ianwilkins

If you have a spare hour, this is pretty fascinating*... https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/ If memory serves, we need people to keep getting educated, this raises living standards, which lowers infant mortality, but that makes parents have less babies, so it looks like the population will top out at some point. * If you like anecdotes and stats.

Long and the short of it is...I enjoy it. Okay, sometimes it's frustrating, annoying, and stressful. I love seeing the going people grow in confidence, being brave, growing up, trying new things and doing the things they love. I'm not gonna lie, I feed off their enthusiasm and joy, I get a kick out of it if you like. There's the camaraderie with the other leaders, and yes, with the young people too. There is something magical about doing things together as a group. There's probably a bit of the Peter Pan in me that still enjoys things that still enjoys things I've done hundreds of times - what's not to like about lighting and sitting round a fire? Why do it over another self selected hobby? I'm not sure. I don't really fancy doing much else, I like the variety of scouting, plus I always feel a bit selfish for my family if I spent money on toys for me, or time doing this that and the other, then again, if I wasn't scouting, that would free up a good chunk of time.

Okay, I think I can see where this all went wrong. I'm pretty sure Win.Mamma meant the *parents* going on a "date night" while their boy and girl kids were at Cubs or Scouts. The rest of this spiral seems to stem from that, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, and yes, us debauched Europeans have also heard of "Jamboree babies". No actual proof of course. Just juicy salacious gossip.

End of last summer camp as we got off the coach to hand the explorers back to the parents a good number decided they wanted to give me a hug along with their thanks for a good camp. No complaints from the parents, it was rather heartwarming I thought. Only time I can recall refusing a hug is when we were both having a swim, and she was in a bikini. Dear reader, you've never seen anyone backpedal in 4ft of water so fast as I did that day, arms raised, and a clear warning "no hugs! No hugs! Red alert! Red alert! No hugs!" Oh, and you keep talking about French kisses as a greeting...wow, I thought you lot were uptight, but apparently not. Or have I mistranslated USA->UK English?

Or, from observations, the upper hammock being tied a little looser than the lower hammock, and/or with heavier contents, the hammocks can get, err, well, a little too close for comfort. I've had explorers triple deck hammocks before, I really don't like it, as the top "bunk" is 6ft off the ground, but apparently they know everything and "it'll be fine". It was, as it happened, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

Do they not want the competition?

[aussie accent]"That's not a knife..." Nice to see we tie ourselves in the same knots on different continents. Definitely not delving into UK knife law, but I've seen the reaction to knife crime and knee jerk responses and rule making. Then that nice Bear Grylls fella comes along and it's all survival this and bushcraft that. I prefer Ray Mears, always trust a tubby survivalist. Anyway...we then have lots of groups buying sheath knives for their kids to use. Cubs love a pointy stick eh? Then The Scout Association get Victorinox to sponsor a badge (don't start me on that), and the poor bushcraft guy that was writing an article for the magazine on making a whistle out of a twig (or something) has to put away the hand-crafted sheath knife he has and whip out a folding Swiss Army Knife for the photos. Meanwhile a small group of my explorers make their own sheath knives and leather sheaths.

Sadly, you get this every once in awhile, a serial complainer, never happy, never satisfied. And yet they carry on turning up like a bad penny. Very wearing. Whoever does tell this mum needs to stick to the facts and leave all emotion out of it. I would put it in writing. I would have thought it would be the chair of the committee that would do it, seeing as it was that committee that pulled the trigger, but I'm talking from across the pond so it might be more complicated than that. Before you do it I would also talk about how you're going to manage the fallout. I would expect more emails from mom to *everyone*, and you need to have a party line to respond *once* with, then say "we don't comment in public on individual cases". Again, I'm in the UK, so I may have not understood some aspect of this. Good luck! Ian

I thought it was a general moral panic in Victorian England about "kids these days" being "too soft", and yes, I guess not ready to defend the empire. Unsurprising really, you take a bunch of city boys off to war in the african veldt and they get their backsides handed to them on a plate by the rufty tufty guys who had grown up there. Apparently one of my ancestors managed to survive a couple of particularly heavy defeats, but anyway... He did very much want scouting to become an international movement for peace, so as well as being pleased we're still lighting fires and playing games in the woods, hiking etc, I'd expect he'd have also liked things that break down the barriers between scouts of different nations. So JOTI, JOTA, Jamborees of all flavours, messengers for peace, all that sort of stuff. And the use of technology to bring people together.

Yup. When I was a lad, my dad was a scout leader, and my mum ran the central stores, but I saw them about as much as any other scout would. Ok, maybe a little more. But they weren't hovering. It was the 80s, so that wasn't a thing. I was in my patrol, and that was that. Now with Explorers sometimes we have leaders kids who are explorers on camp, but we just get on with it. Sometimes we have leaders bringing their younger kids on camp because otherwise they couldn't make it. The kids generally get adopted by a few explorers, and sometimes the parent will take the younger kids away. It's never ideal, but we make it work. One leader ended up being called "dad" by everyone on camp. *But* it's ok if it's just one or two. And they know their place. If we had basically everyone with a parent or two and a little brother/sister...yeah, it'd be, ummm, no, not right.

Must admit, from this distance, merit badge factories sound...not my cup of tea let's say.

Equally, it doesn't say much about girls either, but let's not start eh? Nice list, kind of still works for over the pond too, so I might be pointing my charges and parents at that.

Indeed. If not...what are we all doing here? In the UK, at one time, they estimated that 50% of all boys were in scouting at some point. Seeing as it's been scientifically proven that scouting is good for your mental health, both during and after, it must have made a difference.

Aye, lest we forget, some 28 million scouts + 10 million guides (very rough estimate) puts the scouting population, if we were a country, nicely into the top 40 of world countries. Not bad at all.

Aaah, the thread in which we project our values onto BP. Aye, he'd probably just go "I say, keep it simple, one promise for everyone. The girl guides have managed it" He'd probably be a confirmed environmentalist, if you judge from "leave the world a little better than you found it".

I suppose I don't have a choice (well, I do, I could leave) but as we have mixed scouting in the UK, we just get on with it. If one of mine is misbehaving, they get told. If one of mine needs some comforting words, they get them. It matters not what flavour they are. No comeback so far (touch wood) and I've been doing this leader stuff 20+ years. I guess at any time any one of my previous charges could turn round and say "Ian did this bad thing" but I still don't see what gender has to do with it.

Your guess would concur with my anecdotal experience. In the UK we get a not insignificant number of girls joining scouts that were in girl guiding but it didn't offer them what they wanted, i.e. more outdoor adventure. Interestingly, looking at the numbers, there is a higher proportion of girls as you go through the age ranges. I can't drill down into any details to know if it's that more girls stay the course, once they're in, they're in for "life", or if when kids are small gender stereotyping by parents occurs (guides is for girls, scouts is for boys), but as they grow older girls decide for themselves they want scouting and join. A fellow leader used to do exchange trips with Swedish scouts, they were co-ed and had no qualms (and were mystified by UK leaders qualms) about mixed gender tentage. If I say he had a great time, don't get all hot under the collar, I don't mean it like *that*. It's just he had a good time, it was fun, he met some very nice people etc.

A member of the public collared me after the remembrance sunday parade, and it turned out her daughter had been in explorers about 10 years ago. They told me what a fantastic thing explorers was, how it really helped her daughter with her confidence, gave her another set of friends not from school, made her more outward looking, how the summer camps in Kandersteg and Spain had broadened her horizons and given her some amazing experiences. The spain trip even got a mention in a speech at her wedding (something about rather going on that than a family holiday). Okay, so I wasn't involved in those trips or the unit she was in at the time. But it pure warmed the cockles of my heart. Turns out it's a good thing we do, and we do make a difference.

As usual, not as simple as I first thought. Thanks!

Presumably National don't actually own 100s of small campgrounds, they're all owned by local councils etc no?

Maybe French Canadian? I've only met one branch of French scouts (there's three as I understand it), and theirs was a very pleasing pale blue. I feel slightly foolish, as with a momentary pause for thought I would have realised they weren't BSA uniforms. I *know* that aren't BSA uniforms, well not ones I've seen so...momentary brain fade. Back to the downward V sign. Closest I've got is a description as "an archaic gang symbol used by Japanese girls, Gangstas, and white people posing for photos who'll never be gangstas." Maybe I'll ask my Explorers tonight, but I only ever see them do it when they pose for photos.

And there's the first of many cultural differences, though maybe I'm just old fashioned, but the first picture has a kid front and centre (sic) with a two fingered salute. Maybe global cultural homogenisation has ruled the day, but in th UK of my youth, it was similar to the middle digit salute, but not as severe. I'm probably just not down with da kids. And quite right too. Not that it matters, it's a US blog for US people, but it highlights a point.

I remember grumbles and threats to walk away when the UK moved over to co-ed in scout troops, some left, some stayed to see how it panned out, and it turned out that when what they did at scouts didn't change, girls weren't really a problem, they were just scouts after all. Most of it was fear of change. Of course, there's survivor bias here, maybe there's vast swathes of boys sat in their rooms refusing to join scouts because its got girls in. No way of telling really.

Yup, marketing 101. Most people won't know how much it's shrunk, but it's still large in the public consciousness. We have the same thing over here, at a very local level, one group will say "we've got no leaders, we need some leaders to step up to the plate or we close", sad faces of cubs in the paper. Tumbleweed blows, and you can just hear the sound of a distant bell. Meanwhile the group down the road is turning kids away and have plenty (well, enough anyway) of adults as it's all "yeah woo! look at all the stuff we do and the fun we have!" So yes, sell it as "girls want to join this amazing thing" not "crikey if we don't get someone in soon it's game over man, game over"

Like it. Let's see now... 1) Slightly bittersweet, but we ran our selection for the World Scout Jamboree the weekend before last. Picking 5 from 15 was unpleasant, but the actual weekend was a blast. Lots of the kids remarked (and not just to score points) what a fun weekend they'd had. We've got five darn fine candidates coming to you year after next. Bittersweet because of course there was only room for 5 and we had to turn down some good candidates. Reportedly many have responded to rejection down at first, but then happy for those that are going and promising to support them. Good character showing there. 2) It was supposed to be gale force winds and torrential rain, but it was just "quite windy". 3) There were some scout leaders there who are leading the units to the Jamboree who were genuinely impressed at the very high quality of candidates, and by extension, scouting, in my district. 4) Have started planning for next year's summer camp. Looks like, fingers crossed, we may be camping on actual Brownsea Island at the actual campsite of BP's first experimental camp for the night as part of it.