"If you hold an MSA license, you cannot race in a non MSA race."
However, the rule never said this, it was a lazy interpretation for a rule that said that a driver should not knowingly participate in unsanctioned practices taking place within an MSA meeting.
Now such practices might have been the introduction of unlicensed or unsafe drivers, fixing the races including holding an unsanctioned sub race within a race , inadequate safety or medical cover or holding a meeting purporting to be an MSA meeting at a track that had lost its licence and so on.
In other words, drivers were not meant to knowingly collaborate with the breaking of the rules laid down.
The trouble was that various people assumed that it meant something else, possibly because someone else said that was what it meant.
Another definition that took a lot of changing was the one about "the overtaking kart must be given right of way" which means, clearly in the light of the clarifications issued, that if you knew or should have known there was a kart inside you, you weren't allowed to squeeze him off the track, but many people interpreted as "the overtaking kart has to be given the racing line" a completely different thing.
"Now that there is social media and drivers can communicate away from the track, the governing bodies have realised that it is not possible to suppress opinions."
Yet this is abused too in much the same way. Because something has appeared and not been disputed on social media or has been debated but any contrary opinion shouted down, it is often assumed that the opinion has some greater validity than the contrary opinion. Yet it doesn't, because normally those taking part are an equally small proportion of overall population as the opinions of the other body.
And, as has become very obvious, social media is not a guarantee of a person's identity or ability to reach rational decisions or to interpret what has been written or said correctly.
"although they left it a little too late and IKR has broken the stranglehold they had."
I am not sure that this is necessarily a good thing, there are too many people who have a vested interest in "breaking the stranglehold" as a goal rather than concern for the well being of karting as a whole.
I'd agree with you that the current structure of the MSA committees has lost the trust of many drivers and various people report that the committees themselves are being manipulated to satisfy people outside the MSA.
I'm not sure how the trust is regained, history tells us that those who lead revolutions are often as bad as those they replace,whicgh suggest that we need to reform the MSA process rather than overthrow them.
Perhaps a good start might be to prevent the committees from selecting those applicants they want to serve alongside themselves, and then ensuring that enough applicants volunteer to serve who don't have the same vested interest or industry connections.
Perhaps the MSA could tell us how many karters stood for selection to the committees this year and how many of those resigning but restanding were selected?
After all, if we don't actually participate in making the existing system work, there's very little point in overthrowing it because it doesn't give us the answers we want, is there?
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