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!

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?

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!)

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

More Russian Sailor Boys

Shorts Shrift

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