is the b.h.a. fit for purpose?

​Of course, the answer to the above question is no, the B.H.A. is not fit for the purpose.
If you are of the opinion that I am wrong and that not only is the B.H.A. fit for purpose but also do a good job in running British horse-racing, please provide your evidence.
Horse racing is a specialised sport; it is a sport that requires people at the top of the pyramid that have an abundance of that specialised knowledge to make the informed decisions required to maintain the health, efficient day-to-day running and future prospects of the sport. I would contend that the B.H.A. is little more than an organisation of pen-pushers, with a leadership resembling Nero fiddling with his bow while Rome burned around him.
Every problem that virtually every sector of British racing must face on a daily basis, with perhaps the exception of those at the very top echelon of the thoroughbred breeding industry, should have been tackled decades ago by the B.H.A. Prize-money, to take but one example, has spiralled downwards now for many decades, ever since the Jockey Club were removed in favour of the B.H.B., through to the new governance recently awarded to the B.H.A. under the leadership Julie Harrington. An Epsom Derby worth over 1-million to the winner is not a sign of new growth but an indicator that the B.H.A. and its cohorts see the future of horse racing as an entertainment for the elite, when it should, as a policy statement/starting point or aspiration, be aiming, at the very least of its ambitions, to have one race at every meeting worth five-figures to the winner.
But what has reignited my ire towards the B.H.A. is their u-turn on use of the whip and their total disregard for the thoughts of those people who bothered to take part in their on-line survey on the subject. ‘We listened to what the jockeys had to say and altered our view accordingly,’ is spin for ‘we cocked-up, please don’t think badly of us, we done our best’.
This is not top-end leadership but sackcloth and ashes-speak of people promoted beyond their competence. 
When the B.H.A. sought to find a colour for take-off boards and the bars of hurdles that was compatible to the eye-sight of horses, it commissioned a university to conduct research. Yet, as far as I am aware, it failed to uphold the same thinking when it came to a subject that also impacts on the well-being of horses and, perhaps as importantly, the public’s perception of how we, racing people, perceive the welfare of the horse.
The whip issue within racing is very much like the public’s perception of the supernatural. You either believe or disbelieve, with science offering no real guidance either way. Horse racing is also similar to the supernatural in that if you believe a house to be haunted or if you believe the whip causes neither physical or psychological harm to a horse, no ‘circumstantial evidence’ to the contrary will change your point of view. Yet, horse racing in this country has been haunted by this issue for many decades, and will continue to be haunted, I fear, for decades to come.
When I learned that jockeys were to be represented on the whip steering group, I laughed; to me, it was akin to allowing the convict to have a say on his or her sentence. I was wrong, as it turned out. The B.H.A. might just as well negotiated only with the jockeys on the matter; it would, after-all, have saved time and expense. 
I am not accusing jockeys of either acting in their own interests or being wrong about the difficulties the new (or formally new) rules would present for them. What I am saying is that the discussion should have taken place at the outset, not at the eleventh-hour and that both the B.H.A. and the Professional Jockeys Association were at fault.
Again, as with the supernatural, a definitive answer to the age-old problem is held in abeyance not by those with point-of-views at either end of the spectrum of debate but by those who either do not understand what the fuss is about or who simply do not care.
The whip and its use, I truly believe, is fundamental to the long-term future of the sport.
The issue of the whip has been tinkered with the B.H.A. and its predecessors for over forty-years and when racing’s (now) governing body gave itself the opportunity to find a longstanding solution it cocked-it-up big-time. At the outset science should have been commissioned to settle once and for all (hopefully) whether horses suffer any physical or psychological harm from being struck by a whip, cushioned or uncushioned. Then, and they might have chosen this road irrespective of whether science was brought in to arbitrate, a series of racecourse trials should have been instigated to explore all or many of the possible solutions to the debate – eight-strokes, no backhand or no forehand, no-strokes, one-stroke, jockeys banned from taking their hands off the reins and so on. Or not so on as perhaps more than three options might have taken another decade to compete and I will not have lived long enough to learn what the eventual answer might be and would have to walk for eternity the corridors of power dragging my chains of ire and howling in agony at having to bear the sound of the death-knell of my beloved sport.
As an appendage to the above: wouldn’t it be a lovely way to live in the afterlife to wander the equine heavenly fields where the racehorses of the past graze at their ease; to ask them ‘how did you feel about being smacked relentlessly or restrictedly with a whip’? Of course, the answers may vary according to the racing era in which they lived.
I wonder if Drumlargan, for one, grazes contentedly, forgiveness in his heart?