Having had a bit of time to think I guess I'll chime in with my tuppence worth. Firstly thanks to the committee chaps for all their time and effort, a very polished set of proposals!
I'm going to vote Yes for Document A. This all seems like housekeeping and generally positive stuff, and with nothing at all controversial here there isn't much for me to say.
I'm going to vote No for Document B. It won't be a surprise to many of you that I agree with almost everything Phil and Paul have said in their posts. But I'll try to express it in my own words for those who are reading this still unconvinced. This is about as good an attempt at a qualification system as I could have imagined. Better than anything I would have come up with!
I am really impressed by the amount of thought that has gone into the proposal. But - and it is a big but - it is still a qualification system.
My concern here is not Team England. Frankly even the worst case scenario of picking a rubbish TE pales in comparison to the larger consequences of having such an overarching framework to the English tournament scene. It isn't about the weekend of the Eurobowl itself, but how it will impact behaviour and enjoyment for the other 51 weekends of the year. Particularly - and this is the really key bit for me - for people who have no interest in Team England and even those who have no idea that the qualification system exists. Others have made more detailed points above, but there will be a race towards Tier 0 teams. People are going to care about this ranking, even those who haven't previously expressed any interest in playing for TE. You can see that already in this thread: people love their numbers. Many, many more people than just the TE regulars will be playing with the qualification ranking in mind. It will hang over ever game, every turn, every dice roll all year round. In March, in June, in September. Nobody will get a weekend off, there will be no more fun tourneys with Nurgle or a funky star player. Or at least there will be a lot fewer.
And this will have an impact on everyone, even the people not bothered by the rankings. Suddenly every tournament they go to will be packed to the gills with Undead and Wood Elves, Dark Elves and Lizardmen. And what is the one piece of feedback that comes back loud and clear from the English community? They don't like Tier 0 and they really do like diversity of teams. For every one comment complaining about transparency in TE selection I have seen hundreds talking about diversity of teams or 'boo powergamers'. So I ask, what are we trying to achieve here? If we want to hear the voice of our community surely we need to listen to the one thing they tell us over and over again?
As a minor addendum, I don't think this is even good for TE itself. I've always thought the reason TE have done so well is that we had a core of coaches who travelled a lot around Europe looking to be challenged. Playing different coaches with different styles is a huge benefit when a Eurobowl comes around. You learn more when you lose games than when you win, and we should be encouraging our coaches to improve by seeking out strong opponents who are likely to beat them. None of these things are compatible with maintaining a high ranking to hit your qualification number.
TL;DR: Do you want to play Wood Elves and Undead every game? Because this is how you get to play Wood Elves and Undead every game.*This post may have been made without the use of a hat.
