Ah...
...how fondly I remember that fresh flush of youth when, armed with a newly-minted degree that granted me full exemption from any BCS membership examination nonsense, I thought that joining up and being all chartered and MBCS-ish might be a good idea.
However, during the course of my fun and (largely) carefree postgrad days, I soon realised that membership of the IEEE and ACM were much more useful: better magazines; more respected journals and much higher potential for racking up a few peer-reviewed conference publications (and jetting off on international jollies as a result).
Of course, when I finally left the ivory tower, tempted out by filthy commercial lucre, I discovered that none of these august institutions counted for much at all in the "real" world. So I let the old IEEE and ACM memberships lapse and have been determinedly unattached (at least as far as professional associations are concerned) ever since. And, funnily enough, it never did me any harm at all in my career - such things were never mentioned by anyone, at interview or anywhere else, as far as I can recall.
Nowadays, when the only time I ever hear about the BCS is when they seem to be going flat out to make themselves look like squabbling schoolchildren or emphasizing their apparent total detachment from what actually happens in the commercial IT world, I'm rather glad that that first flush of youth was so fleeting and didn't lead anywhere. I've probably saved myself quite a few beer tokens over the years...