It will end in tears.

I wonder if it happens in other Lions Clubs? Or Rotary or Round Table or other such organisations? Our Lions Club has what we call a Service Committee whose brief is to oversee hands-on service activities such as providing transport for a club for the blind and also to consider applications for financial assistance and make recommendations to the Club. The actuality is that one person investigates all applications, many of which he declines without further reference. Only those which he thinks suitable are put forward for further consideration. This has been the case pretty well all the time I have belonged to the Lions, which is very nearly 25 years. It hasn't been the same person doing the vetting but I don't think there have been more than two.

While I - and most other members of the Club - agree with the majority of the decisions made by the vetting member, some of us have long suspected that there are applications which the majority of the club members would support but which are not being put forward. I have been considering how to overcome this problem when I take office as President, but that will not be until July 2014 and it would be good to solve the problem before then. Our present vetting officer does do a first class job on the whole. He has weeded out a number of cases that could have been a complete waste of money. (In one case he uncovered a discrepancy of over £20,000 in the accounts of a small charity and nobody was able (or willing) to tell us where the money had gone. The charity has since folded.) But he is very quick to take offence or to see an insult so I have been looking for a solution that will not cause any loss of face. The only thing I have come up with so far is so transparent that it is unlikely to be effective.

But matters have now come to a head. Or they will very soon. While customers were browsing the tables at our book fair yesterday morning, there were a good few Lions sitting over coffee. (We tend to treat book fair mornings as social occasions.) Not surprisingly, talk turned to Lions' business and we learned the fate of a project we had first heard of some months back. This was to establish a social club in Brighton for blind and partially-sighted persons under the auspices of the East Sussex Association for Blind and Partially Sighted People, with whom we already have a good relationship. We had been told that there would probably be an application to made to us for financial assistance to get the Brighton club up and running. The club agreed (at a business meeting) that this is just the sort of project we would wish to support and we looked forward to learning how much would be needed.

What we learned yesterday was that the lady setting up the blind club - already known to a couple of us as a hard-working and energetic person - had sent in an application but had subsequently somehow offended our vetting officer. He had therefore declined the application without any further reference. Those of us talking (quite unofficially) agreed that the application must be resurrected and considered properly. Indeed, we said, if all they want is £1,000 we need do nothing more but write the cheque.

I would hate to see him leave the club, but that's what is likely to happen as we just can't see a way of reintroducing this without upsetting him. But the club is bigger than any one member and this will be an important matter of principle.