Monday, December 29, 2008

Up North?

Again, I'm just guessing here.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Full Sleeve!

The Telegraph yesterday carried the news that little Ben Spratling of Norwich has become the first Cub to be awarded all 33 badges.

Normally at this point of course I'd be cynical and snide and think "Well, they're not the propert Cubs badges are they? They're all for silly made-up modern things like computing and PR." I, after all, never got anywhere near as many.

But given that it's Christmas, and given that he seems like a nice lad, I can only say congratulations and well done. For all its faults, Scouting is clearly still something that can give boys pride in who they are and what they are (and not in what they are nor), and at the end of the day that's what really matters.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Opposite of Scouting?

Unfortunately it's a good deal less far removed from the ethos of Scouting than some of what goes on under the aegis of the Scout Association nowadays.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

"Sea Scouts" help with Xmas post

It’s a dark, cold December night down at the Newport docks, so why is 71-year-old Roger Swabey, a retired warehouse manager, visiting a drab pre-fab opposite a sleeping timber yard?

The answer lies inside: the headquarters of the 29th Newport Sea Scout Group, which has been turned into the sorting office for the town’s annual Scout and Guide Christmas Post. Run by Swabey, a Scout leader for 30 years, the annual operation is the principal source of fundraising for Scouts and Guides. Since starting in 1990, the initiative has raised more than half a million pounds through the sales of its own stamps.

As the lights flicker on, you can see banks of grubby but neatly labelled cardboard boxes filling up with Christmas cards bearing one of the specially designed and printed stamps, priced at 16p and depicting 10 local landmarks, including some of the bridges across the River Usk, which bisects this town of 140,000 inhabitants.

Swabey scoops up a heavy shopping basket overflowing with fat bundles of letters, and heads for his car. It’s a project that visibly energises this former merchant seaman.

“I’ve been bitten by dogs and I have sleepless nights, but it’s work that gives me a zing. For a month I go like Harry Clappers and have to think on my feet, just like I did when I was a warehouse manager,” he says.

Halfway into town we stop at Nathwani’s newsagent and general store. Along with Gibbo’s Fish and Chip shop, the Vogue hair salon, and a few other local businesses, the newsagent sells the Scouts’ Christmas stamps and collects the resultant mail in a posting box by the counter.

Ten minutes later, we arrive at a Scout hut in the centre of Newport known as Skip Jennings Hall, after a long-departed Scoutmaster who built it in the middle of the last century. Today it serves as the central sorting office for the 200,000 Scout Post letters handled every year. By mid-evening, it’s a hive of activity, as sacks, boxes and bags of letters arrive from 34 different collection offices around town, to be re-sorted into sacks bound for delivery to the same areas. There’s a Dad’s Army feel to the scene as Swabey barks instructions to the assembled volunteers, mainly of advancing years, but with a few teenagers helping out as well – including girls, of course. Admitted into the Scouts in the mid 1970s, they now comprise one in eight of the 400,000 young members.

Continued...

[The Daily Telegraph]

Obviously they're not really "Sea Scouts". (Just look at the picture, for crying out loud!) But then one wouldn't expect a mong from The Daily Telegraph to appreciate that. The list of actual Sea Scouts groups registered with the MoD is on the Royal Navy's website here. The website for the Newport Scouts and Guides "Scout Post" is here.

It's one of those things that really puzzles me (or at least it has
in the past) - not just why the media lie about big important things (i.e. where they actually have an interest) but why they can't actually be bothered to get things right even when it'll make no difference at all to 99.99% of the population but it will cause considerable embarrassment or even offence to the tiny number who will actually care about these things.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Finding Miracles

Soppy Canadian films about growing up in the 1930s really shouldn't be allowed to be this good.

In fact Looking for Miracles is a very middle-rank sort of touchy-feely part-Disney family feature (and yes, that's the same Disney we have the half-witted Abbot of Worth sneering about in today's Telegraph - H/T: Thompson). But I was pleasantly surprised, nay hugely relieved, given that I'd bought the DVD from an Amazon subsidiary for a couple of quid and it had been sitting on my shelf unwatched for months, like a standing reproof to those who buckle to the charms of one-click ordering.

It could have been immensely dull, or, worse still, hugely preachy. In fact it's neither. Certainly it isn't preachy. Authority figures in it do, ultimately, maintain their authority, but they also get a good-natured, Harry Potter-style run around from the ambitious, scheming young ruffians they've taken on as leaders at their incredibly dangerous summer camp. There also lashings of violence (including corporal punishment - if "lashings" is quite the right word) and all sorts of dangerous things that were legal in the 1930s and 1989 (when the film was made) but that almost certainly not survived the Clinton-Blair years. (How many modern Canadian children would even fit in a canoe, one pondered at one point?)

The trailer is below. And here's The Simpsons' take on such things - not to mention the Addams Family's. (Happy Thanksgiving!)

Friday, November 28, 2008

XXXXmas

I suppose it's something of a departure for this blog, but the news that Guides and Brownies have been banned from carol singing in a shopping centre for the first time in 20 years on the grounds that they pose a threat to customers' health and safety is really too delightful.

And quite right too! When the Girl Guides were founded the focus was on clean living and outdoor activities. Last year, however, Girlguiding UK decided that what their girls really needed was more sex. And if they're not sure which way they want to swing, why should that matter? Condoms? Sapphic tendencies? It's all good fun for nice young gels. Shortly before 9/11 they were condemning the Bush Administration for not discriminating against boys. (OK, so I'm biased! Sue me.) They've also been very keen to shed their "Christian" image. (Hard to believe, huh?)

In any case, I'm sure the powers that be in Girguiding UK will be more than capable of thinking up more exciting things for the girls to be doing in the run-up to Xmas.

Friday, November 21, 2008

In Iraq...

...I think.

Mystery Scouts

Dunno who they are, but Scouts (and Cubs) ought to be recoginsable by what they're wearing. (Those slogans on their T-shirts look as if they're Google-able.)

Friday, November 14, 2008

Thursday, November 13, 2008

No Escape!


The War against Boys Continues

Actually it's not some "feminist" war against boys per se. Quite the reverse, in fact, it's simply a war by brainless ideologues who know nothing and care less about raising and educating children who simply want to advance their horrible disgusting sexual revolution into every corner of the world.

Council officials have told Broad Plain Boys' Club, Easton, an inner city area of Bristol, that it does not meet its equality standards.

The club, which has helped thousands of children, said it had had its name since it was founded in 1894, and it does cater for girls two days a week.

The leader, Dennis Stinchcombe, who was made an MBE for his work, has been warned that unless he changes the club's name the authority will withdraw the £11,600-a-year funding it receives for two paid staff to work alongside volunteers..

Bristol City Council wants the club to cater equally for both boys and girls, despite funding other minority and single sex groups.

[The Daily Telegraph]

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Messing about with Boats

Another little boat pic! No other connexion!

Tug-o'-War

Before and after!

Saturday, November 8, 2008

What reputation?

A quinquagenarian lady in charge of Beavers almost died and had to be taken to hospital after a her fruit cocktail drink was spiked by a typically vicious product of the modern Scout movement mischievous teenage Scout leader.

It's chilling to think that Beavers are now being taken on camp. Presumably it won't be much longer before the entire movement in this country is composed mainly of pre-schoolers and toddlers - like pets dressed up in strange costumes by their owners.

But what's rather more depressing is the way this poor woman was subsequently treated by the Scout Association.
[W]hen the mother-of-two from Norbury, south London told a local newspaper about her ordeal she was sacked by the Scout Association.

In a letter from the association's district commissioner Chris Williams, Mrs Setohy was told: "I am disappointed that you chose to bring this matter to the attention of the media and in so doing tarnished the reputation of the Scout Association. I have had no option but to withdraw your appointment."
"Tarnished the reputation of the Scout Association"? What reputation?

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Yukon Ho!

Three possible takes, in fact, on Calvin and Hobbes's famous expedition to the Great White North!

I just came across the third pic - of our young hero now all grown up, still with his faithful old companion but with Susie Derkins as well - and then remembered the "real life" version just above. (The first, of course, is Waterson's original.)

Oh, what a life! we cannot wait,
To be in that arctic land,
Where we'll be masters of our fate,
And lead a life that's grand!


Sgt. Preston eat your heart out.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

St James School, Twickenham

The second half is here, and includes interviews with both the headmaster of the school and some of the boys themselves. It is non-embeddable - if that's a real term.

Obviously this school will have declined greatly since this news report was made in 1996. (The modern school's website is here.) The Socialists came to power in this country over eleven years ago. They abolished corporal punishment in all schools, and with it went proper discipline, and I have no doubt that St James Independent School for Boys is now the same sort of chaotic hell-hole as the one where I was "educated". What is more, with a progressive Tory Party in opposition, patiently and quite complacently just waiting to take over once the Socialists are eventually deposed from office, there is now no possibility that discipline and moral and educational standards will be ever restored in this country in our life time.

Traditional morality, which depended on discipline, virtue, self-sacrifice, and above all rationality, has now been abolished in public life and replaced by a "new" morality (which has in fact been around since Jeremy Bentham). This new morality values only pleasure and can see no use for pain, or suffering, or indeed poverty in the overall economy of human wellbeing. It was for this very reason incidentally - and irrespective of what Gerald Warner and a thousand other class warriors on either side may say - that the Blair Government forced through its "ban" on foxhunting. And until that leftwing totem to the modern morality is torn down once again there will be no true discipline in schools and no real possibility of restoring traditional morality in this country, whether it be in schools, in the home, in the Church, or indeed in public life.

What is most interesting, of course, is that for the last ten years the people of this country have been basically insulated from the results of their own moral decay by unprecendented material wealth and prosperity. The time is coming now, however, when "old fashioned" values, such as respect, hierarchy, discipline and morality - which means doing the right thing, not what feels nice and is easy - will be more important than they've been for over a decade.

Then we'll see!

Monday, October 27, 2008

The Abolition of Scouting

It's the little things that give away what a ghastly old Trot deep down Peter Hitchens really is (not to mention the big things, such as his unhinged attitude towards President Bush). Whilst fuminating (quite rightly) against the disgusting modern Scout Association's sex-ed plans (which it now turns out were wheeled out in tandem with the Governments own sex-ed plans for very young children indeed), he also snorts derisively
I'm not too sorry to have missed the Scouts. I'm not wild about youth movements, even independent ones. They give off an odour of regimentation and enforced jollity that I don't much like. But if we have to have them, then independent ones are the only sort to have.
Regimentation! "Enforced jollity"! How could liberated modern youth ever be expected to tolerate such things?

This is a man who bangs on about The Abolition of Britain. But what sort of Britain would he actually want to preserve?

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Ride Forever!

Oh, the awful useless pointless stupidity of the mindless souless incompetent made-up artificial fake modern world is starting to get to me (again).

Here's Benton, to make everything better again. (And looking remarkably like Paul Gross with it!)

Thursday, October 23, 2008

And now for some grown-up politics!

From the WSJ:
In his recent stump speech, Thomas Fleming took a stand against nuclear power, violence, weapons and war. He told voters there was no greater honor than serving them and requested their support. "I ask nothing in return except a better America," he said.

Then the 8-year-old candidate, dressed in his Cub Scout uniform, sang a song from "The Simpsons," waved his fists over his head and rejoined his fellow third-graders in the cafeteria at Altruria Elementary School in Bartlett, Tenn. Thomas, who won the election, serves as the student council sergeant-at-arms when he isn't busy practicing piano or dancing like a robot.
Unfortunately, given Senator Hussein's lead in the polls, it would seem that "adult" politics in America is not noticeably more sensible than the pint-sized variety.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Sexed Down

Lindsay is his usual pompous self on the subject of the Scout Association's new sex-ed policy. He seems to be firmly of the opinion that Roman Catholic and other church Scout groups will somehow be able to resist the Association's latest wheeze. If such is the case then he if of course mistaken, since anyone who tries to resist will have no chance whatsoever. Since the 1960s every single decision taken by the Scout Association corporately has been ruthlessly enforced right down to the lowest level. If Catholic leaders refuse to show their boys how to put on condoms then legal proceedings will be begun to have them removed from the Association's lists and they'll be ostracised and frozen out. (The Association's website now has links to well-known abortion providers. Don't even think of protesting!)

Some of the Press have made the usual smutty innuendo - but then for most journalists that's all the Movement is now fit for, and their attitude to children in general is not much better. The Male is suitably alarmist, but then of course they would be wouldn't they. They also have a photo labelled 'a scout leader and his pack' - which makes me feel there really is no hope. Yes, it's natural to be a pedant about terminology if one knows what it's supposed to be (i.e. what it used to be)! But what this boo-boo in particular underlines is that for most people it's the Cubs - or "Cub Scouts" as they are now known, somewhat tellingly - who are now the public face of Scouting, and not the Scouts themselves. For all that the Scout Association's never-ending re-branding project has aimed at making the movement less juvenile (because of course that's what "modern kids" want), in reality its often no longer seen as being appropiate for anyone over the age of 11. And of course that only makes the new condoms policy all the more disturbing.

OK, let's do it! If a Scout (or any child below the age of eighteen) approaches a leader (or any adult over the age of eighteen) with questions of a sexual nature then that leader (adult) should immediately inform the Scout's (child's) parents or legal guardians - or, if he suspects that the Scout (child) has been sexually abused by said parents or legal guardians (as is often the case when children start asking inappropriate questions) then he should quite possibly alert the police, who will pass the matter on to social services. There can be absolutely no question about any of this, and anyone with a better developed moral sensibility than the average predatory child-molester would know to do this without even having to breathe, let alone think about it. And yet somehow the Scout Association has decided that its members, many of whom are not married, many of whom are only slightly older than the boys themselves (and girls, sadly), have all the authority they need to tell their charges about the facts of life.

Apart from that I have nothing much to say, other than that this is just yet another nail in the coffin of traditional Scouting. In the 1960s the Scout Association was taken over by a bunch of charlatans who abolished Baden-Powell's version of Scouting and replaced it with something the founder wouldn't even vaguely recognise. I mean, just go to their sodding "Explorer" (i.e. modern teenage Scouts) website. The first thing that comes up is a picture of multi-racial teenagers of both sexes sitting around indoors wearing baggy, American-style mufti clothes, watching television, playing on their mobile 'phones - and trying to get off with each other on the sofa.

And it's not even a photograph. It's a cartoon. Not only is this not real Scouting, but one wonders if there are even any real children involved in it.

For their own moral wellbeing, one certainly hopes not!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Boy Scouts of America - Doing Their Best!


Subtle it ain't. But it's funny in a wholly unhilarious sort of way, I suppose.

Actually this is partly posted out of guilt that this blog has got so off topic, with all sorts of other boys doing wholesome outdoorsy sorts of things but not so many Scouts. One must rectify that sooner or later!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Religio

A lovely photo I found on this blog here, this is apparently of two boys posing in the uniform of a Roman Catholic group of the Boys Brigade.

There's an article on the Boys Brigade on the HBU website here. The Brigade actually predates the Scouts by some years. It's also quite explicitly Christian, whereas Lord Baden-Powell's ideal was for Scouting to be spiritual but only in the context of "religions" in general. ('No man is much good unless he believes in God and obeys His laws. So every Scout should have a religion.')

Writing from the point of view of an old British imperialist, of course, this attitude may very well have seemed to make sense to old B-P. Unfortunately it rather bespeaks a wishy-washy attitude to truth and reality that has since permeated western society generally, with disastrous effects morally and culturally, and has left religion, in Scouting and elsewhere, to decline into religio in the ancient Roman sense of nothing more than superstition and exotic mumbo-jumbo.

And just as Rome declined, it would appear that the latterday West is poised to go much the same way.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Hunting

I was looking for a picture of Hunter Parish on Google, because I didn't know what he looked like. (Genuinely!) But I found this instead - which to be honest is probably nicer.

Monday, October 6, 2008

More Russian Sailor Boys

Shorts Shrift

[H/T: A nice site about corporal punishment by the people behind the School Uniforms Galleries.]

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Sad News from the Sea Cadets

On the subject of British sea cadets, the following is from The Times.

Sir, Martin Samuel’s article (“Heroin is hard work. You don’t drift into it”, Sept 26) is skilfully written but seeks ultimately to equate the dangers of taking heroin with that of joining the Sea Cadets.

Christopher Preece was no longer a cadet at the time of this death. While he was a cadet his behaviour was exemplary and we offer our sincerest condolences to his family.

The Sea Cadets provide opportunities to more than 14,000 young people across the country to participate positively with other young people engaging in a multitude of activities such as drill, sailing, canoeing and catering. They get to meet other young people nationally and internationally at a huge number of courses, events and competitions. These activities provide life skills, citizenship and leadership development. The activities also seek to relieve the boredom of the teenage years that Mr Samuel’s article highlights correctly as being one of the principal causes of drug use.

Only a small fraction of the 14,000 join the Royal Navy, although those who do join ultimately turn out to be the ones the Navy retains the longest. The Royal Navy needs this to carry on the fight against the many dangers we face, one of which, of course, is preventing the traffic of drugs into this country.

More than 9,500 volunteers give up a huge amount of their spare time changing the lives of young people and their communities for the better. Average uniformed volunteers will give 16.6 hours a week supporting their local unit, a substantial amount of which is involved in fundraising to keep the self-financing units running.

An indication of the challenge and the rewards that face our volunteers is that 40 per cent of cadets come from single-parent backgrounds and from areas that the Government describes as being of multiple deprivation.

It is for these reasons Mr Samuel’s conclusion causes immense offence.

Mike Cornish
Chief Executive
Marine Society and Sea Cadets

Russian Sailors

As it happens I can't be sure whether they're actual young sailors or just sea cadets.

Monday, September 29, 2008

A Relaxing Foot Massage

After a long hike, it's just what you need. (OK, I've never had one, but just watching is fairly soothing.)

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The HJs Again!

Because I don't actually speak German, I have a certain difficulty telling whether this video is really pro- or anti-.

Jolly Handsome

Handsome and jolly young Brazilian lad here!

Friday, September 26, 2008

Vlaams Nationaal Jeugdverbond (VNJ)

There's a lovely article on the Historical Boys' Uniform site here about the Vlaams Nationaal Jeugdverbond (VNJ). Basically they're a Flemish nationalist youth movement and they where a Scout-type uniform, with nice short leather shorts and also scarves.

Still no sign of anything like that emerging in this country, but then considering that the VNJ are very nationalistic that's probably a Good Thing.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Future

There's something horrific about computers. But there's something positively demonic about computer-games. The sheer lack of life and freshness about them, the utter emptiness of sociability they inculcate, the deadening mindlessness of their subject matter! What boys need are real things, outside, in the Real World. What they're given, more often than not, is electronic nonsense, inside, where the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow.

Is this the future their grandparents would have wanted for them?

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Monday, September 22, 2008