day to day basis and you are best to leave. My money is on you getting more out of coming to DVinfo.

2. Leaving them should be viewed in the same manner as firing a client, namely that there are many ways to do it rather than a simple "goodbye". I suggest it be mandatory that you use your insider knowledge of their whine points to make them just so badly want to get rid of you. Start with asking the hurt-feelings moaners "was that your work and you don't want to admit it?" etc.

Enjoy, and definitely have some fun.

Andrew

I base my BECTU subs on my personal income, not turnover. There's a minium subs rate.

The old ACTT general council used to vary from Workers Socialist Party members to conservatives.

Quite a few people have had the same issue it seems Brian - they simply don't recognise that for a self-employed person, income is not what you earn. HMRC understand when they work your tax out, but a union doesn't? That's very odd.

I never go into detail with them.

The ITV staff people were convinced that they were only ones that actually paid 1%.