A FRIEND OF MINE once approached the local BSAC branch to ask about joining. During the initial discussion, it was discovered that he was already a PADI qualified diver. Taking into account his experience and training, the club decided to enrol him on its next novice course.

This was a man who had been diving for 11 years and had been a full-time PADI instructor for the past eight. He had worked abroad and in the UK, trained thousands of divers and had more dives under his belt than that entire branch put together. Even so, it decided that he didn't even warrant a novice rating. When he told me, I said I wasn't surprised.

Over the years, a number of BSAC divers have approached me to chat about diving, only to turn away when they found out that I was PADI-trained.

Judging by some of the readers' letters published in Diver, there are still some people out there who behave in this way.

However, my intention is not to rubbish the BSAC or its members. I have met a lot of very friendly, easy-going BSAC divers, like our club secretary Parky, a regular buddy and a BSAC Sports Diver who has been diving for longer than I have.

What I want to do is show my support for all those divers who do not dismiss people simply because they were trained by an agency other than their own, those divers who are into diving and having a laugh, and are not blighted by bigoted or narrow-minded attitudes.

Most people would agree that both PADI and BSAC are training organisations that offer good levels of safety, differing only in the content of their courses. Divers to whom I talk agree that both have their good and bad points.

On the one hand, you don't have to complete lengthy training to be certified by PADI. On the other, the training provided by BSAC at entry level is more in-depth. I have always felt that PADI should follow suit in teaching rescue skills straight away. Each body seems to have borrowed from the other: BSAC's Ocean Diver course looks very similar to the PADI Open Water course, while PADI now has its own variation on the club system.

I have heard stories of people who have given up diving because of club politics or policies. A recent unofficial survey on a Divernet forum revealed many disgruntled club divers who were being told by their branches that they couldn't join dive trips because they didn't have high enough qualifications, yet they couldn't get those qualifications because they didn't have the experience.

I find such attitudes astonishing, yet they seem quite prevalent. Who are the people running such clubs ?
If you're not happy with your current club, change. Better still, organise a take-over. Mutiny! There are plenty of clubs on Divernet's Club Notices or in the back of Diver, many of which nowadays advertise "no politics".

I hear stories of clubs failing due to lack of membership. Don't they stop to wonder why? Perhaps your committee should canvass its members about what they want from the club, instead of assuming that they know. They might be surprised.

I belong to a club in Surrey Quays in London called Aquamarine. Our chairman is certified PADI, the secretary is BSAC and the diving officer Sub Aqua Association.

Our membership includes divers from BSAC, PADI, SAA, NAUI, TDI, IANTD, CMAS and a few other weird ones of which I had never heard.

We are affiliated to the SAA but tend to find that people wish to complete PADI courses. By becoming a club member (and as such a member of the SAA) as a novice, you are taught both the PADI Open Water and SAA Club Diver courses.

So the students get the popular training course as set out by PADI, but then get taught further skills, such as in-water ventilation and lifting unconscious divers, as laid down by the SAA.

The members felt that it would be beneficial to learn rescue skills from day one, as with the BSAC, rather than have to wait until they completed the PADI Rescue course. I have spoken to the people at PADI UK about this and, to my surprise, they agreed that it was a good idea.

The club feels we can all learn a lot from each other and that this results in good, all-round divers who have acquired knowledge from many sources rather than just one.

Diving is meant to be about fun and adventure. We don't tolerate bigots in other walks of life and shouldn't have to put up with them in diving.

I salute all those people who are trying to change diving for the better, especially those who are running clubs with the members' interests at heart.

I hope one day a club is formed solely for those divers who think they are a legend in their own logbook, although I'm not sure of the environmental damage that would be caused by having so many self-inflated egos in such a confined area!