For generations of Scouts, it was a time for raising money by performing good deeds – until health and safety fears and the rise of compensation culture saw it scrapped.
Now, 20 years after the last one, Bob-a-Job week will this week be revived by the Scout Association, as leaders attempt to rebuild the movement's traditional commitment to helping others.
The scheme, which starts on Saturday, will see more than 144,000 children take part in thousands of community projects across the UK.
The revamped scheme has been designed to comply with health and safety laws and to avoid the risk of compensation claims that saw its previous incarnation halted in 1992.
Then, unsupervised children, would knock on strangers' doors to ask if they wanted jobs done. Now, the scouts will operate in groups while carrying out work and will be supervised all the time by their leaders.
"Supervised by their leaders" say's it all really. No wonder some of our youngsters can't stand on their own two feet.
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"Supervised by their leaders" say's it all really. No wonder some of our youngsters can't stand on their own two feet."
Possible but would you be happy with your 11year old son or daughter being invited into a an unknown strangers' house by themselves?
The new Scheme seem good idea . Shame to knock it.
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>>Possible but would you be happy with your 11year old son or daughter being invited into a an unknown strangers' house by themselves? <<
Statistically probably safer than being with a Scout leader? :)
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>> >>Possible but would you be happy with your 11year old son or daughter being invited
>> into a an unknown strangers' house by themselves? <<
>>
>> Statistically probably safer than being with a Scout leader? :)
........................or a pillar of the Church?
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I've a particular reason to dislike the SA. Their perception of risk at that time (1999) was other worldly to say the least.
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I also have a long held grudge/dislike, as they failed (for some spurious, long forgotten, reason) to give me my due prize for the most £ collected during BaJ week 1962!
Last edited by: pmh on Mon 7 May 12 at 10:17
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Just reminded me, for no obvious reason, we were on one of our fairly regular forest trail bike rides yesterday when we came across a family, two parents, three kids. They waved us down to ask for directions and produced a map, compass and assorted felt pens. All were mounted on pretty basic but clearly brand new bikes ( not a speck of dirt on them so clearly they hadn't been far ). All were dressed in helmets, hi-viz vests and lycra. But the best bit is they had walkie-talkies strapped to their hi-viz jackets.
I remember my wife remarking that they were almost certainly scout leaders and civil servants to boot !
Goodness knows what they thought of us as we were doing our usual "creatures from the swamp" impression !
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I was expelled from the scouts despite having led the Woodpigeons to win the county flag not a month before.
Beer / local wench /camping related incident...
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I gave up anything to do with the scout movement after a particularly bizarre after lights out fathers & son camp, where one of the fathers fell in the fire after passing out blind drunk. It helped that he and a few others had pee'd and then vomited in it first, it had lost some of high temperature intensity, but i will always remembering picking bits of red hot fence post out of his hair and skin.
By the way, don't puke in a fire, the smell of burning vomit is, quite simply, indescribable.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 7 May 12 at 11:15
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>
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>> Statistically probably safer than being with a Scout leader? :)
>>
"Scouting for Boys" by BP.
Old joke, but I can't help chuckling.
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A humorous response but anyone with children care to answer my question?
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Well, I've had children if that qualifies CG and I certainly wouldn't let them do it the way they used to so certainly, some supervision is needed if it is to be revived.
Well done, I say, for getting round the problems in a sensible manner.
Pat
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"Well done, I say, for getting round the problems in a sensible manner."
My thoughts entirely. It's easy to criticise but sometimes a little bit of support for people, like Scout leaders who give up their time voluntarily for others doesn't go amiss.
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>> A humorous response but anyone with children care to answer my question?
Oh! you wanted somber and austere replies, why didn't you say so!
Ok, I qualify on all counts, having a child who was in beavers, and wife who was a beaver scout leader. So my thoughts.
1/ It is an elegant solution and without doubt of some use.
but
2/ I sympathise with the suggestion that we can no longer be allowed to let our children learn too make their own way in the world, because of rampant overbearing and excessive H&S legislation.
There, humourless enough for you?
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Would have been a perfectly compromising reply, but for the sarcasm at the end of it.
Pat
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It wasn't sarcasm, it was a poke at sourface.
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There, humourless enough for you?
I never said I wanted humourless and I appreciated the humorous comments, just thought that MD's comment needed some balance.
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>> The revamped scheme has been designed to comply with health and safety laws and to avoid the risk of compensation claims that saw its previous incarnation halted in 1992. >>
Problem lies with the people who interpret the laws.
I think probably nowhere in the H&S laws would you find anything that prohibits the type of activity that Scouts used to perform before 1992.
>> Possible but would you be happy with your 11year old son or daughter being invited into a an unknown strangers' house by themselves? >>
Yes. The danger, tiny though it is, lies with trusting people that you or your child are familiar with. Stranger danger is a virtually non-existent danger, it has been blown completely out of proportion to any proven and insignificant risk.
Why is it that these concerns seem to be a province of life in Britain? How many other nations/nationalities in the world exhibit this paranoid trait?
The H&S Executive:
www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm
'Health and safety' is often incorrectly used as a convenient excuse to stop what are essentially sensible activities going ahead.
The Health and Safety Executive has set up an independent panel - the Myth Busters Challenge Panel - to scrutinise such decisions."
www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/inthepublicinterest/detail.htm
"HSE's job is to prevent people being killed, injured or made ill by work."
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When I was in the scouts I got a badge for successfully lighting a fire.
My son is not allowed to light fires, but got a badge for knowing how to extinguish one.
Says it all really.
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Possible but would you be happy with your 11year old son or daughter being invited into a an unknown strangers' house by themselves? "Yes"
I suspect you would be in a minority. "Stranger danger" might be rare but I think most parent do not take a purely statistical view on the safety of their child.
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In my day it wasn't "an unknown stranger's house".
We went round our neighbours' houses, most of which we knew, and mostly by prior arrangement as my mother touted for business amongst her friends.
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>> In my day it wasn't "an unknown stranger's house".
>>
>> We went round our neighbours' houses, most of which we knew, and mostly by prior
>> arrangement as my mother touted for business amongst her friends.
Much the same our way. Most people knew their neighbours better in those days but as parents had moved into a new development in 59 just before I was born they probably knew each other even better. In fact Mum is still in contact with a few neighbours from then to this day.
As a Cub I cleaned windows for the actor Joe Black - known in Leeds as the Panto villain at the Grand Theatre and occasional performer on The Good Old Days at the City Varieties .
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Aye but...
Last summer, my son was leaving primary school. His school was ( still is come to think ) around 150 yards from our house across a green. He and the other kids around here kick a ball, or play with their dogs or mess about on their bikes or generally do other kid stuff on the green most fair, light nights. We can see them from our house.
Anyway, the end of summer term came and there was a disco thing for the leavers. They called it a "prom" whatever that means. My son went with his pals and at 8.00 it finished. It was a bright sunny mid-summer evening. I'd told him just to come home but oh no, I get a call from an irate headmaster at 8.10 to say I had to collect him.
I pointed out that if he cared to look out of his study window, across the green, that I was the fairly naffed off guy waving to him from my dining room window and that he'd be just fine. As it happened some of his friends from other schools were playing in the intervening space.
The hi-viz obsessed twonk dug his no doubt inexpensive heels in and insisted I collect him.
The world is just mad these days.
At his age, I used to cycle 5 miles into Edinburgh to school, return home and cycle, ( often in the dark ) 5 miles back for evening activities. Do those and cycle home again. OK, there was less traffic then but we now live in a small town so there wouldn't be a great deal of difference.
We are frightened of our own ruddy shadows now.
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Mon 7 May 12 at 18:36
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Yes, children could live quite free lives from 12 or so in the provinces in the fifties. The world hasn't changed all that much, but the way it is generally perceived has. In some ways this represents an improvement, but there's a sort of overheated side. People are certainly made anxious by media coverage of sensational and sordid cases.
But as has been well pointed out, people don't adopt a strictly statistical attitude to the safety of their own children. Better safe than sorry when in doubt, they think, and on the whole that is a correct attitude. Of course a minority of parents are madly and damagingly over-protective, but even the apparently insouciant ones use their instinct and sixth sense in these matters. Hardly anyone is a kiddy-fiddler or axe murderer, but there are neighbours - especially in mixed areas of large cities - to whom you happily entrust your tots, and others whose friendliness you don't encourage your tots to respond to. In the end with strangers or relative strangers your gut feeling may be all that stands between a nipper and a bad experience.
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My lad belonged to a scout group at the parish church and I think he generally enjoyed it..
the assistant scoutmaster, however, was into ' child appreciation ' He was charged after a complaint and topped himself while on bail. Only in his twenties....a sad life and end.
The scoutmaster was reasonably normal. Married, with a boy of his own in the group, he was unfortunate in that he suffered from some skin complaint. He wore a black suit when not scouting, a poor choice. He came round to our house one evening to tell us something and shed his flakes on the hall floor. He had a straggly black beard and compounded his shedding by sneezing into it leaving it embellished with strings of silver snot !
Embarrassing for all of us.
I just thought I ought to tell you that !
Ted
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From this Morning's News - CGNorwich
