Something to ponder
Here's the deal. Close to where I live, and close to the scout group I'm a leader at, is a small but nevertheless significant Asian community, and by that I mean of middle east descent rather than far east. Where the streets that they are concentrated in are is probably equi distant from three different scout groups, one of them being mine. And not one of these 3 groups has a single member from them and neither, as far as I know, do any of the guide groups in the similar area. They have white kids, black kids, far eastern kids, but no asian kids. And I am genuinely curious as to why?
Is it a religious thing? 2 of the 3 scout groups and 1 of the 3 guide groups in the area are attached to churches. Yet there are still those, including mine that are not.
Is it a class thing? Those streets are, for want of a better and less patronising word, working class. Of the 3 scout groups mine is admittedly pretty middle class, the other 2 aren't though.
Do they even know that we are there? Certainly none of the 3 groups has any great need to actively recruit, we are all fighting kids off with a stick. Other than when we opened a beaver colony 3 years ago we have done know active recruiting in living memory, the others are similar. So why would they be less inclined to know that we are there than the parents of other kids?
Is it a race thing? Are we seen as a "white organisation"? Possibly, but I see black kids turning up, why not Asian kids?
I simply don't know the answer to these questions. I don't even know if the answers matter.
But I'm curious.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Focusing our energies
For various reasons work took me to Bootle for the last few days. If you've never had the dubious pleasure of Bootle then it is a sight that you really should see. It is unbelievable. It is quite possibly the worst place to live in Britain. I mean honestly, you have no idea.
This is not somewhere with a bit of graffiti here or a broken window there. In fact there are no broken windows at all, because they are all either boarded or shuttered. Instead there are holes in the roofs. All the shops are shuttered, even when they are open. Speaking to the locals it seems that they have such a problem with theft and vandalism that it has reached a point where shops that are trying to show off what they are selling can't do so. Most heart breaking of all was the youth centre, boarded up, burnt out and covered in graffiti.
What an absolute hell hole.
And it made me wonder why I do what I do in scouting. My group draws from a very wealthy, very middle class area. While I'm sure all the kids get a lot out of what they do with me I'm also pretty sure that if they didn't have a scout group to go to that they would find plenty more to stimulate them and would still grow up well rounded and well adjusted. In actual fact shouldn't it be places like Bootle where we concentrate our efforts?
I know that sat here typing away while I eat my morning muesli that it's very easy for me to say. To ask people to volunteer their time in unpleasant places with kids that are likely to be a lot harder work than perhaps they are used is a huge ask. To try and get bums on seats in places like this would also be far easier said than done. And yet.... just because something isn't easy doesn't stop it being the truth now does it?
Food for thought indeed.
For various reasons work took me to Bootle for the last few days. If you've never had the dubious pleasure of Bootle then it is a sight that you really should see. It is unbelievable. It is quite possibly the worst place to live in Britain. I mean honestly, you have no idea.
This is not somewhere with a bit of graffiti here or a broken window there. In fact there are no broken windows at all, because they are all either boarded or shuttered. Instead there are holes in the roofs. All the shops are shuttered, even when they are open. Speaking to the locals it seems that they have such a problem with theft and vandalism that it has reached a point where shops that are trying to show off what they are selling can't do so. Most heart breaking of all was the youth centre, boarded up, burnt out and covered in graffiti.
What an absolute hell hole.
And it made me wonder why I do what I do in scouting. My group draws from a very wealthy, very middle class area. While I'm sure all the kids get a lot out of what they do with me I'm also pretty sure that if they didn't have a scout group to go to that they would find plenty more to stimulate them and would still grow up well rounded and well adjusted. In actual fact shouldn't it be places like Bootle where we concentrate our efforts?
I know that sat here typing away while I eat my morning muesli that it's very easy for me to say. To ask people to volunteer their time in unpleasant places with kids that are likely to be a lot harder work than perhaps they are used is a huge ask. To try and get bums on seats in places like this would also be far easier said than done. And yet.... just because something isn't easy doesn't stop it being the truth now does it?
Food for thought indeed.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Moments that make it all worth it
On the way home from work today I bumped into one of my former cubs who has just moved to scouts (I'll be following her very soon). Now while you shouldn't have favourites I have to confess to a real soft spot for this kid. I said that if she wanted she could come along to cubs tonight for my last night as Akela (basically a giant water fight followed by a BBQ), which she nearly ripped my arm off to do!
What was lovely though was that mum told me how thrilled this kid was that I'll be moving up to scouts and what she had been telling her friends there had come from other cub groups about me and couldn't wait to have me along.
Right now I feel about 20 feet tall!
On the way home from work today I bumped into one of my former cubs who has just moved to scouts (I'll be following her very soon). Now while you shouldn't have favourites I have to confess to a real soft spot for this kid. I said that if she wanted she could come along to cubs tonight for my last night as Akela (basically a giant water fight followed by a BBQ), which she nearly ripped my arm off to do!
What was lovely though was that mum told me how thrilled this kid was that I'll be moving up to scouts and what she had been telling her friends there had come from other cub groups about me and couldn't wait to have me along.
Right now I feel about 20 feet tall!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
This is it
Well the time has come, tomorrow (Monday) yours truly will be at his last cubs night as Akela. It seems rather self indulgent to say I'm feeling say or even to write about it as I'm not exactly going far. I'm taking over the scout troop and will be faced with the same kids I was dealing with over the last 3 years or so with my current lot following me over the next 2 and a half. It's at the same HQ and I will still be close friends with all the old cub leaders. And yet......
I started helping with cubs 15 years ago during my sixth form and it's become a part of my life that's been pretty difficult to let go of. Scouts is different to cubs, the relationship with kids that age is different. In some ways it's easier, in other ways it's harder, there certainly wont be as many "awwww.... how cute?" moments. (The time 3 of the cubs presented me with home made book marks on my birthday was cute to the point of nauseating. I still use those bookmarks by the way!) That said I'm sure it will be easier to have a more grown up conversation and let the kids just get on with things without being supervised. There will still be the 2am issues on camp but it will be less wet beds and more "will you please be quiet!"
I have had more fun than I can ever properly put into words but the time has come to move on, a new door is about to open and I'm pretty excited!
Well the time has come, tomorrow (Monday) yours truly will be at his last cubs night as Akela. It seems rather self indulgent to say I'm feeling say or even to write about it as I'm not exactly going far. I'm taking over the scout troop and will be faced with the same kids I was dealing with over the last 3 years or so with my current lot following me over the next 2 and a half. It's at the same HQ and I will still be close friends with all the old cub leaders. And yet......
I started helping with cubs 15 years ago during my sixth form and it's become a part of my life that's been pretty difficult to let go of. Scouts is different to cubs, the relationship with kids that age is different. In some ways it's easier, in other ways it's harder, there certainly wont be as many "awwww.... how cute?" moments. (The time 3 of the cubs presented me with home made book marks on my birthday was cute to the point of nauseating. I still use those bookmarks by the way!) That said I'm sure it will be easier to have a more grown up conversation and let the kids just get on with things without being supervised. There will still be the 2am issues on camp but it will be less wet beds and more "will you please be quiet!"
I have had more fun than I can ever properly put into words but the time has come to move on, a new door is about to open and I'm pretty excited!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Royalty gets it right (for once)
Regular readers will no that I am a pretty much dyed in the wool republican. I really don't see any excuse for having a head of state who is not democratically elected. That said I have nothing against them personally, none of them are particularly offensive as far as I can see and indeed on occasions they can come out and do something quite marvelous.
Like this for example. Prince Charles hosted a garden party for YOU, an organisation that is trying to boost the number of kids in London attending uniformed youth groups. As part of this all but one of the London Assembly members. And who did they fail to invite? The one and only Richard Barnbrook of the BNP.
Prince Charles, for once I take my hat off to you! The BNP have NO place at anything to do with the scouts, or boys brigade, or cadets or St John's, democratically elected or not. And Charles has stood up to these nasty little fuckers.
Fantastic!
Regular readers will no that I am a pretty much dyed in the wool republican. I really don't see any excuse for having a head of state who is not democratically elected. That said I have nothing against them personally, none of them are particularly offensive as far as I can see and indeed on occasions they can come out and do something quite marvelous.
Like this for example. Prince Charles hosted a garden party for YOU, an organisation that is trying to boost the number of kids in London attending uniformed youth groups. As part of this all but one of the London Assembly members. And who did they fail to invite? The one and only Richard Barnbrook of the BNP.
Prince Charles, for once I take my hat off to you! The BNP have NO place at anything to do with the scouts, or boys brigade, or cadets or St John's, democratically elected or not. And Charles has stood up to these nasty little fuckers.
Fantastic!
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Christian Left - Part 1
Ok, as promised, it's time to start my series on the Christian left. So lets start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!), and it's not with Jesus, or faith or all that jazz, but, over two parts, with God. Why does someone like me, someone with a science background, that reads the Guardian et al, believe in something I can't see or touch or prove the existence of?
Well to start with I guess we can't get away from the whole cultural side of things. I was brought up in a moderately religious household. My Mum is what you would call Christian with a small c and my Dad is one of those who believes there is a God but hasn't settled on any particular religion. We were semi regular at church, maybe 8 times a year (plus weddings and funerals) and it was fairly standard CofE. No guitars and tambourines for the Akela household!. You could very easily point at me and say if I had been brought up in Iran I would have been Muslim, or in Thailand I would have been Buddhist. And there is a good chance that you would be right.
It wasn't though something I thought about hard until later in life when I did a philosophy subsid at uni along side Biochemistry. And it was then that I firmly concluded that there must be something more to this world than just the material world that we see around us.
Consider this, consider what it is like to be blind. Not like shutting your eyes but no sense of sight at all. Scary isn't it? Now strip away your hearing as well, and all your other senses. What part of you is still there? Is there anything? You may think no, but it seems to me that there is something. It is that sense of being self aware. That sense of a passing of time.
Consciousness, that is what I am talking about.
Now consider the universe and what it is made up of. It's made of matter, which is interchangeable with energy, as per relativity. It's pretty freaky stuff and a lot is not yet understood about it. Yet if I am just made of matter/energy, how has it come to be aware of its own existence? I can understand how it can form complex organisms, how my body can be formed, how plants and animals can all be formed (yes I am very happy with the concept of the big bang and evolution) but for those to be self aware?
It is my feeling that there must be something else there, something else that makes me conscious. Yup, I am a dualist.
Now this is the point where someone normally pipes up with something about the Turing Box experiment. Now if you don't know much about it the google it, I can't be arsed explaining it here. Now many people will say that Alan Turing proved that you could create a robot that is fully conscious, and those people have completely misunderstood. What Turing actually proved was that theoretically at least you could create something so life like that you couldn't tell the difference between it and a conscious entity. And that is a different kettle of fish all together.
Of course dualism opens up many many more questions about sleep, death, brains, how it fits with our bodies etc etc. I don't pretend to have all these answers at all, but that doesn't mean I wont keep looking for them.
So anyway, that briefly, is why I have concluded that we have souls and in the next part it's how this leads on to God!
Ok, as promised, it's time to start my series on the Christian left. So lets start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!), and it's not with Jesus, or faith or all that jazz, but, over two parts, with God. Why does someone like me, someone with a science background, that reads the Guardian et al, believe in something I can't see or touch or prove the existence of?
Well to start with I guess we can't get away from the whole cultural side of things. I was brought up in a moderately religious household. My Mum is what you would call Christian with a small c and my Dad is one of those who believes there is a God but hasn't settled on any particular religion. We were semi regular at church, maybe 8 times a year (plus weddings and funerals) and it was fairly standard CofE. No guitars and tambourines for the Akela household!. You could very easily point at me and say if I had been brought up in Iran I would have been Muslim, or in Thailand I would have been Buddhist. And there is a good chance that you would be right.
It wasn't though something I thought about hard until later in life when I did a philosophy subsid at uni along side Biochemistry. And it was then that I firmly concluded that there must be something more to this world than just the material world that we see around us.
Consider this, consider what it is like to be blind. Not like shutting your eyes but no sense of sight at all. Scary isn't it? Now strip away your hearing as well, and all your other senses. What part of you is still there? Is there anything? You may think no, but it seems to me that there is something. It is that sense of being self aware. That sense of a passing of time.
Consciousness, that is what I am talking about.
Now consider the universe and what it is made up of. It's made of matter, which is interchangeable with energy, as per relativity. It's pretty freaky stuff and a lot is not yet understood about it. Yet if I am just made of matter/energy, how has it come to be aware of its own existence? I can understand how it can form complex organisms, how my body can be formed, how plants and animals can all be formed (yes I am very happy with the concept of the big bang and evolution) but for those to be self aware?
It is my feeling that there must be something else there, something else that makes me conscious. Yup, I am a dualist.
Now this is the point where someone normally pipes up with something about the Turing Box experiment. Now if you don't know much about it the google it, I can't be arsed explaining it here. Now many people will say that Alan Turing proved that you could create a robot that is fully conscious, and those people have completely misunderstood. What Turing actually proved was that theoretically at least you could create something so life like that you couldn't tell the difference between it and a conscious entity. And that is a different kettle of fish all together.
Of course dualism opens up many many more questions about sleep, death, brains, how it fits with our bodies etc etc. I don't pretend to have all these answers at all, but that doesn't mean I wont keep looking for them.
So anyway, that briefly, is why I have concluded that we have souls and in the next part it's how this leads on to God!
Monday, July 13, 2009
18 - 25 Year Olds in having a drink and a party shock horror
The world was in up roar last night as your ever campaigning Daily Mail brought you the shocking news that some people aged 18 - 25 went away for the weekend with their friends and had a drink. This shocking news that people of a similar age to the vast majority of students were out meeting their friends will come as bolt from the blue to those who thought they would all be at home darning their socks. Even more of a shock though is that they were engaging in the dangerous and subversive activity if playing twister, something that can surely lead down the road of destitution and crime. If only they stayed at home they could get a job as a journalist where they could spend all day surfing facebook to find non stories to fill up column space.
*Seriously, I don't think it is possible to buy this kind of PR!*
The world was in up roar last night as your ever campaigning Daily Mail brought you the shocking news that some people aged 18 - 25 went away for the weekend with their friends and had a drink. This shocking news that people of a similar age to the vast majority of students were out meeting their friends will come as bolt from the blue to those who thought they would all be at home darning their socks. Even more of a shock though is that they were engaging in the dangerous and subversive activity if playing twister, something that can surely lead down the road of destitution and crime. If only they stayed at home they could get a job as a journalist where they could spend all day surfing facebook to find non stories to fill up column space.
*Seriously, I don't think it is possible to buy this kind of PR!*
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
BT are Fuckwits
I am still here but following a bout of masterly incompetence by BT since I moved house I still have very limited internet access (I am writing this from a crappy little internet cafe). Hopefully this will be sorted shortly but until then it's difficult to post.
Just how incompetent have they been? Following my last rant down the phone at them the call centre monkey said he would put me through to the complaints department. A few seconds later I was spoken to by a different but strangely familiar voice. I had a hunch, and my hunch proved correct. On interogation this voice admited that it was the same person, he hadn't put me through to anyone different and that he was just pretending.
In the words of Littlecock, you couldn't make it up!
I am still here but following a bout of masterly incompetence by BT since I moved house I still have very limited internet access (I am writing this from a crappy little internet cafe). Hopefully this will be sorted shortly but until then it's difficult to post.
Just how incompetent have they been? Following my last rant down the phone at them the call centre monkey said he would put me through to the complaints department. A few seconds later I was spoken to by a different but strangely familiar voice. I had a hunch, and my hunch proved correct. On interogation this voice admited that it was the same person, he hadn't put me through to anyone different and that he was just pretending.
In the words of Littlecock, you couldn't make it up!
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