They Weren’t Prepared

Bear Grylls bemoans the lack of volunteers prepared to run scout troops.

Waiting lists to join the Scouts are soaring because of hysteria over child abuse, it has been claimed.

Chief Scout Bear Grylls said 35,000 children are unable to join the organisation because of a dearth of volunteers.

Campaign groups said adults are being put off by ‘incredible bureaucracy’ regarding child protection, and that volunteers have resigned over the issue.

We can file this one under “entirely foreseeable”. Much like the dearth of male teachers in our schools. Given the paedogeddon hysteria, what adult – especially white, middle-aged men – would go anywhere near a school classroom or a scout hall?

When I was growing up, my father used to run a scout troop. In those days, adults were co-opted by friends or work colleagues to run such ventures. You just turned up and got on with it. It worked. But since then, we’ve had a moral panic and the absurd vetting procedure that, frankly, has eroded the trust that once existed between children and adults. I would not do as my father did as I refuse, absolutely, to undergo this process as I refuse to enable it.

No, paedogeddon is not upon us. What is upon us is a mass hysteria based upon a few exaggerated cases and in  some cases the accusations of fantasists.  The amount of child sex abuse has been massively over-stated and the panic, ironically enough, has been stoked by none other than the venerable organ that is now bemoaning the lack of scout leaders. Well, you helped create this mess. Suck it up, frankly.

8 Comments

  1. Precisely. The vast majority of child abuse happens in the home, by immediate family, people brought into the family circle (the classic live in boyfriend syndrome), and relatives of the abused. The amount by random third party strangers, even ones in positions of authority such as scout leaders, teachers, sports coaches etc is minuscule by comparison. Yet it is that proportion that everyone concentrates on to the exclusion of the bit they’d rather not have to face up to – that the collapse of the nuclear family has increased the likelihood of child abuse many fold.

    The biggest single thing the authorities could do to prevent child abuse would be to ban single mothers from living with any man not the biological father of her children, and refuse to pay welfare payments to any that do (not sure how you’d manage with the 5 kids by 5 fathers brigade, they’d have to live alone whatever I guess). That would prevent more child abuse cases than all the vetting of volunteers who might happen to have contact with children ever could. Yet it would never happen, despite what we are repeatedly told ‘If it saves just one child we must do it!’. That mantra only seems to apply to (basically) treating middle class white men as all potential paedophiles. When it comes to the families that abuse kids, not so much keenness for action.

    • The vast majority of child abuse happens in the home, by immediate family, people brought into the family circle (the classic live in boyfriend syndrome), relatives of the abused and Pakistani grooming gangs.

      Fixed for you, Jim.

  2. I am hoping that a few Scout volunteers will post on here, but the three I know keep telling me how pi**ed off they are with the Scout Movement and the vast amounts of paperwork that they – unpaid volunteers – are now expected to do; not only the regulatory stuff but the crap that falls continually from head office.

  3. I was an Assistant Scout Leader in the 1980s, I dropped out of the system as work commitments meant I was no longer readily available. Then when I retired I was asked if I would like to help as a committee member of another troop. Even though I would have no contact with the scouts except knowing them and their parents socially I was told that I would need to be vetted. this despite the Scouting movement knowing I had been vetted for Official Secrets Act reasons. I declined the invitation .

    • It’s the vetting that makes damned sure I will have nothing to do with that or any other voluntary organisation involving children. I am not a criminal, I don’t expect to be treated as if I am one and I will not enable this hysterical behaviour.

  4. And of course, the problems caused by the lack of male role-models in schools is exacerbated by the ensuing feminisation of our education system leading to children of all ages being subject to a misandrist left-wing feminist brainwashing. When young boys (under 10 yrs old) are subtly told that they’re worthless potential rapists, is it any wonder that so many just give up on academic achievement and follow the “gangsta culture” as this gives them a feeling of self-worth, albeit a perverted one in the view of a rational adult (there are a few left).

    It WILL all end in tears, but knowing who to blame will not help to put matters right – especially with pseudo-male apologists of the like of 12yr-old Owen Jones scribbling his hot air & cliché-ridden agitprop nonsense.

  5. It isn’t just the education system that is being feminised, our local scout group now recruits more girls than boys.

    When the group was formed post-WWII ‘dads and lads’ demolished an old army hut and rebuilt it as their HQ. Later on they raised funds and had a permanent building erected on council land. Because the land was leased the building became the council’s at the end of the lease but as the rent was only £1 per annum no-one bothered.

    Then the council brought in commercial rents and grant aid to community groups. The grant always arrived months after the rent demand and only after the group’s statement that it was compliant with council policies had been approved.

    One year the group received a lottery grant. This pushed the ‘cashflow’ into the next tier of Charity Commission reporting so they had to pay for a charted accountant to sign-off the accounts.

    Yet still parents volunteer – amazing!

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