Tributes have been paid to James (Jim) Palmer, Table Tennis England National Elections Scrutineer, who has passed away after a short illness.

Returning Officer Caroline Williams writes this appreciation:

Jim was a Chartered Accountant who ran his own accountancy business in Malvern for many years.

In 2011 he was appointed as a National Elections Scrutineer and in that capacity was involved in the counts for the Election of Andy Seward as Chairman in 2013 and of Sandra Deaton as Chairman in 2015.

Since then, he has participated in the Elections of Directors in 2019 and, willingly accepting the new procedures that had to be made to accommodate the move to an online election, in June 2020.

He even managed to fulfil work for the Director Election in May 2021 when Ritchie Venner was elected, even though at that time his wife Cicely was very ill.

He willingly attended and helped for many years on an ad-hoc basis as needed with AGM counts since well before 2011. This included the EGMs in 2014, 2017 and the one earlier this year.

He worked tirelessly this year on the count in January and this spring he helped to devise new forms for this year’s AGM, so that we could be prepared in advance for an online or for a physical meeting.

Sadly, ill-health meant that in early June he had to tell me that he would miss this year’s AGM and he wrote that ‘he was disappointed that he was unlikely to be able to help in the future’.

He had excellent computer skills especially with using spreadsheets and so his abilities will be much missed. He was always willing to drop everything and help with the work even though it often was long and arduous and needing to be done in a very short time scale.

Jim’s son Richard writes:

Dad will be missed by many more people than he can imagine, table tennis was one realm where he operated where I know this to be the case.

Dad would want people to think cheerfully of him, he was such a wonderful straight-talking character, that you could truly rely on when he took something on.

I know he took pride in the fact that he continued to be relied upon in so many ways right up until the diagnosis. His only frustration was that he thought 90 would see him retire.  But as ever he quickly adjusted and remained fantastically observant and clever to the end.  As he said, my body is knackered but my mind remains. I can testify to the fact that that remained true to the very end.