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.

Youth organisations, such as the Scout Movement, are less desperate for money than volunteers. Whilst more money is all well and good, it is of a far far lesser importance than having the adult volunteers in order to run the meetings and events. The amount of paperwork that needs to be done is exorbitant, the number of regulations massively excessive. There are forms for this, forms for that, forms for the other. Yes, it is all intended for the safety of the kids, but considering that it is all done by volunteers, the excessive paperwork puts many off.

There is also the problem of society, which often views any adult - especially men - who want to do this sort of volunteering [or even as a job, such as teaching] as potential or likely paedophiles. The CRB forms that need to be filled out are ridiculous and take stupid lengths of time to come back. I filled one out at least three or four months ago, and it has still not been returned. And since you are supposed to have a separate CRB form for every activity in which you may have some - even fleeting - contact with children, it is nothing more than absurd.

Most youth organisations have - certainly the Scout Movement does - waiting lists of children who want to join, but can't because there is not enough adult volunteers to provide the service. Throwing money at it won't make the blindest bit of difference on its own. It doesn't matter how much "spare" money Balls can dig up unless the whole culture around youth organisations are reformed. Simplify and streamline the paperwork, for a start. Give the Criminal Record Bureau a damn good kick up the back side, and make it necessary to have only one check which can be carried across various organisations. But most importantly, society as a whole needs to understand the reasons that people volunteer in youth organisations - to pass on the knowledge that they have, and to enable a new generation to have great experiences they had as a child.

No posts this weekend, I am away on a Scout camp with my old unit - as it is the 50th annioversary of its founding, and the centenery of the Scouting movement.

It should be fun - playing with fire, poking it with sticks, singing camp fire songs...

So try reading some of the blogs in my sidebar instead!

* even though it is no longer in use, it's still the most well known scouting phrase.

UPDATE: It was a fun, but very long weekend. Unfortunately, it rained Saturday evening and Sunday mor ning and early afternoon. Still had fun playing with fire, though!