Cambridgeskip

I've got 5 current and former scouts going to the world jamboree in Japan later this month. They've already had to have evacuation drills as the site is on the coast and if there is a tsunami alert they have to be ready to go in a matter of minutes. Quite scary! Any major jamboree will have an evacuation plan, this one in France though is the first time I've heard of it being put into practice.

In the UK we strangely have it the other way around. Everyone wears the purple world badge, but only those who have done an international event can wear the UK badge. I never did quite get why it was that way round! The pre 1990s BSA rules make more sense to me.

I was going to take some time this morning to write a lengthy rebuff of your previous comments. This latest disgraceful slur from you does the job for me though. It is no longer possible to take you or your views seriously any more.

Kind of. Official uniform is still to wear it with a woggle and on a regular troop night that's what you mostly see. On camp I personally, and I recomend the scouts do the same, tie a friendship knot and slide my woggle up on side of it so as to make it difficult to lose. Certainly at major jamborees it's standard to use a friendship knot. Traditionally someone you have met and befriended should tie it for you, if you tie it for yourself it's a square knot. What you call a square knot is what we call a reef knot!

It's pretty standard here in Europe to wear the necker without the full uniform. It's most practical purpose is to identify scouts. You have to remember that we have a much higher population density and that translates into numbers of scouts on a given campsite. I've seen 2500 crammed into Gilwell Park, which is about 130 acres. Yes it's rammed! The kids wearing the necker when out of full uniform makes it a lot easier to recognise them at long range when mixed up with a crowd of others. It's also good PR. Scouts out in public doing something that doesn't require full uniform? Say a cycling trip? Keeping the necker one identifies them as scouts and is good for publicity. If you've got any scouts going to Japan this summer they will find a lot of necker swapping going on. The Swiss national necker is particularly nice and in demand!

One of the most ignorant and offensive things that I have ever read on the internet. And I've seen some shockers. I'm quite shocked that the moderators are allowing this to stand.

I don't actually mean atheists at all. The reason I didn't mention any particular change is because I don't know what that change will be.Honestly I don't. When I was cub age there was huge controversy when there was a gay kiss on TV in the UK. It was considered a massive issue, it was front page news. Now we have fully gay equality in a relatively short space of time. No one could have predicted that. Similarly until 1973 it was still legal in the UK to pay a woman a lower wage than a man for the same job. Jobs were openly advertised that way, one hourly rate for a man and a lower one for a woman. 6 years later we had a woman Prime Minister. No one predicted that one! In another 30 years I have no doubt that there will be some other kind of massive change in society, the nature of which I can't predict and neither can anyone else. Any organisation unable to adapt to it could find themselves in serious trouble.

Maybe you don't like some of the decisions that your HQ take, but at least they are decisions of your HQ. The logic is this, none of us knows what the next major social change will be. Forget gay rights, that's irrelevant. There will be other changes ahead that will be controversial. Quite deliberatly I won't suggest what they will be, but they will come. At present before it makes changes BSA has to basically have LDS and Catholic Church on board before it can make any major change sbecause through the chartering model they own most of BSAs assets, both tangible and intangible. Those are two highly conservative organisations. And by conservative I don't mean politically, I mean in the more traditional sense, ie their willingness and ability to change rapidly. If BSA remains at their beck and call they will be stuck at their pace of change. And when the next major change in the world comes BSA may find itself unable to move at the pace necessary to keep up, thrive or even survive.

You are probably right (although naturally I see it more positively than I'm guessing you do) but looking in from outside it seems to me that the BSA heirarchy will have learned, or at least should have learned, a few things in all of this. The big thing is that they were way behind the curve on gay equality. The big damage was done not by the change itself (although there will be some who will walk away, that is clear) but by waiting until the pressure on it became intollerable. And that delay was caused by the chartering model of BSA's structure. BSA will need to be far more agile on its feet going forward. The world is changing and it's changing at an ever quickening pace. Organisations that don't keep up are going to find themselves in a lot of trouble. As I've said before the Uk Scout Association had just that problem in the 1990s. It stagnated, didn't keep up, and went through a crisis as a result that we are still recovering from. If I were Mr Gates right now I would be instigating a root and branch restructuring of BSA. Nothing to do with the programme, simply change how it is run and move away from the chartering model, make sure that the decisions on how BSA is run sits in the hands of BSA, not outside bodies.

Go back a few years when I used to be a cub leader.... We were camping the last weekend of May and it was hot! Saturday morning after breakfast I tell the cubs, it's going to be hot and sunny. I want to see hats, t-shirts and sun screen going on. Does everyone understand? Yes they say, and start slapping on the sun screen. All except one, 8 year old boy. So I chase him, sun screen, I told him, now! He shakes his head and says no, I'm allergic the sun screen. I'd been through all the permission forms before camp and none of them had anything on about a sun screen allergy. Put it on! I tell him. No, he says. I'm allergic to it. So I double check his permission form and show it to him, in the box for allergies or medical conditions there is nothing, mum has left it blank. I ask him if he has any with him, yes he says, mum put it in my kit bag. So I tell him, you tell me you're allergic but mum hasn't told me and she's given you some to bring. I don't believe you, put it on! No he says, and starts getting quite upset. So I decide to tripple check my phoning his mum to check. Oh yes she says, he is allergic to it. Brings him out in a terrible rash! Why did you send him with sun screen? I ask. It was on the kit list you sent out. Says mum. As Oddball says, you can't fix stupid.

Trouble with the southern England is that it's so densely populated that there is pretty much nowhere with no phone reception. There's the odd dead spot but certainly nowhere that's simply too remote. You have to go hundreds of miles to find anywhere like that, we don;t normally go that far for a weekend camp. Our 2012 summer camp in Northumberland was that remote! It was great! Interesting to see that while the campsite itself had no phone reception at all it is on a lake and there was a small area in the middle of it that could get reception. When they were running sailing or canoeing on the lake all the camp staff used to give their phones to whoever was in the safety boat to take them out to the live spot and pick up emails etc from home. They flatly refused to it for kids. Quite a good system.

The joy of smart phones! Used mostly as an alarm clock, but when the site has full 4G reception it seemed a shame not to give the troop facebook page some live updates, and I thought I'd swing by here and say hello while I was at it. Just got home feeling rather lucky. Some rain over night, it had stopped when we got up but tents were wet. They dried out and we got them down and packed minutes before a torrential down pour

Good Morning! The view from my hammock on camp this morning. Just been woken up by a curious magpie trying to figure out who and what I am. Beautiful looking day this side of the pond, there will be kids up and about and disturbing my gentle slumber in about 20 mins.....

Sadly we've all been there. I wonder what parents think we do when scouts finishes at 9pm. Personally I loaded a some tents into another leader's car, cycled home, emailed one parent to tell them "your son will bring a permission form to camp tomorrow or else", updated the scout accounts having paid a load of expenses to other leaders tonight. Not the hardest graft but it doesn't stop when we lock the door at 9pm. Some days you just want to scream at them.

I hope you don't mind some musings from across the pond, as this is something my group has been pondering recently. First bear in mind we have a group system here where Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and sort of Explorers (it's complicated for Explorers) are all technically part of the same group and you automatically feed through from one to another and it's all coordinated. However..... historically our scout troop has been full. We ran at a max of 35ish scouts as this is the largest number we can realistically have in the main hall in our building doing something active. There was a waiting list for those wanting to join from outside of cubs, and we did get those joining from externally. We never had to recruit so never thought about it. Over the last year or so though we recruited several more adult leaders, sufficient to open a second scout troop by clearing our waiting list in one fell swoop and that now has around 20 scouts. We are looking at opening a second cub pack to feed it. Until we do so we are needing to recruit externally which is something we've not had to think about before. When we ask kids why they join they typically tell us because they want to be with their friends and that "it sounded fun". Hmmm..... nice to hear but not very helpful in terms of pinning down what our USP is! When we ask the kids what the highlights of a given term have been the ones that constantly come up is anything involving food and fire. Also they love patrol camps where they camp without leaders. The question is what channel do you use to put the message across and actually get them signed up? Do it wrong and you can actually cause a lot of damage. It can a fine line to tread.

When I became SL (what you call SM) after years of being a cub leader in 2009 I inherited a discipline problem. The troop while of a decent size wasn't functioning and there was a core of about half a dozen trouble makers who were disrupting thing. My biggest regret is that I didn't crack down on it quickly enough. It wasn't a situation that I could let peer discipline sort out, it had gone beyond that. Before I got control I lost 3 or 4 good scouts who left in frustration. However once I did crack the wip I can tell you that it only takes sending one scout home on the spot to get the message. One particular trouble maker told me, in front of the rest of the troop that I was stupid. I told him to leave the room, handed over to an assistant leader, phoned his parents and they came and collected him. The scouts were quite shocked to see what I had done and his parents were mortified at being summoned and within a few weeks had left the troop. The message though go through and things quickly settled down, albeit we did lose one or two more trouble makers soon after.

Back in the Easter holidays some of my scouts went on a mountaineering course at a place called Lochearnhead in the Scottish Highlands. It's a an old railway station on a disused railway line that was acquired by the scouts in the 1960s. The old station buildings have been converted to kitchens, dining room etc with chalets built as accomodation plus camping space on the old track bed. It's mainly used as a base for mountaineering and sailing courses and is absolutely magical!

Properly inspiring, thank you for sharing. It's been shared to our facebook page and will be going on the troop notice board this evening. It's perfectly timed as well. Tonight's programme is being run by my two young leaders going to the jamboree in Japan, all themed on Japan. It's going to be a lot of fun, but a small reminder that scouting in the west is a different ball game to some corners of the world, where it is the difference between life and death far more often than most of us ever see.

We roughly used the the international Quidditch Association Rules here http://iqaquidditch.org/rulebook.php Only differences were dismounted players ran around rather than touching the goals (on the basis of them being a bit flimsy!) and the snitch was a small ball passed around between the leaders piggy in the middle style for the seekers to catch. The explorer unit who ran it for us meet in a hall with basked ball hoops which they use as goals rather than building the hoop goals that you're meant to.

So on Thursday a series of school trips reduced our normal 35 scouts to 14. What to do? Two make shift patrols of 7 and a game of Quidditch! Enjoy

Don't believe everything you read on the internet! You're looking at a second hand version of something that itself was reported by Education Action Group. It doesn't take much googling to find that they are anything but the "national non-partisan, non-profit education reform organization" group that they claim to be. Non profit maybe? Non patrisan? Hilarious! Go have a look! They've cherry picked a few quotes and documents that support their own agenda that's all. I wouldn't fuss.

I've been involved in recruitment, as a bit of a side line, for my employer this side of the pond and I would say you should always tweek your resume depending on who you are applying to. So here, I would say someone fresh out of university looking for their firs career move should make a big thing of it if theyhave their Queen's Scout Award or in your case Eagle Scout. It shows dedication, not scared of hard work or geting hands dirty, team work, leadership etc. If it was someone in their mid 30s who was looking for a new job I would be wondering why they were telling me. Frankly if in your mid 30s you are not filling your CV or application with details based broadly on work experience I would be wondering if actually you just haven't done much at work! The other side of that is voluntary work from the last few years will look good especially if you can show me how it has developed you and benefits you in the work place. You manage people? You risk assess? You follow regulations? You think on your feet? Fantastic stuff, tell me about it. Make sure it's recent and relevant though. If I was going for a job with a high pressure employer that would expect me to work long hours I would probably play it down. In terms of controversial again research your potential employer. A large organisation is likely to have set criteria they are looking for and scouts volunteering may well help you meet those. It is smaller employers where you are more at the mercy of the particular point of view of the interviewer. See if you can find out anything about them. Google is your friend!

The girl in the sumo wrestling outfit on the right. Used to be one of my scouts. Is now a young leader with the cubs at our group. http://www.huntspost.co.uk/news/scouts_use_pedal_power_to_raise_money_for_trip_to_japan_1_4106402 God help us all!

I'm not going myself, sadly, but 2 of the Explorer Scouts who work with my scouts as Young Leaders are as are two more former scouts who are also young leaders. All of them are absolutely chomping at the bit to get going. They were slightly perturbed on their last practice camp to be kicked out of bed at 3am for a tsunami evacuation drill! I don't know how you chaps have ended up with it being so expensive. It's not cheap at this end (£3000 all in, approx $4500) but it's half what you are paying! I assume you know that it's weighted from country to country so first world countries effectively subsidise the third world right? I'm over the moon for all them as well. This will be quite simply the experience of a life time. I don't know anyone that has been to not come back completely changed and convinced they can change the world.

In that context 40 million is a small number. If you are 12 or 14 years old though it is still a huge number. It is a movement, numbers wise, that for many of us is the biggest thing we will ever be part of. That realisation that no matter where you go in the world you can find a friendly face and a warm welcome from your own kind is quite something. I had the honour of taking scouts to the European Jamboree in 2005. 15000 scouts from 68 countries. I came back a different person.