Nick's Ramblings

I was saddened and annoyed to hear that one of the Groups in our District had their Scout hut broken into just before the weekend and had some tents and lamps stolen.

Luckily for the Group, this is more of an inconvenience than anything else, but that is not point. The running costs of their building will increase (insurance etc.), which means that less money raised for the Group will be spent directly on the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts.

But what annoys me most is that they are targeted by thieves whose sole intention is making a couple of easy quid by selling the stuff down the pub (although I doubt they’d get that much cash).  I guess it doesn’t enter their stupid heads that by focusing on community based groups like the Scouts, they could cause some of them to close and potentially condemn young people to have no activities outside school or hanging around on the streets.

Hopefully the police will catch these ‘naughty people’.

Read more about the break in here.

Tonight I’ve been to meet a potential new Assistant Scout Leader. He got in touch, out of the blue, to say he was interested in helping us, so I invited him for a chat. The interesting thing was that he had been a Leader (and Cub, Scout etc.) in the past. He’d left due to ‘life getting in the way’.

Interestingly, he is the second person to come to us to return to Scouting. One of my old Scouts (urg, that makes me feel old!), has recently returned to the Group, also as an Assistant Scout Leader. He’d been a Leader before, but again had to give up due to his circumstances.

Two other Leaders in the Group have also come to us after significant breaks.

All this is very good for us as it means that years of Scouting experience returns to the Group.

It is good that these people are able to return to Scouting and have done so without any persuasion.

The point of this is that with these returning Leaders, it enables us to provide a better programme for the younger members of the Group and also encourages those parents who have never done any Scouting are more likely to help out in some way.

And that’s the point. Although it is great to get ‘full time’ Leaders, anyone can help out at whatever level they wand and how often they want (‘an hour a week’?). All these adults helping out and bringing their individual skills to the Group, give us a huge pool of talent to enable us to get the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts to access new and interesting activities etc.

What is one of the defining things about the look of a Scout? Their neckerchief / necker / scarf, call it what you will. It shows everyone what Troop / Group / Pack / District etc. we belong to. They can be a single colour or multiple colours, in fact there are many combinations available. The colour(s) of a necker can also signify how old a Group (etc) is. Generally speaking if a necker is a single colour, say scarlet, then that usually indicated that the wearer’s Group is one of the first in their area.

The necker is also practical as well as it can be used, in an emergency, as a triangular bandage. Many Scouts have done their first aid training using their necker as a sling!

We adorn them with badges of various meanings, Group badges for  example and hold them in place by either tying a friendship knot or by using the other iconic item of scout equipment a woggle.

So for me, I have a scarlet necker with two woggles, one is from a District camp from our old District and the other is my Mum’s old Boy Scouts one.

So, what’s colour is yours?

 

Today I went to our District’s St. George’s Day Parade in Newcastle. We had our Beavers, Cubs and Scouts there, but this year we had something extra to add. Drums!

Our Scout Troop used to have a Scout band in the 1930’s to 1950’s, but not a lot is known about it. Indeed, I’m not sure if it just had drums or drums and bugles.
After the Remembrance Day Parade last year, it was decided to set up a small drum corps. Having only got their drums in early February, our Assistant Scout Leader and the 6 Explorers and Scouts have worked extremely hard and created an impressive sound. This was their first public appearance and they brought up the rear of the parade, prompting our Scout Leader to say that it was much easier to march this year as he could actually hear the drums!

After the service, we, as a Group, paraded behind the drums back to Queen’s Gardens to finish the day.

Well done to all the drummers, you have done the Group proud!

More photos can be seen in the Group’s Gallery.

So what did you do for the Royal Wedding? 

My Group held a special indoor street party for all the members of the Group.  The Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Young Leaders and Leaders came dressed up as princes, princesses or in their best party outfits and played silly games and had a party tea. Prizes were given out for the best costumes in each section. I have to admit that as I came dressed ‘only’ in my uniform (I was investing some new Leaders), I felt a little underdressed!

We also invested two new Assistant Beaver Leaders into the Group.

At the end of the evening, I was suddenly asked to lead the Group in a toast to the happy couple, which caused me a little moment of panic, as I couldn’t remember what to do! Luckily, it came back to me and the evening was rounded off with a toast.

We all had a lovely evening, and even if the whole world is in a financial mess and things are going to pot, it’s events like these that make you proud to be British!!

If you want to see more photos, they are in the Group’s Gallery.

Following on from the launch of the My Body, My Choice sexual health programme last week, a few thoughts come to mind.

I have been reading a lot of the press coverage and the vast majority has been extremely positive. I had expected reactionary headlines about Beavers being shown how to use condoms and that kind of thing, but the press have been generally positive and sensible about the whole thing.
In fact this was due to a lot of planning by the SA’s press people to make sure that the correct information was got across to the press and that the silliness was minimal. In fact the Assistant Director of Marketing and Communication, Simon Carter, has written an article about it here.

We are very lucky that we have direct access to the ‘high ups’ in the SA. Wayne Bulpitt, the UK Chief Commissioner, is happy to answer questions put to him on the Escouts website. These range from the serious to the trivial and silly, but he always takes the time to reply, which is highly commendable and useful. To be able to put questions to a ‘high up’ in an organisation is very useful, especially for those of us at the ‘coal face’.
Unfortunately, a question was put to Wayne about the My Body, My Choice programme which wasn’t too friendly or polite. I think Wayne’s answer was very restrained and it put the point across well. But the thing is that he doesn’t have to do this and putting questions that are deliberately confronting and, indeed, rude, can only be counterproductive. He can turn round and decide to stop answering. Of course the questioner also forgot that ‘ A Scout is Friendly and Considerate’.

My friend Lotta, from Sweden, made a comment to me about the necessity of this programme and it reminded me that this kind of programme / information is not limited to UK Scouting. In fact she had a hand in writing the handbook for the Swedish Challenger Scouts (15 – 19 year olds) last year and she was kind enough to send me an electronic copy (much better for Google Translate!).
In the book, Våga Utmana / Dare to Challenge (oh please be the correct title and translation!), there is a whole section on relationships. Not just sexual ones, but with everyone and how these affect you and others.
Now when I initially saw this, I thought that there was no way that anything like this would appear in this country – we are British after all and we don’t do things like that, unlike these Continental chaps (I am being extremely stereotypical here!).
But we do and it’s here! Hopefully the Explorers who take part in the programme will be better informed and will be able to make the right choices for them.

As the launch of the programme made the media in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA, to name a few, I wonder whether the other national Scout organisations across the world have similar programmes in place?

From the WOSM’s website –

The Boy Scouts of Libya, around 3,500 in the town of Benghazi, are organized, and able. They find themselves called upon to take on tasks that many would expect of the state – or at least more professional, trained volunteers.

That kind of puts all our little ‘problems’ and ‘grumbles’ into perspective!

Yesterday, the Scout Association launched the My Body, My Choice programme which is about sexual health.

This does not mean that Beavers will be coming home with handfuls of condoms! This programme is aimed at the Explorer Scouts, and it’s worth pointing out that it’s not a compulsory part of the programme, but is there to be used at the Leaders discretion.

The depressing thing is that there is a need for the Scout Association to have such a programme in the first place. Obviously, Explorers are at the age when they becoming interested in sex and potentially sexually active, but it is not a good thing to find out that –

Health Protection Agency figures show that the UK has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections in Europe, with under-25s the most likely group to contract an STI.

Not good. Hopefully, the information contained in this programme will help these Explorers / young adults make informed choices and not end up with STIs or pregnant. I suppose it’s just a shame that it will only reach a small proportion of 14 – 18 year olds in the UK.

Ever since my Scout Group has had its own website, we’ve put photos on it to show what we get up to. This is a great way to show potential new members what activities we do and, of course, the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts like to see pictures of themselves doing stuff. If this is done in the correct way and according to Scout Association guidelines, then it is a fantastic resource.

Initially when we had a straight HTML website, putting photos on the site require the photos to be resized, thumbnails to be created, the pictures inserted into a table and the pictures and thumbnails to be uploaded to the correct places (see here for an example on the archived version of our website). To be honest, it was a pain and time consuming! So once I changed the site to a content management system, I was looking for a different way of showing the photos.

I found a nice hosted site called Fotopic which had a number of options for photo galleries. I chose the free one! It worked well for us since 2005 (I hadn’t realised I’d used it for so long!) and I even changed to a paid for account as that gave more features and removed the adverts (some of which could, on occasions, be unsuitable for a Scout’s site!).

However, three weeks ago it just vanished. And there has been no official word as to why, although reading some online forums (especially the railway ones – a lot of railway photographers used Fotopic), I could get some idea of what was happening as Fotopic’s former owner has been very helpful in trying to keep people updated. But it appears that today the company owning Fotopic has gone into administration.

Bearing in mind that it’s never a good sign if a website just vanishes overnight, I started to look at alternatives. One possibility was to set up a gallery on the Group’s own webspace, but I couldn’t find a suitable package I liked. Also, I don’t think there wouldn’t be enough room on the Group’s webspace for all the photos. So I looked at commercial and free providers and as with most things, there were pros and cons with each. Eventually the one I liked the most was SmugMug (even though is has a very odd name if you ask me). It has features and looks that I like, and I can even add videos to the site which may remove the need to use YouTube (got to check this one out though).

Luckily I didn’t lose any photos so I’m in the process of populating the site with photos, but it is taking some time! This means that it will be a while before I can all the photos back up, but at least nothing is lost.

So here it is, our new Photo Gallery. Please take a look!

Scouts are well know for their eagerness to camp in odd places, so as I sit on the train returning home from a weekend in London, let me give you four interesting places where Scouts can stay, and indeed, camp in London.

Firstly are the two most obvious ones, Baden Powell House and Gilwell Park. BP House is run as a youth hostel and is convenient for central London. Gilwell, is of course, the ‘home’ of Scouting and is an excellent place to camp.

The other two are, perhaps, a little less obvious.

HMS Belfast is a World War 2 Cruiser which is moored on the Thames near to Tower Bridge and is open to the public as a museum ship. As part of their educational department, school groups and youth organisations can spend a night aboard the ship. Unfortunately, you can’t sleep in a hammock, but instead in a 1950’s mess deck. I took our Scouts there some years ago and it certainly is a talking point for the Scouts (and the Leaders of course) to say they spent the night on a WW2 ship in the middle of London.

The last place to stay is probably the least known. In the Bounds Green area of North London is Scout Park camp site. And yes, it is a camp site! If you are not from the area, you wouldn’t know it was there! I only found out about it because I have relatives who live close by. Staying there is an odd experience as you know you’re in the middle of suburban London, but the site itself gives the impression of being on a site in the country. In fact, the only give away is the low flying aircraft on their way to or from Heathrow or the sound of the traffic in the rush hour! It’s a really great place to stay and it is really close to Bounds Green Tube Station, so you can have easy access to the centre of London.

So if you’re thinking of going to London check out these places to stay.

The Scout Association has just launched a campaign regarding the raising of the rent paid by Scout Groups for the land that their Scout Huts are built upon.

Many Group’s own their own building, and have done for many years, but the land they are built upon is often owned by their local council (County, District, Borough – you get the idea).Often these were built many years ago and the ground they stand upon is leased for a peppercorn rent or on terms that are generally below the ‘commercial rate’.

However, times are tough and councils are having their budgets cut and are they having to look at ways of increasing their incomes. to do this they are looking at increasing the payments Scout Groups (and other youth organisations, including the Guides) are having to make. An extreme example of this is one quoted on the BBC –

In a further two cases cited by the Scout Association the 23rd Camberwell Group in south London faced a £7,000 bill this year having previously rented school rooms for free, and the 9th Watford Group’s rent was going up from a nominal £7.50 to £650.

To go from nothing to £7000 pa is appalling. And while to go from £7.50 to £650 pa might not sound much, if you’re a Group without much income, it is a lot of money to find all of a sudden.

 

As usual the councils are targeting the wrong areas. Scouting (and again many other youth organisations) does not receive money directly from government, either locally or nationally. It does receive grants and awards, but these are always awarded on the merit of the individual project and Scouting gets ‘charity discounts’ on their land rental.

About 10 – 11% of the UK’s 60 or so million population are under 18 – I am not using accurate figures here, just approximates. Of that 10 – 11%, over 1 million young people are in Scouting or Guiding in the UK. Quite what that figure would be if the Boys Brigade, Girls Brigade, Baden Powell Scouts, Youth Clubs, Cadets etc. were taken into account, I don’t know. But all these organisations are providing things for young people to do without a direct cost to the taxpayer.

In the worst case scenario, if a Group is forced to close or move away from their building, what will happen to it? Will the landlord (council) be able to lease the land at commercial rates or will it stand empty and become derelict? Who knows, but I would imagine that it would not be reused in the immediate future.

Also, what will happen to the young people if a Group closes? They won’t learn new skills or meet up with friends from different schools and could end up on the streets causing a nuisance of themselves, which would cost, in the long term, more money to put right! So this does seem like a policy of ‘penny wise pound foolish’.

My Group is lucky as this will not affect us, but I know of a number of Groups in our area which this could affect, so please visit the Don’t Raise Our Rents website and sign the petition.