The conduct of meetings, whether they be the AGM of a major company, or the committee of the local raffle group should run by the same basic set of rules, worked out over a long period to ensure that a meeting comes to a conclusion at the end of a comprehensive “due process”.

Whilst the AGM of a public company should be far more formal than the local tennis group, nevertheless, some rules should never be broken, significantly the one that states: “No-one can speak  twice on a topic until all who wish to speak on the topic have done so”.

This simple rule ensures that the local opinionated motor-mouth who seems to pop up on most small committees is controlled. 

It is up to the chairman to keep the discipline, but many a local meeting I have attended  has failed because the basics of conducting a meeting are not enforced.