ianwilkins

Assuming that "blaze" is USA speak for "dayglow", some wear those over here too, but go one step further and have a hi-vis reflective border sewn on to it. Yes, agreed, they certainly stand out! And useful when you are out and about in the dark.

If you went co-ed you should keep the necker so that girls can use them as headscarves and headbands to keep their mane of hair out of their eyes whilst doing stuff. Also from the UK, some are quite happy wearing the necker when out and about, some are not, last time I had to give out grief about it*, they left shortly after, despite seemingly enjoying what we did. Pure peer pressure. Ho hum, can't win 'em all. * Day trip to the London 2012 Olympic Park. We had 20 UK Explorers, and 20 Portuguese Pioneiros, I told them they'd get a rocket up them if I caught them without a necker on.

Well, for some perspective, if you've got time on your hands, here's a thread from escouts, UK equivalent of scouter.com: https://www.escouts.org.uk/forum/threads/1600-Is-the-Scout-Association-right-to-force-all-groups-to-accept-girls-from-2007 Sadly it doesn't go back much further but I thought it might be useful/interesting. Ian

Next time....there's always a next time isn't there? We'd move the tents halfway through the week. Sadly that camp ground was so small we couldn't. It looked big enough on the recce, but that was before we knew how many were coming. My heart sank when we took down the tents at the end of the week to see a string of yellow rectangles. Ho hum, a month and it would have recovered. Another reason for encouraging hammock camping. We do try and leave no trace, and my litter sweeps are infamous.

Our hut (it's not unusual in the UK for each group to have their own hut, I'd guess probably 75% have their own) has hoops in the walls at about 5ft high, good for stringing rope across an hanging smaller tents from, it also has a decent high ceiling so we can hang bigger tents from ceiling beams. Of course, when the cubs are in the next day at 6pm, it still doesn't give you much time for things to dry.

Can I ask, as an interloper from across the pond...what is meant by "outfitter quality"? Talking of matching tents, we had a stroke of good fortune a couple of years back. An ex-leader got back in touch with us, his company were having a global sales conference, and decided it was cheaper/better to put all of the visitors in tents, as the location had loads of green fields and it was summer. As the event was themed, they had some custom flysheets made for some standard two man tents, put one person in each, with a sleeping bag and headtorch. They had all the tents put up in rows on site by

I've seen them up at a few camps. Seems to be a few kids try it once or twice and give up, some will be determined to master it and you'll see them on there all weekend. Quite telling really. Yes, needs to be risk assessed, set up properly, and they need to understand how to use it safely. Having your scout stave with you makes it easier! Ian

Don't worry, I get that too. I mean, I've seen Baywatch and The Dukes of Hazard so...[yes, I'm being flippant] Ian

The number of boys involved in scouting in the UK has increased by 11% since 2007. Total youth membership up by 19%. Though back in 1997 (I think) they allowed co-ed scouting, I think it's safe to say that to start with it was only groups that had the odd girl that really really really wanted to join that went co-ed. I can look at my local census back to 2002, so 5 years after all sections "went co-ed", optionally - there were 11 female young people, out of 497 total, and 5 of those were in Ventures (of 19 total), that had been co-ed since 1976. Only 3 sections out of 23 had gone co-ed. So mu

Well, there's 78,000 scouters in the UK doing exactly that. When we switched to fully co-ed, there wasn't a meteoric rise in independent boys only scouting organisations. Though I'm not sure that's a valid comparison. But, I'll freely admit, and I'm realising more and more, we're two countries with a moderately common language, but some sizeable differences in culture, so I'm definitely not going to tell you what's best, as if anyone could really know.

It doesn't matter who you let through the door, you're either appealing as a thing to do, or you're not. If you're appealing to more and more kids every year, they you're growing, otherwise you're shrinking. Yes, I'm saying the obvious. I believe the gender thing in the UK had a short term effect on numbers, but I believe the programme changes (and other things) have made it more appealing. No way to prove it either way of course, unless we can access alternate universes. Going back to the original post, you have someone who is enthusiastic about boy scouting, who wants to do it, not being

Even if you're down by 25 points, sometimes you can come back for an overtime win.

Is that all because of "the gay issue"? Are you saying "scouts isn't thriving"? Or "scouts isn't thriving because of "the gay issue"? And 4000 out of what? 4500? 8000? 40,000? 400,000?

I thought the whole premise* of Scouting was learning by doing? * Okay, maybe not the whole premise.

Sorry but I believe your 2004 number is not accurate. I have a spreadsheet of the annual census numbers from someone who got the numbers from the annual HQ report, I have no reason to believe they are inaccurate. I've got a low figure of 446,000 for all members (357,556 youth members) in 2005. It appears the major decline was in the years between 1994 and 2002, roughly 5% per year, for the years I have figures for. So three years after they made co-ed optional, and 18 years after girls were first allowed in Ventures, the numbers started a pronounced decline. I guess you certainly could say

Indeed. The UK will be selecting our participants for 2019 towards the tail end of this year.

I don't know if it's the usual thing for other contingents from other countries, but I know it's pretty standard for the UK contingent. One of mine that went said it was one of the highlights of her Jamboree last year. I mean, there you are, 14 or 15, and from a fairly normal bit of the UK, and you are dropped into a Japanese family's life for 4 or so days. Extraordinary. Anyhoo... http://ukcontingent.co.uk/ho-ho/ One of the best parts of any international experience is a home stay, as it provides the opportunity to live with a family and experience their day to day life and see their

That depends. Are they very close in what they do? I know in the UK Girl Guiding, like Scouting, is a broad church. Some do the chocolate badge (no really, no, the badge isn't chocolate) every year, some would put many scout troops to shame with their outdoor programme. There was some wailing from some leaders, I guess the HQs had a few conversations. There are always the grumble from guide leaders about scouts "stealing their girls". Was it the end of GirlGuiding? No. It's actually bigger than scouting in the UK, but I don't have membership numbers to know if they are growing or shrinking. Th

So you'd say you have no common bond with other scouts from across the world? If you and yours from BSA and me and mine from UK scouts shared a campout, and some of mine were female, say, or transgender, to stick to the topic in hand, would you not consider us your fellow scouts?

As far as I can see, from across the pond, the USA turns left or right either once every 4 years or 8 years. Actually I guess in reality there's vast swathes of people that are either left or right at any given time, and it's only a much smaller percentage that vacillate between sides that decide the outcome (to be fair, that's undoubtedly the same in the UK) of elections. I guess somehow, for scouting to thrive across all of the USA, it needs to be all things to all people. It needs to be liberal where the "market" are liberal, and conservative where the the locals are so. Yet without los

Of course, if CambridgeSkip's scouts used normal proper correct chocolate, it would be a world away from any so called "chocolate" they have in the USA. [ducks and covers] I'm joking about my denigration of US chocolate of course, but they nub of truth remains, the UK chocolate and US chocolate I believe are somewhat different beasts. Sometimes people bring back Hershey's kisses or Reeses cups from their holidays and bring them into work, and they are pretty unpalatable to me. And I know at least one expat in the US who pines for Cadburys.

I guess they figured as they weren't paying for the electricity, the consumption was irrelevant. Little realising that the police have heat seeking cameras on their helicopters, and do the occasional flyover to check the roof heat signatures. They light up like a beacon. Another advantage of basement setup I guess. Basements aren't generally a thing in the UK though. Now, fish, and water, and greens, that reminds me. I'm sure I've seen something with lettuce being grown floating on expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) "floats" in ponds or tanks. Though as I guess the roots dangle in the water,

The people who lived in our house before us tried that in the loft, and were selling the "greens" to the slacker students from the local college. They bypassed the electricity meter, and our loft has about 20 double power points and a tap in it. They got about 3 years jail time when they got caught.

Yes. Unless you're looking for a stick to beat someone with.

They're only in girl scouts for a few years, and will probably only get one shot at marching at an inauguration. Why deny them that? One assumes as Girl Scouts are non-partisan that they aren't marching for the president's benefit, but for patriotic and civic reasons. The screeching of the easily offended is grating. Berating people who've come to a decision based on different motives.