ianwilkins

Looking at the website... http://www.lanternfestnys.com/ I'd have no hesitation about doing a cub outing there. It looks fantastic. Looks like LEDs inside paper/wood models that don't fly. It doesn't say anything about mass releases of flaming sky lanterns. So from what I can see, no problem. I can see why, if they did do a release, you'd be more hesitant about going. There's been lots of negative stories over this side of the pond about damage to wildlife and livestock, and setting barns and building on fire etc. They were basically a fad whose time has passed. In my opinion, lanterns are not much more than litter once you let them go.

One of mine came up to me one evening and said "Ian, I think I've done my Queen's Scout Award" (roughly Eagle equivalent, i.e. highest award in UK scouting), I asked them to prove it, the next week two of us leaders sat down with them and their evidence and went through it. Sure enough, it was all there, and then some. E.g. Undertake a 5 day and 4 night residential project in an unfamiliar environment with people who are not known to you. They went to Svalbard for a month and did some glacier measuring or something. All was good, we applied and the award was approved without a hitch. No surprises. They were awarded their badge locally at a district camp, we were proud. Every year the Queen's Scout Awardees have a parade and day of celebration at Windsor Castle. They had a couple of extra tickets, and invited me and the other leader along. It was a grand day out. We had lunch with the parents where they were embarrassing effusive in their praise. I tried to demur as much as I could, I'm sure we hadn't helped that much. All the Queens Scouts awarded that year paraded in the quad at the castle. There was a Scout marching band, an army marching band (the ones with the big fur hats and red coats), the chief scout, a descendent of Baden-Powell, and to top it off the sun was shining. Windsor is basically full of people in scout uniform, it's a very fine occasion. She's now an Explorer Scout leader in another part of country. So yeah, I guess we must have made some sort of lasting impression on her. Then there's the times when parents I know not to be embellishers of the truth simply say "yeah, they reckon it was the best camp they've ever been on." Then there's the time you talk to the parent of the special needs kid when they pick up their kid from camp, and tell them camp went fine for their kid, all the other explorers looked after him....and they burst into tears of relief. Oh, and the kids on camp that come up to you and ask "what can I do to help?". So rare, and so welcome! And yes, the nights round the fire, the songs, the jokes, the stupid things that happen. Probably the bizarrest thing I really enjoy is driving the minibus to camp, and chatting to whichever two are in the front with me. Them choosing tunes off my Mp3 player, people singing along to the good ones. So many good times. When you reflect and think, how lucky am I to be able to do this.

Across the other side of the pond, but money is money. Our Explorers pay once a term, so three times a year. That pays for - weekly activities* - central insurance/admin fees - equipment - rent of meeting location * Though sometimes, to stretch the money further, if we're doing something fun and expensive we might ask for £5 ($6) or something to go towards it. When we have weekend camps, we don't have them monthly, more like 4 or 5 a year, the Explorers generally pay what it costs for the camp. So that can range from £15 ($16ish) for somewhere cheap + food, to £60 ($65ish) for something with more bells and whistles. Sometimes we have subsidised weekend camps out of general unit funds. Our summer camp is generally £200-£250 ($250-$310) but this year we're flying somewhere, so it's £450 ($560). We're subsidising that out of unit funds, as we have funds available. Leaders generally pay nothing, except this year they're paying for their flights, otherwise pushing that cost onto the explorers would make it too expensive for them. Generally we budget for camps on what they cost, variable costs + share of fixed costs + 10% contingency. We also do some fundraising during the year to help buy new equipment or subsidise activities or camps, and support those that can't otherwise afford the fees for meetings or camps. Yes, I also feel disquiet when I see a big bank balance. I reckon you need enough if you're suddenly in a hole, but generally I feel you should be spending most money on the people that put the money in. " inconstant practices in what we charge individuals" rings alarm bells too! What do you mean?

I guess, like Europe, some parts of the USA are more flammable than others. In the UK it's only really in high summer (and sometimes not even then) we need to be a bit careful with fire circles, fire buckets on standby, and not building a huge pyre. When we went to Portugal, their "campfire" was a 9" square hole in the sand, and when the flames came too far out the top, that was too big. But for them a stray spark could cause real and widespread havoc. Their wood chopping skills were limited to not much more than kindling. When they came to us the following year, we were in 400 acres of forest (nearby to Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood as it happened), and the campsite were happy for any and all deadwood to be burnt, they threw themselves into saw and axe-work with much gusto, too much gusto at times if I'm honest. Our main fire each night was probably in a pit 4ft square. They absolutely loved it. We didn't mind either. And the night they cooked their dinner on open fires themselves...yes, bread and butter to some, but a completely new experience for them. Oh happy days. Then for a while we had a lad from Australia, a very dry part of Australia. We were at the local campsite, and had a fire, of course. He was alarmed at the lack of two full big water drums to tip over the fire. When it had burnt down to embers, and we said our goodnights, he was horrified that we were going to just leave it. But it was embers, the grass was wet with dew, everything bar the fire was stereotypically British levels of damp. It would be odd for us to put it out. We might have chucked a bucket of water on it just to calm him down, but he was still a bit on edge about it. But reading up on the scale of forest fires in Aus, he was rightly trained for his normal environment.

I don't know, maybe click on the green arrow and I'll let you know if I get a notification. You can go and look at your profile and under "reputation" it'll show you all the posts that people have up or down ticked. If you hover over any user's name in green in the grey stripe between the posts, you get a pop up that shows that user's reputation, amongst other things. I suppose it's supposed to show it the user is a greenhorn or if they write a lot of stuff people (dis)agree with. My most popular post is one about an accidental biker/scout camp in the 80s, and I've only ever had one down vote.

Wasn't Fleagle in The Banana Splits? Oooh, my memory, I'm sure we had silly patrol names on summer camp, but I can't remember a single one. I mean, apart from when we had flags for the best patrol and worst patrol, the best had a crown on, and the worst a pair of Y fronts. I think one patrol got it several days in a row and just renamed themselves the pants patrol. Losing something in translation but I couldn't ruin the alliteration.

Well, at the DNA level... Actually, I was watching QI the other day (esoteric UK "quiz"/comedy panel show), and they were talking about some rule of averages, or the rule of normal, or some other name that I've forgotten (fat lot of good that did then!). In australia the office of statistics worked out the "average Australian" from their stats, and discovered there wasn't a single australian that was their definition of average. So really, when you look at it, we do have commonality at some level with everyone, but we are all different. To quote The Life of Brian Brian: "You're all individuals!" [Lone voice]"I'm not" Ian

At the end of the day, BSA, BPSA, TrailLife, if they want to grow (or stop shrinking), they need to appeal to more people, be appealing. To the parents who need to think it's something they want their kids involved in, and to the kids, to enjoy doing it. Everything else is noise.

Hi F-P, It's not really a league, the intention is to go once as a troop/pack/unit/whatever and record the scores on that night rather than over a series of nights. Our thinking being that most trips bowling with scouts are a one off treat, not many around the world that go regularly. I shall expect your boys to be near the top of that results table. Ian

Except the waiting lists are almost certainly a product of lack of leaders. I know of groups that could open Beavers Cubs and Scouts tomorrow, just from their waiting list, if they could magic the 6-9 leaders it would require. On your second points, I agree entirely. The UK Beaver motto is "fun and friendship". Seems about right. Learning by doing. Learning as an adjunct to having fun with your mates. Ian

Trust me, it's fairly paranoid in the UK too. Or rather, it is bad enough that it definitely puts some volunteers off. I still get stuff like "been away playing with the little children" every so often. Though I think it's better than it used to be. We definitely had a bad patch, well, probably tying in with the falling numbers. I think the parents are fairly happy as we've put quite a lot of effort into making sure parents know about police background checks and our child protection policies. And their kids are there having fun so it's easy to think the best. Ian

I've not got much to add to CambiidgeSkip's posts, but that's not going to stop me... I do have census figures in a spreadsheet for the UK, sadly, I only have total figures up to 1994, then section figures from 1997, then detailed figures, including gender split, from 2007. His numbers are pretty spot on, numbers were dropping all through the 90s, and turned around in the early 2000's. Moreover, looking at the gender splits since 2007, the growth hasn't been in just girls joining, at the expense of the boys, there are more boys involved in all sections, as well as more girls. The rate of growth in boys numbers is slower than the rate of growth in girls numbers, hence girls are now a greater proportion of the total. There was a not insignificant drop in numbers in 1991 (2.3%) but the census is taken in January, so I can only surmise that everyone was told "we're going co-ed next year" in 1990 and a number of leaders walked away (despite it not being obligatory, though, knowing how these things go, it probably ended up sounding obligatory to some, in some places), meaning their sections closed. Numbers stabilised after that, before starting to drop again from 1994 onwards. It wasn't just the older sections where the numbers were dropping, every section was losing members year on year. Roughly 5%. So it wasn't even that I was still a Venture Scout around 1991, but my dad was a scout leader, and I'm pretty sure a few of the scout leaders in our group were dead set against girls joining, and either would have left, or did leave, even if their troop didn't go co-ed, even the fact it was being done meant that they felt they weren't on the same bus, going to the same place on the same journey, no longer part of an association they wanted to be part of. My experience chimes with CambridgeSkips too. My opinions and guesswork follow: There was probably a lot of negative publicity around the gender thing, the conservative press I would imagine would have majored on how wrong it was that boys didn't have their own space, how scouts would be flower pressing and girl things, the liberal press would have been giving examples where girls wouldn't be let into their local group. So both sets of parents would have been thinking "scouts is not for my child". I don't know what the effect of the uniform was, I know for scouts the trousers were awful (terylene anyone?), berets, cubs had caps, shorts, grey socks with garters, beavers an awful baggy grey tracksuit. BUT There are still groups of other non Scout Association scouts that still wear a very traditional uniform, and seem to be doing ok, to me they look like historical re-enactment groups, but the kids seem to be enjoying themselves, so who am I to judge. I think it just fell, well, maybe not out of fashion, but no longer the thing you just did, that all your mates did, that was almost automatic, we no longer had that place in the national consciousness as something do to. I know when the sections changed in 2002, there was a heck of a ruckus, there were many scout leaders very angry that their competent 15 year olds were being taken away from them. Some would say that it destroyed the patrol system, as in the UK our patrols were of mixed ages, so the PL and APL tended to be the oldest (15), and the youngest might be just up from cubs (10). At the time I was a Venture Scout leader, and we were doing ok, well, in fact, but we were increasingly the odd ones out. I think, though I don't have the numbers to prove it, that scouts was losing a lot of kids at around 14, when they became PLs and just didn't like it, voted with their feet. Actually, looking at the numbers, the scout section was the first to move from negative to positive growth, there was a blip when explorers started, -8%, but in theory in a section of 11-15 year olds, if the age spread was even, they should have lost more like 20%. I think the clincher was that they did a really good job on the new programme, leaders knew what sort of thing to be doing, what badges it led to, made it easier to volunteer. They also did a lot of positive publicity, they started using the media to their advantage, and they just started looking more modern and outward facing, no longer hiding in the hut, but scouts and proud. It started with getting a moderately famous person to be chief scout (no, the one before Bear, well he was famous in the UK ok?) which gave a voice to PR output. It was ever a lack of adult leaders that limited numbers, but whereas in the past it seems it was the "old guard" finally giving up and their not full sections closing, now there's waiting lists in the younger sections, and parents wanting their kids to join. The girl thing is almost a red herring, we're just providing something that young people want, some of those young people are girls. Ian

And just to say, [trumpet fanfare] registration is now open.

We had one try and make Caramel Peas. The little that made it out the pot was ok I guess, if you like caramel shot through with peas, but I think we had to throw the pot away, or clean it with a wire brush fitted to a drill.

I did spend a bit of time looking at this, and sadly a bit of money, before finding I'd got the "wrong" stuff. Well, I was so close, we had some 3-4" diameter spars, far too smooth. 12mm hemp rope was a bit too thick and stiff for that diameter wood. The length you cut the rope also depends on generally what size wood you'll be using. The answer is then, it depends. Sorry for mixing metric and imperial. Hope that's not too scary. What I did enjoy, and some of my explorers enjoyed, was learning the sailmaker's whipping, and whipping all the ends properly. One of those oddly satisfying skills. If you get into it, I'm told the John Thurman books are the very thing. Here's one... http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/pionprinciples.pdf I found a really good resource on the irish scouts webpage too. That was a while ago though. Hmm, this looks like links to it, http://www.pioneeringprojects.org/resources/

Yes, maybe parents deciding their kids should join scouts and guides are better at handing on mental resilience or something? Here's another source if you're having trouble accessing the first one... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-37923133

Ok, it's a UK study, and it appears to be a strong correlation rather than a causal link but...it appears, if you didn't know already, that we do a good thing... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2112209-scouts-and-guides-grow-up-to-have-better-mental-health-at-age-50/

What? You have trouble getting strike anywhere matches? You mean the likes of which Clint Eastwood would strike off his stubble in cowboy films? (Yeah, may be misremembering a little here, but he was hard as nails so...) Well there's a thing. We can get them anywhere that sells cigarettes, brand of Swan Vestas usually. Can light them off most hard rough surfaces. Brick, some rock, metal. Of course, when we got them as scouts on summer camp, you went around trying to find things that you could light them on, until you had none left to light the fire. Oops.

For the benefit of this transatlantic brother scout, what is an Ordeal? What happens at an Ordeal? Is it actually an ordeal?

Probably around early/mid November. Cost is $8 for as many teams as you like, and the optional badges are $2 each, with $6 for postage (for how ever many you order). That's US dollars by the way, rather than Australian or Canadian.

Hi all, hope this doesn't transgress some advertising rule I'm not aware of... I'm running Jambowlree again this year, and it would be great to get some more teams involved. Jambowlree is the (unofficial) World Scout Ten Pin Bowling Competition, Dec '16 - May '17. Entries will be open in November. It's open to all sections from any country. Last year we had entries from Australia, Canada, USA, Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Cyprus, Qatar, South Africa, and New Zealand. So you'll definitely be taking part in an international competition! Premise is simple... Go bowling Enter your scores Wait See if you've won Ok, it's a tiny bit more complicated than that, like there's a small entry fee, but not much. And there's a blanket badge. Of course. http://www.jambowlree.org http://facebook.com/jambowlree http://twitter.com/jambowlree Ian

I'm getting the meat sweats just reading that list. And it does look like fun. Ian

Good thinking. Draw their fire onto the sternest defences. As it happens, the award of merit is a gold coloured emblem on a green ribbon worn around the neck http://www.harboroughscouts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/merit-awardcropped.jpg You also get a badge, with an embroidered knot on it, to sew on above the right breast. I'd imagine that wearing the ribbon with an adult BSA uniform would definitely catch the eye of the badge police, and the curious. I could tie them up for ages banging on about my "good deeds" while everyone else sneaked past.

Could they, he said, listening out carefully for the badge police, just wear the foreign award badge on their BSA uniform? I know in the UK leaders are entitled to wear the Queen's Scout Award on their adult uniform. I'm sure there's a suitable place it could go, like on the right breast where it's supposed to go on the UK uniform. After all, they're entitled to wear it. They haven't earnt Eagle so can't wear it, seems fair enough. An interesting question though. I have an Award of Merit knot badge, awarded for outstanding service to scouting, if I moved to the states and volunteered...would I wear it? I'm not sure. People would naturally ask what it was, and it seems a bit showing off to just drop "oh it's my UK award for outstanding service to scouting". Not that I'm not proud of it, and I'm touched that people thought I deserved it. If I did wear it...and the badge police told me to take it off...then there might be a full and frank discussion.

Aaaah, Baden-Powell, he had some wise words: “A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.†“A boy is not a sitting-down animal.†“The most important object in Boy Scout training is to educate, not instruct.†“There is no teaching to compare with example.†“We do not want to make Scout training too soft.â€