Cambridgeskip

So I'll take that as something that happens but not everywhere.... The instructor was properly eccentric. As well as shooting he had an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars including weird stuff about light sabres. More interestingly he is also Buddhist and when one of our younger scouts was really struggling to hit anything and getting quite frustrated he used some basic meditation breathing exercises to calm him down, get him to focus and then he hit the target straight away. Very interesting young man.

So.... my band of merry men and women were on camp at Gilwell Park over the weekend. Saturday morning some of them were on air rifle shooting and were instructed by a chap from California. Among his various eccentric ways he had names for all the rifles. All were female because, in his words, they are both beautiful and dangerous! Just curious, is this a truly American thing? We've done shooting before and never encountered named rifles.... The rifles were call Elizabeth, Mary, Georgina and Juliette.

I have some experience of this. I was an assistant cub scout leader aged 19, cub scout leader aged 24 and scout leader aged 31 and handed the cubs onto a 19 year old at that point, I'm 38 now. I've personally never had any of the comments about what is a young man doing hanging around kids. If anything here things are turned on their heads. It's older men who tend to get the comments like that made about them. For younger adult leaders, if you get any comments, it's about being young, not a parent, inexperienced, how do you know how to deal with kids?etc. Late 30s is probably the easiest time. Too old to get those comments, too young to be considered a weirdo! In all seriousness though it is very rare to get any sort of a hard time. Scouters are mostly held in quite high regard. When I took over cubs aged 24 all it mean was it was easier to get parents to get involved! The 19 year old I handed over too got a more difficult time at first but she soon got the hang of handling the parents. I guess though that with the kids we do get a self selecting group, both boys and girls, almost by definition those that turn up are the children of parents who trust us. In terms of dealing with situations where you may feel awkward being a man with a girl the trick is to be absolutely open about what you are doing and why. So for example I remember an instance of an 10 year old girl cub falling on a gravel path, her t-shirt riding up and taking all the skin off her back. It was quite unpleasant. In terms of treating that we asked her to go into the mess tent to take her t-shirt and bra off and lie down on her front (it was a real mess and quite necessary) and to shout when she was ready, I then went it with a female leader to clean her up and dress the wounds before we left and left her to get dressed again. It's the kind of situation that I can imagine a man feeling quite awkward dealing with any situation where a girl needs to get undressed to administer first aid and I will confess that I am quite glad that we had a female leader with us to help out. In theory we don't have to have a female adult to take girls away on camp. In practice most groups will make sure they do, even if it's just borrowing a mum to come along. From a personal point of view I would go to a staffed campsite without a female adult, ie where there would be a woman on hand if necessary. I wouldn't go somewhere more remote though without.

Interesting to hear how it's gone elsewhere! We have a twin group in Canada (who we're off to see for summer camp, exciting times!), they don't have enough girls to have single sex patrols (I think currently two girls in a total of about 25) but speaking to their leaders they say the same as you, which is girls come from girl guides but don't go back the other way, which is exactly what we see in the UK. One thing we have deliberately tried to avoid though is the single sex patrol. This is from the observation of one of the major differences in the sexes at scout age (10-14 for us), girls are more likely to get something right first time, where as the boys are better at recovering and over coming once something has gone wrong. Trying to keep a balance in each patrol is something that falls out of that. I guess it helps that we are not as strict on single sex accommodation. It's seen as best practice to have it but if everyone involved is happy then boys and girls do sleep in together. Most commonly happens on things like night hikes where everyone just crashes on the floor of our HQ afterwards! Another interesting difference is that for weekend camps we get a disproportionate number of boys sign up for any given event, for longer trips we get disproportionately girls. Never have figured that one out!

Like most groups this side of the pond we have our stock of tents. We have two sets of tents. Light weights, most a mix of Vango Omega and Eos 350, that we would use for weekend camps. Our oldest ones are about 5 years old. We've sent a couple away for zip repairs and replaced a couple of poles but over all they seem pretty durable. This is what they look like up And heavy weight canvas patrol tents. In theory they are 6 man tents. In practice that means 6 cubs or 5 scouts, 4 if you want some wriggle room. We typically use them for longer summer camps although they are also nice and airy so sometimes for weekend trips. Certainly not a backpacking tent. This is what they look like up They are old and smelly but built like tanks. The last time we decided a canvas was beyond repair we think it was knocking on the door of 45 years old!

I've been following this thread with interest. Thought it was time for a couple more observations.... Re the toilet and showers facility issue. If anyone is looking over at the UK and thinking "well the coped with it" don't forget that over here the Girl Guides have very few campsites compared to the scout association. This means from the earliest days scout campsites have been geared up for having girl guides camp there as well. So there was no "big bang" of having to cope with the change. Lets say the change does happen... what happened here was we started with a local option and went all in 16 years later. What that meant was that the groups that chose to go coed typically developed the local reputation for being girl friendly. It's now over a decade since we went all in. And groups, such as mine, that went coed before that, still have a disproportionate number of girls. I honestly don't know how long that will take to shake of. So at the moment I am 40% girls compared to about 22% nationwide. Our neighbouring group has no girls at all. ANyway carry on.... it's an interesting one to earwig in on.....

I've noticed Seriously though I'd be properly curious to see what effect the 2019 world jamboree has on things. There will be a lot of scouts from every corner of the planet turning up, all with their own way of doing things. In 2005 I was at the European jamboree in the U.K. One side of my unit we had a polish unit, other side of them were isralies. The other side of us were Italian, next one on was Irish. Across the track from us were Dutch, Swiss, Ugandan and Portuguese units. If I recall right there were 68 countries with contingents there. It was an incredibly eye opening experience. The Poles who never seemed to sleep, the scruffy French, the Hungarians with a unit of over 40 scouts led by just 2 adults the oldest of who was 22. The Dutch with their human pyramids, the Italians who pioneered everything, the German tents (look up the black magic German scouts beer tent, non alcoholic of course) it was an incredible experience.

Looking in a few observations and questions…. Any article that starts that by using a few cheesy buzz words should be binned by the editor. Painful to read. It’s now 25 years since I was a 13 year old boy (more’s the pity!) in that time I’ve noticed a couple of things change in the UK. When I was 13 it was almost unheard of to have a purely plutonic friend of the opposite sex. Yes at 13 the first hints of dating were on the cards, there was the odd friendship between boys and girls here and there. But it was a pretty unusual thing to see. I had one female school friend when I was a teenager, and the hard time I got about that was extraordinary! 25 years later and watching teenagers, not just at scouts, but in the street, in public, everything seems to have changed. Gangs of friends are naturally mixed. There’s the odd gang of boys and the odd one of girls but mixed is the norm. I can’t confess to knowing where that has come from, but come about it has. Genuine question, has there been any similar change in the USA? Another thing has been the ‘esprit de corps at scouts. In the UK this has always been at troop level rather than patrol level. At least as far as my experience can see. When I was a kid any given scout would identify themselves as a member of a troop. The patrols were simply how the troop would organise itself. While it was that way when I was a teenager I think it has become more so in recent years. The PLs would rather work together to run something as a troop than individually as a patrol. My thought is that both of those reasons is why mixed scouting has worked in the UK. Would it work in the USA or any other country where it is still single sex? I don’t know. Something to leave you with though are 3 photos, all 3 are some of my favourites, all were taken on a camp way back in 2011. Sometimes boys are just boys, sometimes girls want to hang with the girls and sometimes they all just end up in a big heap together. In a mixed troop they can get to do all 3.

Back in my days when I was Cub leader...... First weekend of June was always district cub camp weekend. Friday and Saturday evenings, after the cubs were all in bed, the leaders from the various packs would gather round a fire somewhere. One year, for reasons I can't recall, that fire was in an alter fire with the legs having been removed so it was flat on the ground. It was a relatively small event one year and I was able to get quite close. Sinking quite comfortably into my camp chair I stretched out my legs (I am 6'2" so there's plenty of leg to stretch!) and it was the perfect distance to rest my feet against the side of the alter fire, something which felt quite pleasently warm. Some minutes passed and while talking to someone next to me I smelt a smell. An 'orrible smell! It was the smell of burning rubber! At the same time I realised my feet had gone from pleasently warm to unpleasentyl so! Yes, you guessed it, the souls of my trail shoes were now smoldering nicely. Some ridiculous dancing around and they stopped smoldering leaving some foot shaped scorch marks on the side of the alter fire. I wasn't allowed to forget that for a while Another memory.... this time when I was a Venture Scout. Each year my venture unit was asked to run some of the events at a district scout camp. On the Friday night after set up that meant the scouts rotating through a series of bases that involved various relatively basic scout skills. One of those was a scavenger hunt which we had created. Now traditionally we would include a couple of joke items on that list. Something like tartan paint or a glass hammer etc. One year though we included a pair of the campsite warden's underpants. Never for one moment thinking any scout would take it seriously. Later that evening a 17 year old me along with 3 others from my unit were getting a dressing down from our venture scout leader following an incident where the warden and his wife looked out into his back garden to see a couple of enterprising scouts raiding their washing line.....

While I agree with some of your observations I would disagree that working in small groups is out dated. Less popular maybe, but not outdated Humans have evolved over many thousands of years to be social creatures. We live in families and for most of human existence villages. There is still a very basic human need to belong and that is particularly strong among teenagers. If it wasn't for that feeling we wouldn't have a fashion industry. We wouldn't have sport teams with tens of thousands of followers. We wouldn't have music festivals, churches, carnivals or weddings or all the other things where many people gather together. And we haven't changed because of a decade of broad band internet! Yes people are spending more time alone, but I would point out the huge increase in mental health problems as the big consequence of that. People staring at a screen rather than seeing each other face to face. It can't be healthy. Those that have seen my previous posts will know that I am certainly not afraid of changes in scouting! But.... that fundamental part of how we operate. Of young people working with each other in small groups, led wherever possible by their peers, growing, learning and developing together, through the outdoors, that, in the world we live in, is probably more vital than ever. That is the core of what we do, whatever country or culture we happen to operate in.

Flip the coin for a moment.... While we may see scouts miss evenings of trips etc for sport or music or whatever remember that you won't notice it the other way around. Look at the scouts that turn up for everything. Have some of them been dropped from sports teams or orchestras because they didn't turn up because they were at scout camp? Two of my patrol leaders are also musicians. One has an armful of badges, will easily make Chief Scouts Gold, will probably end up as SPL but there's no way she'll get into the school orchestra because she's on camp when she should be practising. The other one was has very few badges (except all the musician awards!), won't make Chief Scouts Gold but is an exceptional talent on the flute, practicing hard when her friends are at camp. As Stosh says, it's all about choices. But just listen out because some of them may be sacrificing other things for scouts and it may be that you are just not hearing about it.

They are indeed some of my girls

The topic didn't come up in the end. They were too busy burning stuff, scouts being, well, scouts!

I agree, it's not something I'm planning on bringing up unless they want to. Not an entirely daft thought to be honest. Imagine being in your early 20s, travelling round the world where people come from miles around in their thousands to see you perform. We've all done worse things to pay the bills! She must have been having the time of her life. Then this happens. 22 people are dead Including an 8 year old girl. I suspect she's in pieces.

First of all if this is more appropriate to the politics section please feel free to move. Anyway, I got asked yesterday by @@Tampa Turtle how my scouts had reacted to Monday’s terrorist attack in Manchester and what I would say to them. Fact is as we meet on a Thursday I haven’t seen them to know. What I plan on saying, should they want to talk about it this evening, is this. Monday night’s events were tragic, evil and horrifying. I am not going to pretend to understand what goes on in the head of the people that do these things. I fear that unless you are a professional in the field, a psychologist, a sociologist or whatever then that way lies madness. What I do know though is that these events are very rare. It’s easy to see the 24 hour rolling news coverage on tv and the internet, the endless pages printed in the hard copy press, and think that these attacks are happening all the time. That everywhere we go there is someone trying to do us harm. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. These events are vanishingly rare, it is the endless news coverage that makes us think that they are common. The vast majority of days there are no attacks. The vast majority of places will never see an attack. The vast majority of us will never be anywhere near one. There are fewer terrorist deaths every year now then there were in the 1980s when I was a kid and the IRA were at it. The fact is that unless you are into something seriously dangerous like cave diving, unless you work somewhere very dangerous like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, unless you do something utterly stupid like have a crack habit, the most dangerous thing any of us will do today is cross the street, cycle to school or drive to work, something that kills about 5 people a day in this country. Let’s mourn the dead, let’s catch and lock up the people who did this. But don’t forget to live your life. Don’t live in pointless fear. It’s a beautiful day out there* today. Go and enjoy it. And look both ways before you cross the street! *After what has been a pretty chilly spring so far the sun has come out this side of the pond this week. Wall to wall sunshine, day after day. This is the UK so it will be heaving it down with rain next week so we're all making the most of it

To be clear I wasn't equating poltical conservatism directly with not being coed. The point was more as an example of cultural difference between our respective countries hence one shouldn't assume that where one goes the other will closely follow. One thing that always strikes me about the USA is it's extraordinary diversity in pretty much every respect. From climate to geography to religions to music to ethnic background and pretty much every other aspect of life. It's something that I think other countries can learn something from in terms of how different communities live alongside each other. But I would also speculate whether that leads to difficulties when it comes to changes. If you have to get that massively diverse population to all agree and pull in the same direction you are going to have to work at it. Just a thought.

Just catching up with this. I think that Tyke, with all due respect, has made a common mistake among many of our country men make which is to assume that because the UK and USA share a language that we are closer culturally than we actually are. Fact is that the UK is closer to other countries in north west Europe than anywhere else. The Netherlands, Germany and in particular Denmark than any other English speaking countries with the possible exception of Australia. I suspect that at some point, probably in my life time, BSA will change with regard to girls and religion but I certainly don't expect it to be yet simply because that is the way the western world is going and the USA is no different. But the USA is at a different point along that road than other countries. Compared to the UK the USA is far more politically conservative. Many people equate the democrats with our Labour Party. Actually they are better compared to the liberal wing of the Conservative party. Similarly religion plays a much bigger role in the USA than the U.K.. That's just the way it is. That said I suspect the 2019 world jamboree will have a big influence on BSA. An awful lot of scouts from a lot of countries will be turning up. They will influence the attitudes of both those at the jamboree itself and those communities hosting units on home hospitality visits. I don't think you can have that volume of cultural influences in one place and it not have some kind of result.

Ah the great British summer! Remind me, fell on a Wednesday last year didn't it?

I concur with pringles! It basically behaves like a candle. What little potatoe there is in it works like a candle wick, soaking up the melting fat and burning it. With tumble drier fluff working so well I have always wondered whether, if you could collect enough, belly button fluff would do the same job ....

Morning all Some others of you may already be aware but a few days ago a 14 year old scout in the troop where @@Tampa Turtle is ASM sadly passed away. I am in touch with TT away from this forum and as I am sure you can imagine both he and his scouts and of course the boy's family are extremely distressed. I have little doubt that they would appreciate your thoughts and prayers at what must be a terrible time for all of them.

Well here is an outline of the major political parties LGBT policies from the UK 2015 general election. The only parties not campaigning on a platform of looking to do something positive for the LGBT community were DUP (8 MPs exclusively in Northern Ireland where the mainstream parties don't even both fielding candidates because the political situation is barking mad) and UKIP with 1 MP, a single issue party that is now a non entity since the EU referendum last year. And frankly find me the UKIP voter who gave a monkey's about anything other than EU membership. That's in a total of 650 MPs Seriously. You won't find a party with any realistic pretensions to holding power doing anything other than supporting LGBT equality. With the exception of parts of Northern Ireland it's a no longer a political issue here.

I think this is a trans atlantic difference. Equality for the LGBT community is just not considered a political issue here anymore. Sure homophobia and transphobia still exists, but it's a social problem on a par with racism and sexism. It's only political in so far as there are differences between politicians on what to do about it as opposed to there being any differences on the principle of equality for the LGBT community.

We have an evening at the end of each year where we show them off and dish out various prizes. The leaders come in dinner jackets/posh dresses. It's quite fun! The photos are the edited down selection, there were quite a few taken that weren't really that great. That's kids for you The going wasn't quite as rugged as it could be. Normally in early April there would still be a lot of snow on the mountains, albeit thawing, but this year Scotland had a very mild winter meaning by April there was next to no snow left which is a real shame.

Hopefully the final time I'll resurrect this thread but.... piccies! Took a while to colate then. How many times it's possible for one scout to bring their camera in for me to download their photos but for them to forget the cable is beyond me. But here they are! Mostly it's photos from out on the hills but there's a few taken at the station itself. http://12thcambridge.org.uk/blog/2017/05/08/high-adventure/

Sigh. Much as night follows day the extremists (of any description) threaten violence when they don't get their way. It's so sad. This girl's story has been a big story this side of the pond. The amount of coverage, while modest in absolute terms, has been extraordinary given that it's been head to head with UK local elections and forthcoming national elections and the French presidential elections. I showed the original photo to my scouts on Thursday and the older ones were properly impressed (the younger ones didn't really understand) I just hope that the online threats are just keyboard warriors.