Category: Scouts

One of the things that always impresses me about Scouting is the generosity of everyone who is involved. From the parent who is part of the cooking team at a Cub camp to the Leaders and so on. But it’s the stuff that people do which is ‘above and beyond’ that is always the most impressive.

For instance, I know if I have a question or problem, that as well as ringing the Info Centre at Gilwell and speaking to my District’s people, I can post a question on Escouts or PTC Media’s forums or email any number of Leaders in the UK, Europe or the USA. And by doing this, I will get the info I need. They don’t need to do this, but we always like to help our fellow Scouts (A Scout is a Member of the Worldwide Family of Scouts – UK Scout law number 4).

Another recent example of generosity is the creation of a WordPress theme for Scouting websites designed by Chris Hawes (see the Be Prepared link in the Scouts in the UK section of my links). Chris has made this theme for his District’s site and then offered it to anyone who wants it for their site! So I’ve used it on my District’s new site, which I’ve recently re-launched (after waiting since March to hear what the District wanted, I got bored and did it anyway!). You can see it here. Since the original release, Chris has made a couple of variations which can bee seen and downloaded from here.

So many thanks to Chris for his hard work and to all those Scouts out there who do that extra bit to help others!

If you live in the US, you’ll know who he is, but if you live anywhere else, like me, you’ll probably say ‘Who?’.

He is a TV host who hosts a show called Dirty Jobs, amongst others, and is someone who is promoting the importance on the ‘blue collar trades’ and the fact that there is a need for people to be trained in such areas (plumbing for example) and that everyone should not necessarily have a degree (as seems to be a common theme these days).

He was a Scout when he was a boy and is an Eagle Scout.

He has taken it upon himself to promote Scouting and it’s values and achievements. He will even send a personalised letter to any Eagle Scout who wants one (see the example here). He recently appeared at the BSA’s recent Jamboree (unlike a Mr. Obama who sent a video & went on a chat show, much to the annoyance of a lot of Scouts) and spoke to all the Scouts and their Leaders about the need to get out and get dirty while staying physically and mentally clean.

But the thing that interests me is that he has done all this off his own back. As far as I know, he doesn’t have an official position within the BSA, but has decided that Scouting is something that is important and relevant to the youth of America and he is going to tell people that.

However, I can’t think of anyone over here who is doing a similar thing. We obviously have Bear Grylls doing his thing as Chief Scout, but he, as are thousands of other adults, is a volunteer within Scouting. There is no one I can think of who is outside Scouting in an official capacity doing the same as Mike Rowe and I guess we’re the poorer for it. If we had someone who is in the media spotlight, be they a sports person, musician or politician, for example, who is willing to say ‘ this is my team, record or policies I’m promoting and I got here partially because of the skills, lessons and fun I had in Scouts / Guides etc as a kid. Take a look you might enjoy it’.

I wonder if anyone out there is prepared to say that?

Back in March, the UK Government released some previously classified files about the relationship between Scouting and the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend). As usual the media made a big fuss about, well nothing really. There wasn’t a link between the two organisations and the WOSM put out a rather good press release explaining it all (read my post from March here).

One of the points they made was that Scouting was mentioned in the book “Informationsheft Groß Britannien”, which was to be issued to soldiers when the Germans invaded Britain.

I was in the library the other day and noticed a copy of this book, translated into English and now called “Invasion 1940 – The Nazi Invasion Plan for Britain by SS General Walter Schellenberg”. So I looked at the relevant section on Scouting and found that if anyone who had written about the supposed link between the Hitler Youth and Scouting had read this book, then they would have realised that there was no connection!

Here is what the book says (please don’t be offended by the language, it’s as originally written):

The International Boy Scout Movement

This was created in 1907 by the English military officer Lord Baden-Powell, who defended Mafeking in the Boer War. His organisation first limited its activities to England, later expanding over Europe (1911) thanks to propaganda from the British government and finally extended to the whole world. The Boy Scout Movement was established in the Dominions only after pressure from the English authorities.

Lord Baden-Powell is, as World Chief Scout, the leader of the International Boy Scout Movement. Its central headquarters is in London, in the so-called International Bureau which until recently has been managed by a half-Jew, Mr Martin, who was simultaneously the head of the Passport Office. The current manager of the International Bureau, John Wilson, also works at the Passport Office; for the previous eight years he was Chief of Police in Calcutta. It is possible that his successor there is a certain Mr Lunt. The International Bureau builds links between the individual national scout associations. An International Commissioner heads each national association and is responsible for maintaining the link with the International Bureau in London.The International Commissioner is required to draft monthly and quarterly reports on the economic, cultural and political situation of the relevant country and pass them to the International Bureau. In addition, any personal or written contact between groups have to go through him. The individual national Boy Scout sections are structured similarly to the International Bureau.

Although the individual Boy Scout organisations are ostensibly almost entirely devoted to pre-military youth education, the Boy Scout Movement is a disguised instrument of power for British cultural propaganda, and an excellent source of information for the British Intelligence Service. Lord Baden-Powell was run as an agent against Germany during the last war. The dissolution of the Austrian boy scout association has, amongst other things, provided proof of the link between the Boy Scout Movement and the Secret Service.

The English Boy Scout Movement follows a similar model, altered to fit English circumstances, to the German Free ~Youth Movement. Accordingly, there has been close personal contact between members of the German Free Youth Movement and the English Boy Scout Movement.

The 1926 Kanderstag Agreement on Minorities has special significance for international relations since it guarantees the constitution of minority scout groups in every country with a national scout association. The German Youth Front, a gathering of émigré youth leaders, also enjoys close ties with the International Bureau. Furthermore, it is suspected, due to its numerous connections abroad, the International Bureau works for British Intelligence.

Hahahahahahahaha! Well, when I was looking through the records of my District which were from the 1920’s onwards, I never noticed any reference to MI5 or MI6! I think the Nazis got their summery of Scouting a bit wrong (to use an understatement). The other interesting point is that, had Britain been invaded, BP was on the list of 2800 or so people to be rounded up and arrested (and probably shot). Of course BP was in Kenya by this time living out his last days.

It’s just a shame that when information is released, people don’t research things properly before coming out with the thought that Scouting was a right wing paramilitary organisation.

Last word to BP himself writing in 1917 after 3 years of the First World War –

The roots of Scouting have grown among young people of all civilised countries and are developing more each day. It might be thought that if in years to come, a considerable proportion of the future citizens of each nation forms part of this brotherhood, they will be joined by a bond of personal friendship and mutual understanding such as has never existed before, which will help to find a solution to terrible international conflicts.

Well all the schools have broken up for the summer holidays and the pupils / students and MOST of the staff (only 4 weeks until MY holidays – but that’s a rant I don’t want to go into here!) now have six weeks off.

The summer holidays bring an interesting dilemma for Scout Groups and their sections – whether to stay open or close for the holidays. To be honest, we normally close, so the Beavers and Cubs finish tonight and the Scouts are carrying on an extra couple of weeks because of a camp at the beginning of next month. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing for two reasons.

First of all, it’s the school holidays so families er, well, go on holiday! With all the kids scattering to the four corners of the globe, it’s nigh on impossible to know who is going to turn up from one week to another which means a normal programme can’t be run – you tend to end up playing games all night.

Secondly, it gives the Leaders a break. It gives them time off, to go their holidays and recharge the batteries ready for starting back refreshed, renewed and full of enthusiasm in September.

So have  great summer holiday and see you all in September (well actually not entirely true, of course, I’ll be posting here over the hols!).

At the Family Camp we held back in May, as well as taking a load of still pictures – see here, I managed to take some video with my little hand held Flip Video camera. I’ve finally got round to editing it all together and you can see the short version below (YouTube is limited to around 10 minutes).

 

If you want to see the full 40 minutes or so, then click here.

In the short version you can see the Beavers and Cubs making their pirate equipment(!), the BBQ we had on the Saturday evening and a few songs from the campfire.

If you watch the long version you can see the camp site in the rain (just for a change), the Beavers and Cubs making their pirate equipment, the BBQ and finally the full camp fire.

Hope you enjoy.

Last night was my Group’s Annual General Meeting. As well as the ‘formal’ stuff, awards were given out. It was pleasing to see three Beavers get their Chief Scouts Bronze Award and the Cub of the Year Award presented (we really need to have Beaver and Scout awards as well!).

But it was also pleasing to see a A Chief Scout’s Commendation for Good Service given to the Group Treasurer. A Group Treasurer is one of those mythical things that appears when money is needed or is required to be collected!

Seriously, a Group Treasurer is worth their weight in gold. It means that the Leaders don’t have to worry about keeping the Group’s finances in order. And, for example, it means that the Leaders do not have access to the bank account (like in our case).

Our Treasurer has been in the position for seven years now and we’re really lucky to have him. He was recently awarded his 5 years service award, but to get the Chief Scout’s Commendation for Good Service is very impressive. Like our DC said last night, its great when uniformed adults get these awards, but even more special when a non uniformed member gets one. They too show their commitment to Scouting, but in different ways to the uniformed members, and rightly deserve to be honoured for their work!

It’s pleasing to know that one of my ex Scouts will be representing his Country, County, District, Explorer Unit and Scout Group at next year’s World Scout Jamboree in Sweden (no pressure then!).

To attend this exciting event is going to cost him about £2100 or $3145 or kr24,375. Now this is quite a lot of money to pay to go away for a fortnight or so, especially in the current economic climate.

So he is not just getting his parents to ‘cough up’ the amount, but doing various activities to raise the money. He, along with the other 4 Explorers from my District who are going, have done sponsored walks, held a charity stall on the local charity market and done car washes to name but a few. He is also, in the best traditions of ‘Bob a Job’, going to do work for people in return for a donation to the fund (hmmm, the car needs washing I think!).

A couple of weeks ago, a District colleague of mine was at a meeting and was chatting to someone from another county. This person was apparently quite surprised to learn that our Explorers are fundraising to enable them to go to the Jamboree. He, apparently, just wrote a cheque for the full amount for his son to go and couldn’t understand why our Explorer’s parents don’t do the same!

Now apart from the small matter that they probably cannot afford to just write out a cheque for that much, it gives the wrong impression to the Explorer attending the event. As our Explorers have to work for the money, they will appreciate the actual cost of going to the Jamboree and realise that it’s an honour to go and will be a once in a lifetime event (I am, of course, very jealous as I never had the opportunity to go on one!). The Explorer whose Daddy just wrote the cheque will think that this is the normal way to get money for things they want in life. I think our Explorers will have a better understanding of the value of money and that it doesn’t just grow on trees in the future.

Whenever you write a post on a blog or an article on a website, you want people to read it and hope that they find it interesting.
Recently there has been a post on here that has proved to be quite popular.
But not for the reason I would have expected!

Last year I wrote about a local District who were being advised not to parade on St. George’s Day carrying the English and Union flags (read it here). And to illustrate I had pictures of both the flags taken from a site which had pictures of national flags available to download free of charge and without copyright. Sadly this site seems to have disappeared now.

However, due to England being in the World Cup (yawn – sorry can’t be doing with football, cricket is more of my thing!), whenever people are looking for the England flag, the search engines are sending them to me! It’s nice to see the blog’s stats on the up, but sadly people are not stopping to read about Scouting 🙁

Also interesting is the fact that my Group’s site is getting quite a lot of hits on the post I made which includes a video on how to tie a friendship knot (see here). Again it’s the search engines sending people towards it and because people are ‘Scouty’ in their outlook (why else would the be searching how to tie a friendship knot?) they are looking at what my Group gets up to.

However, I’ve had to update the post as people think my Group has made the video and we didn’t! I don’t want to take credit for something that’s not ours!

Luckily I found out who did, so if you look at the video, please take a look at the site of the 3rd Ware Scout Group and tell them how helpful their video is!

Another video message from the Chief Scout, this time thanking the adult volunteers.

On the weekend of 28th – 30th May the Group held its second Family Camp (our first was for our Centenary in 2008). This time we stayed at Barnswood Scout Camp, which is near to Rudyard Lake.

Everyone arrived on the Friday evening (the majority of families having put their tents up the previous nights) and we soon started the weekend’s programme. First was a walk around the campsite as many people had never visited Barnswood before. This was followed by one of Paul’s special wide games! After this chaos subsided, it was time for supper and bed – where did the evening go?

 

Explaining the Wide Game

Saturday morning brought the rain! After cooking breakfast for 105 people (the most we’ve ever had on a camp!), we split into two groups. The Scouts and their parents lit fires and did some pioneering, while the Beavers, Cubs and their parents went down to Rudyard to go on the Lake on Bell Boats. To say it rained a lot would be an understatement and we got wetter from the rain than the lake!

After lunch the Scouts went on the lake and the Beavers and Cubs got themselves painted with pirate faces and learned how to make secret messages, how compasses work and made their own telescopes.

By this time the rain had stopped and we prepared the BBQ. The BBQ was a huge success and we must have cooked well over 150 burgers and sausages!

Then it was time for part 2 of the wide game, a general knowledge quiz with questions for both adults and children (can you name the Titanic’s sister ships and do you know which country Dora the Explorer comes from?) and of course a campfire. The camp fire saw fine performances from a group of the Beavers and one of the Scouts did a solo turn. The rain even held off for most of it and just came on at the end. Then time for supper and bed.

Sunday began a bit more leisurely and after breakfast and flag break we held a Scouts Own and then invested one of the Beavers.

Then it was a few quick games and activities, then packing and tidying, lunch, more packing and tidying, the close of the camp and home!

It was great for me as both Carol and Rachael stayed out for the weekend, although we all stayed in a building – 5 months old is a bit young to camp! Rachael got to wear her Group t-shirt, which Mummy had to put on over her coat as the t-shirt is WAY too big for her! Best of all she slept soundly both nights and loads of Beavers, Cubs and Scouts running around and shouting didn’t wake her!

I came across this video of Scouts of the 2nd Kenton Scout Group, North West London, who set up a help bureau in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War.

It’s really fascinating to watch. Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago the Scout Association released the figures from this year’s census and the reported that the youth membership was up by 3.45% year on year. These figures are very promising and show the greatest year on year increase since 1972!

Then last week my County, Staffordshire, released its figures. Overall across the County the number of youth members are up by 1.8%. Not as good as nationally, but still an increase. My own District, Newcastle, shows an increase of 2.8%, which, again is below the national average, is still an increase. Other Districts show increases above and below the national figure, and, unfortunately, some decreases.

One interesting thing is that all of the Districts in the County (11 of them) show they have young people on waiting lists. In fact, when the census was taken in January, there were 362 young people waiting for places in Beavers, Cubs or Scouts across the County. And that’s kind of sad that there aren’t places available for them. Generally speaking, there are not enough adults in the various Groups to be able to accept these young people. This could be down to actual lack of adult help or just that the Group is ‘full’ and cannot physically accept any more kids.

Hopefully, Groups across the County will be able to recruit new adult members and ensure that these young people who want to join are able to do so without much delay!