The ThunderDragon

I am now back after my to week Scouting holiday in Scotland.

We went hill walking, sailing, white water rafting, horse riding, mountain biking, canoeing, and more.

I think I need a holiday to get over it…

Hopefuly blogging will return to normal at some point over the next week.

I’m away camping for the weekend again.

This week is Volunteers Week.

Volunteering is massively important, both to society and to individuals. Society as a whole benefits from it because those in need can be helped without government and taxes getting involved. Individuals - both those who receive and give - benefit from the contact and experiences.

Just think what we could accomplish if everyone gave up just a few hours of their time every now and then. We could leave this world a far better place. Don’t think that money is the answer. It’s not. Most charities don’t need monmey anywhere near as much as people - especially Scouting, which has thousands of young people across the country on waiting lists due to a lack of adults.

Of course, no volunteering is completely selfless - and I’m definitely speaking from experience here. Anyone who claims to do so is a liar. Volunteers benefit from volunteering their time very nearly as much as anyone they help. The benfeits are just in a different way - they are seldom obvious, but far more internal and personal. The personal satisfaction you can get from volunteering and a job well done can outweigh pretty much anything that has been sacrificed to achieve it.

I fully support the idea of workers getting time off to volunteer, as it encourages those who wouldn’t otherwise volunteer to do so. Though the idea of regarding volunteering as a “proper job-seeking activity” is ridiculous, as anyone and everyone could find the time to do some volunteering if they wanted to.

My employer gives me and every other employee half a day every month time off to do volunteering activities. This volunteering can be done on internally organised schemes, such as helping children in schools to read, or externally like me, with Scouting. I used my last month’s half-day to enable me to ensure that everything was ready for my camp on time.

This is the sort of model that all companies should seek to emulate. It provides for a more motivated workforce, and one who knows that the firm is making an effort to put something back into the community.

I volunteer as a Scout Leader because I enjoy it. I gain so much from the time I spend with my Scouts that the hours I spend doing it - and preparing for, and clearing up after - are way more than worth it to me.

If everyone can just put a few hours every now and then in to volunteering, then everyone benefits. Just a small amount can help so much. Just a little bit of your time can mean so much to other people in so many ways.

So volunteer, and let’s leave this world a better place than when we found it.

One last thing to say - just do-it.

I have some good news and some bad news.

Good news: I am now a warranted Assistant Scout Leader [having been on a provisional warrant for the last few months] after completing the required training modules. Now I’m working my way towards my Wood Badge.

Bad news: There will be no posts* this weekend (inc. bank holiday Monday) as I am on a Scout camp. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s going to rain. All weekend.

* or at least not many - depending if I have the time to wrote a couple before I go.

It is impressive is that Google have created a St George’s Day logo, as today [well, yesterday by the time this post is published] is St George’s Day.

He is the Patron Saint of England and, as has been pointed out, many other countries, professions, organisations and disease sufferers as well. And? We should still celebrate the day as part of being English. That we have St George rather than St Edward or anyone else makes bugger-all difference. This isn’t about them, but about us.

I celebrated the day on Sunday when, with my Scouts - and Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Explorers, and other adult members of the Scout Association from our District [replicated across the country] - I paraded through the town. Because just one of the other things St George is the patron saint of is Scouting itself. This sort of parade should not be cancelled, especially on ‘health and safety’ grounds!

Part of being British is celebrating our differences as well as our similarities. It is possible to be both English and British, they are not mutually exclusive. We should celebrate being both English and British.

Just don’t celebrate the day by killing dragons!

And as far an English anthem - obviously it should be Land of Hope and Glory!

A report on British citizenship recommends that school leavers swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country to give them a “sense of belonging”, and to “mark the passage between being a student of citizenship and an active citizen.” This has come in for a large amount of criticism from across the blogosphere and political spectrum, with this post from Asp being the only one that I have seen in support.

I salute the Union Flag on a weekly basis and have made an oath of allegiance to Queen and country literally hundreds of times in my life, as a Scout and a Scout leader, through making the Scout Promise:

And one of the things I do as a Scout leader is explain what this means to new Scouts before they are formally invested.

However, I myself and every other member of the Scout movement does so of our own volition. What is being suggested by Lord Goldsmith is making people do it. People who are British, and have not chosen it, unlike those who come to Britain from another country and want to become British citizens.

I think that it would be a good thing if more people chose to make a pledge of allegiance to Queen and country - but if it isn’t by choice, it is meaningless. And that is what implementing this would be: a meaningless gesture, which would do nothing but undermine Britishness, rather than reinforce it.

The number of volunteers in Britain has fallen by a quarter in the past decade. I’m not overly surprised by that, even if a quarter is a large number. But I don’t think that it can possibly be claimed to be directly the government’s fault for failing to support them.

Volunteers don’t volunteer because the government does or doesn’t support them - they volunteer to do some good in their community or elsewhere. They volunteer to help others in some way. What the State thinks matters little to them.

Instead, it is indirectly the government’s fault. This is because they have fostered a society of reliance on the State rather than the individual. At the same time as this, they have made it progressively harder to volunteer - CRB forms being quite possibly the biggest offender. Not because they are in themselves a bad idea, but just because the Criminal Records Bureau are so damn slow! They have also extended it to cover too many situations.

I am both a Scout leader and a St John Ambulance first aider. I don’t do them for purely altruistic reasons, because I do them because it makes me feel good to have done them. There are two ways that people decide to become Scout leaders or otherwise involved in the Movement: (a) Their children join Scouts and they get dragged in, or (b) they are Scouts and want to give others the chance to do it. That’s my reason. I am a Scout leader because I want to pass on the fantastic knowledge and experience that I got as a Beaver, Cub, Scout and Venture Scout. I want todays children to be able experience it as well.

Some people forget - or simply don’t realise - that Scout leaders and first aiders don’t get paid. They get nothing from doing it but the experience and knowledge that they are doing something good. It was fantastic to see the Scout contingent in the Remembrance Sunday parade yesterday and the voice-over reminding people of this fact - it is all voluntary.

The reason the number of volunteers has declined is because the government has indirectly stifled independent charity in favour of State redistribution. But nobody works for the State for free, yet thounsands will work for charities for free. The amount of paperwork surrounding volunteer charities needs to shrink, and it needs to be simplified. Or else the volunteer won’t be just an endangered species, but an extinct one.

Source: The Telegraph

The number of Britons going camping has fallen by a fifth.

But I’m not one of them. I’m off camping with my Scout troop, so there’ll be no posts this weekend!

Today is 100 years since Robert Baden Powell opened the first ever Scout camp on Brownsea Island. I wrote about the centenary a few days ago.

Throughout the different time zones, Scouts from around the world renewed their Scout Promise at exactly 8am to mark the centenary of the opening camp:

On my honour, I promise that I will do my best,
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people,
And to keep the Scout Law. 

Today is the centenary jamboree of the Scouting Movement, celebrating one hundred years since Robert Baden Powell first took 20 boys to Brownsea Island on a camp. He then published his book, Scouting for Boys, and the movement took off. It now has a worldwide membership of more than 28 million, making it the world’s largest youth organisation.

Scouting is an activity at odds with much of the modern health and safety obsessed world. In Scouts, the children and young adults get to do things that they almost certainly otherwise would not be able to do - camping, fire-making, backwoods cooking, knot-tying, ad infinitum. It also teaches morals, teaching that people have duties as well as “rights” in society.

Although Scouting has changed much from the original movement of Baden Powell - and even since I have been at uni [and on a break from Scouting, even though I still help out on the occasional camp with my old group]- it still has the same core aims. It is about teaching kids skills, self respect, and respect for others. These are never more evident than on a jamboree, where there are Scouts from all over the world.

Scouting is an extremely interesting, fun, and rewarding activity to do. And at 8am on 1 August, Scouts all over the world will mark the centenary of the movement, and look forward to another great century of Scouting.