Boys from Brasil

Up North?

Again, I'm just guessing here.

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.

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.)

Tug-o'-War

Before and after!

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.

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?

Grey Shorts

Well I certainly wore them - pretty much non-stop, in fact, at school and as a Cub, for four solid years. (And it did me no lasting phychological damage whatsoever. Woof!) Thanks to the SA's second round of mindless cultural vandalism uniform reforms in the 1980s I don't think even the Cubs wear them now.

Well, this site is dedicated to them - and no doubt also to nostalgic memories of bygone days!