Where do we go from here
The Catholics start kickback
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I see from today’s papers that the reframing of the criticism of the Catholic Churches involvement in education has begun. Obviously stung by the widespread revulsion after the various reports into abuse by church members and the later cover up by the church management, an attempt is now being made to reframe the argument into one about faith and beliefs, which it isn’t. Obviously if the church authorities succeed in reframing the discussion around faith and religion, they will hope to convince us that they are the good guys.
The real issue is that vast numbers of people in Ireland do not want the hierarchy, the managers of the catholic Church in Ireland, involved in our schools because they have proved themselves incapable of placing the welfare of children before their own. As managers, the Bishops sought to protect their institution and their particular product, Roman Catholicism, in effect their brand. The correlation between their behaviour and that of the Bankers is quite striking. Both acted in their own selfish interest. They sought to protect their power and influence in the ill-begotten belief that what was good for them was good for everyone.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that their “commander in chief” will be doing the same some time soon. The idea being to suggest that the systemic failures within the arrogantly named Universal Church is a moral one rather than a psychological one. They believed and continue to believe that they know best and that such knowing is divinely derived. It was once held by many that Kings derived their right to rule from God. It was also widely believed and probably still is by many, that might is right. It is the credo of the bully. The Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere around the world acted as a bully and now seeks to perpetuate its power.
There is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal and this animal is badly wounded. Those with a genuinely held religious faith and the nutjobs risk becoming bedfellows simply because others do not agree with them. For many, and not only Catholics, faith must be an irrational proposition. Where it otherwise, they would have to prove it, not only to others, but to themselves. A task many would find impossible. Like the rump element that will always vote Fianna Fail no matter what, they have nothing else. My suspicion is that the Fianna Failers and the Irish Catholics represent the same rump and the sooner they are both consigned to the past, the sooner this society can move forward.
Ireland in 2050 by Stephen Kinsella
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I’m not sure that books like this serve any real purpose other than to describe the past and the present as a justification for then going nuts on the future. Kinsella suggests that within forty years parents will be choosing the characteristics of their unborn children. This in a society that has yet to deal in any credible way with genetically modified vegetables. A society that is deeply conservative which finds it impossible to create a convincing separation between the Catholic Church and the Irish State. A state which has only recently enacted a blasphemy law and which not so long ago saw fit to do a sneaky deal to protect the assets of that same church.
I’m not sure the author realises how far behind we are technologically or indeed how broke we are. Todays report from the Garda Inspectorate should leave him in no doubt as to the mighty gap that needs to be bridged. Personnel records that are completely paper based. An emergency response system that gets you the local Garda Station if it’s open and which cannot identify the callers location. All this supported by a unionised workforce that consider the implementation of computerised systems as new technologies, for which they should be payed a bonus. These people don’t seemed to be embarrassed by the fact that they have more technology in their own mobile phones then they have in their workplaces. The technologies for which they will gladly pay monthly fees at home, they demand payment for using at work. That’s how divorced from technological reality we are as a society.
So as a futurologist I cannot award any points to the author. The failure to examine how the vested interests in the public service will be overcome makes any timeline impossible to predict or even guess at. The extent of the systemic failures within Irish society are so great that the gap between us and the rest of Europe will only widen with each passing year. We are as likely to be a failed state in 2050 as we are to be a successful one. As a society we have yet to make the necessary choices. The next election will tell a lot.
But there were some quotable bits that impress.
The isolated, socially-distant nuclear family of the 1950’s was really an anomaly.
And I would add that it was really a creation of the American advertising industry. It was already on its way out in the America of the 1960’s when we imagined we could have it here. It required the three-bedroomed, semi-detacted housing estate which was rather late overtaking the fundamentally rural nature of Ireland that continued until the 90’s.
We don’t teach our children how to deal with uncertainty, how to deal with complexity, or how to be creative. We teach them how to regurgitate, how to seek certainty, how to hand back the ‘right’ answers, regardless of whether they understand the method through which the answer happens to arrive…
The educational system as it stands embeds a fear of not having the right answer to a question, or not showing the correct steps to achieving a solution, through the examination process.
There is no change either planned or proposed within the next ten years and the teacher unions are refusing to co-operate with any changes already proposed. So up to and including 2020, we will still be producing the same old, same old citizens who will be voting for the same old politicians and the same old policies based on jobs that stay the same. So don’t expect any change in society when the educational system is designed to produced yesterdays products.
The Irish Sweep by Marie Coleman
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I’d been waiting for this book for a while largely because of Connie Neenan’s involvement in the selling of tickets in America. While it is very much an academic work with a very full bibliography it was still a really interesting and very accessible read, which I enjoyed. It makes a very solid contribution to the story of the first fifty years of the Irish state. The story is, to a degree, one of benefit to the population as a whole but two quotes bring it right up to date.
When irish journalists and politicians began to ask questions that governments did not want to hear, they were branded as unpatriotic…
and then…
Given the large sums of money available, an even better infrastructure could have been built, and stricter legislative oversight could have ensured that the reputation and legacy of the sweepstake were less tainted.
It confirms, to my mind, just how important the call for an investigation into what went wrong in our banks is. I am also reminded of when reading Connie Neenan’s papers I was struck by that sense of them and us, our people and the others. That same attitude that bastardized patriotism as silence in the face of error and wrong doing.
Yet the real heroes appear to have been the civil servants in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs who steadfastly resisted McGraths attempts to use Radio Eireann as it’s personal advertising arm. Thanks are also due to the millions of ex-pats and others who contributed some £170 million (when a million meant something other than part of a bankers bonus) to the Irish economy. The other side of the coin is that the money may have supported the stagnation of the Irish economy for so long as laid out in Tom Garvin’s book Preventing The Future.
There may be a gap or a least a story that would have been interesting to hear some more about and that’s the one about the people who made up the boards of the voluntary hospitals. Who were they and why did they want to retain control over their individual hospitals so much? Where they the idle rich for whom involvement gave some sense of purpose? The protection of the protestant ethos I can certainly understand given what we now know about the endemic abuse within the Irish Catholic Church and the connivance of the political class with that abuse. But who were these people and what was their motivation? And why did they capitulate so completely in the late ’80’s. Did a generation simply pass and more reasoned heads prevail? Another book maybe?
Oh, one minor correction: Connie Neenan lived at 5 Croghtamore Square off the Bandon Road in Cork City and a stones throw from The Lough. Croghtamore is not a village or townland as implied in the book.
Who really runs Ireland by Matt Cooper
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An excellent read by any standards. The information is clear and concise and certainly gives the reader the story so far. I found it balanced in the telling and I base this opinion on the fact that I found myself getting a bit narked at the positive things he has to say about some of the gits involved.
Ultimately the reader is faced with some very serious questions to ask themselves. What is your attitude to capitalism? Do the upsides outweigh the downsides? Do we need the risk takers? I suspect we do. I am reminded of Rudyard Kiplings poem.
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
The last line equates this behaviour with manhood and maybe therein lies the problem. People who do risk everything consider the gains theirs. They tend to consider their companies and the people who work in them theirs also. Theirs to do with what ever they wish. Their experience is what matters.
I believe that things like businesses are greater than the sum of their individual parts. In a way it’s like having children. Yes the child is your child but you are obliged to let it have a life of its own someday. The best entrepreneurs create companies, sell them on to others (setting them free to live independently) and then start over again. In a sense they hold such things lightly in their hands. It’s the experience of creating rather than owning that’s important. When it becomes about piling wealth up for it’s own sake then it’s probably more kin to a mental health issue. Let’s call it greed.
Matt Cooper’s book lets you see the difference between these two very different animals: the entrepreneurs and the greedy. The entrepreneurs may have lost lots of money but probably won’t be ruined and probably need to be encouraged to dust themselves off, starting all over again. The greedy need a smack in the mouth, to have what they have taken off them and to never be let loose again. I think there’s even a bible story about that somewhere.
What is pretty obvious is that bankers are not entrepreneurs. They risked other peoples money while piling up their own. So they need a smack in the mouth. The politicians and civil servants who should have been watching out for the public interest and I mean all of the publics interest, not just their mates in wellies, they too need a smack in the mouth.
What do the voters who voted for FF in all those elections need? They need to take personal responsibility for the choices they made and pay up for the free ride they thought they were getting. As for the unions: they need to cop themselves on big time and soon.
Unenlightened self-interest
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Two issues have become entangled in my mind this week. One is the Copenhagen climate summit and the other is the attitude of the unions in Ireland to the financial crisis we are facing. I have heard that certain politicians in the US have stated that they will not vote for any laws designed to cut carbon emissions in the US if it affects the coal industry there. In other words local jobs and the reactions of local communities in Virginia are being put before any global concerns other people might have. It certainly gives credence to the cliché that all politics is local. I don’t blame the Senators involved for they are representing the views of their constituents.
The unions in Ireland are probably in a similar pickle having marched their army all the up the hill they must be finding it hard to decide what to do next. The problem they face is that union meetings are attended by those who think it worth their while to do so. People make speeches about how they won’t stand for this, that and the other but make the unfortunate assumption that they will get all their wishes met without a shot being fired. Things get complicated when they go home and find that their own, relations, friends and neighbours are the ones footing the bill for having their wishes met. My wife is a nurse and the sole income earner in our house. She does not want to take industrial action, protest or generally make an eejit of herself because she recognizes the connection between what she is paid and her neighbours, friends and community can afford to pay.
Herein lies the connection between the coal miner in Virginia and the ICTU spokespeople: neither seem to be able to see beyond their own self-interest. Their horizon does not seem to extend beyond the small limited worlds inhabited by people just like themselves. The ICTU can’t seem to see that their protestations at the effect cuts will have on their members and on the poor with whom they seem to have unilaterally allied themselves, would be far better served by civil and public service reform. The unions are the single biggest obstacle to efficient delivery of services to the poor. I simply cannot understand why anybody working in the civil and public services would not want some degree of modernization and change within the service. Or maybe the reality is that only people with an inability to handle change work in the civil and public service: it attracts people who want stability and certainty and no surprises. Yet I find that hard to believe. So I suspect that it is the union activists within the various occupations that pose the problem. This view was reinforced when I heard a union representative on the radio refer to the normal give and take of union-employer negotiations. She actually thought this is business as usual. She simply doesn’t get it. Her world is limited to the people she represents just like the Senators and Representatives for Virginia.
Neither can see the big picture. Neither can see that change is coming no matter what they or anyone else thinks about it. For the planet we humans are just another form of life. Microbes and humans are all life forms and equally deserving of respect. It is only we humans that believe we are in some way special, in some way in control of nature. Life responds to its environmental conditions. When those conditions support evolution and change, life evolves and changes. And only those life forms with the ability to adapt to the changing conditions survive. Ask the mammoths if you can find one.
The unions and the coal miners would have us believe that the craft of flint tool making should be maintained. As should maybe that of the cooper or hod carrier. My forefathers were blacksmiths for eight generations but they are no more. They were once the leading technologists of their day. Or maybe I should bemoan the decline of voice telephony and it’s replacement with VOIP. My skills, which were considerable, were no longer required after the dot.com crash and were probably on their way out for some time before that. I went from being leading edge technology to legacy technology in less then twenty years. I’d much prefer the union of which I was a member agitating to create a structure that supports speedy transition between technologies rather than to support jobs for which their is no market. Imagine a world where you choose an activity for a period of years, say ten. Then it’s assumed you will spend two years training for which you will be paid. Then you work again and so it moves on. But no because the unions are so busy protecting the teachers that the education system is going to crap. I say this as a parent who has spent many years fighting that system and getting three kids through an archaic, learn by rote, innovation sapping load of crap. That it seems to be only slightly better at third level is not encouraging and I say that as a full time student myself.
Imagine a world where rather than protectionism we had adaptability. Imagine if we had courses in change management rather than employment law. Imagine if we had unions that put their considerable resources into helping their members manage the changes and adapt to them in a way that maintained their self-respect and sense of worth rather then turned them into C.A.V.E men (Citizens Against Virtually Everything). Surely we can do better then blowing mountains apart along with all the lifeforms that live on them just so that we can do what our fathers and grandfathers used to do.
Has anyone accepted responsibility?
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Has anyone in this country actually accepted responsibility for their part in the calamity that was the property bubble? It seems that all those who signed the various wage agreements hold everyone else responsible for their consequences. So let me be the first: in so far as I voted for all agreements up to August 2001 I accept my complicity in the creation of the bubble that burst upon us all. For me it was not so much the wage increases as the other elements of the agreements that won my vote. In those days I could not see far enough ahead to know what was to happen but I had been through one bubble already, the dot com bubble and soon recognised the signs.
I lost my job (somewhat willingly I might add) to the dot.com crash and many others did too. One of the consequences I found out recently was a drop in class size in the CIT Software Degree from 120 down to its current 1st year intake of 20 or so. At the graduation day last week there were 220 business graduates. I’d imagine that the intake for business courses this year is just as high. The absence of planning is obvious. But such is the nature of the system within which we live.
One of the functions I assign to government is planning for the future of the country. They have the resources for that type of thing. The CSO have the data and it should be possible for them to extrapolate some distance into the future and plan accordingly. So it seems strange that the courses offering the types of skills the economy supposedly needs are running down in numbers while those creating increasing numbers of managers are being expanded. Strangely the system is still producing candidates for the very jobs that we need to eliminate from the employment environment: those of administrators.
The problem is that 3rd level institutions are paid on the basis of the numbers of students they have enrolled. So the plan is to get ‘em in the doors, put them through the mill and spew them out the other side whether they have any function within the economy or not. Surely it would be better to incentivize the sector to produce graduates that are aligned with those industries been fostered and supported by the government. This requires a plan with a horizon of at least four years.
Coincidently my eldest son is currently doing his masters in eBusiness in UCC. This masters is funded by the EU because in their wisdom they have decided that the EU will need business leaders with skills in programming, databases, and networks i.e. smart economy workers. So the EU saw the need even if the Irish government did not and they were willing to put their money where their mouths are.
Having read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman I too am willing to put Irish taxpayers money where my mouth is and am doing a degree in software and computer networks in CIT. All going well I will qualify in 2013 just in time to play my part in a smart economy on the rise but only if the planning starts now. This government do not have the capacity to plan for that day.
ICTU says “Get up, stand up”.
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Today I received some paper for recycling in the post. It has gone the way of all political advertising that I receive. I took it upon myself to let him know my response by contacting him through his website unionconnect.ie.
Mr Begg, You saw fit to send me a letter and some stickers in the post. I, therefore assume the right of reply. During the 19 years I spent at work I was a union member and spent a period as a shop steward. My father was secretary of his union and advocated membership all his life. That tradition, that assumption that unions have a role to play that is always honest is trashed by years of compliance with IBEC and FF. You must bare your responsibility for the current crisis. You were perfectly happy to see builders at work, competitiveness eroded. For ICTU saw only the short-term gain and the money in members pockets. A curse on all your houses for you have failed us all. I can [not] believe you as I can [not] believe IBEC or politicians. You too have become a “vested interest group” and as such must be treated with suspicion. You failed to get up or stand up for future generations. You were short-sighted and you represent short-sighted people. And yet you, like your fellow travellers, seem incapable of acknowledging your part and as a result are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Your’s
This nonsense from Mr. Begg is symptomatic of the problems we face as a nation. It is further typified by the behaviour of management in CIE with regard to the fraud and theft that they are now attempting to cover up. These all belong to the same class of people who do not seem to realise that the game is up. We know what you have been up too. We know that Ireland has been governed and managed at all levels of society by individuals who represented vested interests and even as they fool themselves into believing that they are legitimate interests, the failure to recognise the interconnectedness of the society as a whole should be a source of shame to them all.
The reality is that if you gain someone somewhere else is loosing. Whether its a cleaner from Latvia or a farmer in Uganda or a factory worker in China, all services must be paid for by someone somewhere. We make a choice. ICTU oversees incompetent teachers at all levels in the system refusing to set any kind of standards. Surely it is not reasonable to give the same levels of protection to the incompetent and the lazy as to the honest and willing. The INO protects restricted practices that increase the workload of those fellow union members trying to make a broken system work. Unions protect the abusers of the workplace. We all know that civil servants treat sick days as annual leave days. It has always been thus and unions have not only sanctioned that but supported that.
Mr. Begg you have lost your way because in your heart you know you have become part of the problem. I had hoped that you were returning to your roots by fighting for the rights of migrant workers abused by Irish employers but now I wonder. Now you are back with your mates, shouting and screaming stupid slogans: “What do we want? blah, blah”. I remember it well. Student marches back in the 70’s. But I was young and innocent. I did not realise that our nation, our people do not see themselves as one nation, one people. They see only narrow sectional interest.
I’ll “get up, stand up” when you cease to protect and expel members from your unions that abuse the common good. I’ll support a political party when it acts in the interest of the common good and not for political advantage. Another generation is lost as we struggle to come of age, to mature sufficiently to recognise that what we do unto others we do unto ourselves. For we are a community, interconnected in ways we have yet to accept but which are easily understood. Will you watch as the planet burns? Still waving your banners in pursuit of the farthings and the hapennies. I suspect you will for in order to keep your job and maintain your position you too, like Ahern and Cowan and the bankers and the employers, you too must hear no evil, see no evil and thereby pretend you are not the devils sidekick.
Technical Briefing – Project 1
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The speech involved a powerpoint presentation. The text below is the notes from the ppt but I didn’t use them after the first slide. Ran a bit over time at 11min+ but given the amount of information I was trying to cover I’m not surprised. Just need to be tighter on the extras. Pleased overall. Evaluation was good.
__________________________________
Slide 1
Slide 2 
Household Occupants
Slide 3
This is the record of a single household
Slide 4
Slide 5 
Form B2
Form N
Slide 7
This final Form is Form N. The form doesn’t add much information on the individual housholds because it only lists religious affiliation. But it’s the stuff up the top that can be useful in your research. We have the County as Cork East Riding. The Parliamentary Division as Cork South East. The District Electoral Division is Carrigaline. We can also see the official name of the town land or street, the barony and the Civil Parish. Note that the Civil Parish, the Roman Catholic Parish and the Church of Ireland Parish can be 3 very different things. All this information is very useful if your extend your search further to local maps and maybe even to the Griffiths Valuations maps of some 60 years earlier. But that will have to wait for another occasion.
An attempt to help myself
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Sometime last friday morning a friend of mine took his own life. For whatever reason this man whom I have known for almost thirty years choose a path that leaves untold sorrow and pain in its wake. In recent years we were not as close as we once were. Our families were at different stages: mine growing into adulthood, his still children and teenagers.
I suspect that the relationship was also in some way a victim of the Celtic Tiger. I ignored the boom for the most part, seeking spiritual growth and enlightenment at a time when he was deeply embedded in the construction bubble that eventually burst. So the two families drifted apart except for birthdays and special occasions. My wife and I being Godparents to one of his children. My daughter babysitting once in a while and maybe taking on the role of a big sister on Bebo and by text.
I am left to wonder if had I paid a little more attention to the world beyond my mind would I have been able to say or do something that might have made a difference. You see no matter how many times you read about how it is not our fault, when it smacks you in the face you react just like everyone else. You ask the same questions of yourself, you feel the same sense of disbelief and delude yourself into thinking that you have the power to save someone, if only in hindsight.
The only way I could have helped is to have known. And I didn’t. I didn’t know the recent history of this man’s life. The ads are running on TV telling us to talk to someone. They are directed at teenagers and show the anguish of friends at their own inability to help someone who simply won’t talk about the problems they face. I know I was available. I know I would have listened with love and understanding. I know I would have helped… had I known. But I didn’t.
That I didn’t is down to the awesome responsibility of freewill. Freewill is an oft misunderstood gift from God. A God whose creation flows in a particular direction and with which flow we are invited to get in touch. Invited, not forced because it simply doesn’t work that way.
My current understanding of life tells me that death is not something we should be afraid of but neither is it something we should bring upon ourselves. The span of our lives is determined by our souls purpose and it is therefore for our soul to determine when that purpose is served or to decide that that purpose is no longer achievable in this lifetime. Given how unaware the majority of human beings are, it is probably wiser to leave the span of our lives to the circumstances of our lives.
My friend is no more. Yet all relationships continue at the level of the soul so in that sense there is no time and place, only experience. We will share time and space again even if we don’t recognise each other and in that I find comfort. But in the meantime there is the week ahead. There is the emotion of loss, of anger, of deeply felt pain. For those closer to him then I was, those whose daily lives have a terrible hole in them, the weeks will be months and the months will be years. My fervent hope is that they will not suffer in silence or go softly into the night but that they will scream their pain loudly so that we all can hear, and listen, and never have to say “if only I had known, maybe I could have helped”.
Special Occassion Speeches – Project 5
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This project is about accepting an award and doing it in a time of 5 to 7 minutes. I am learning that there is a real need to manage your speaking environment (for want of a better phrase). By this I mean briefing the Toastmaster in detail as to what way you want things to work. In this case there was a need to set the scene, to do an actual award and to provide a physical token of the award.
I didn’t give my Toastmaster enough of a briefing in hindsight. I didn’t say where I wanted him to stand, tell him where I wanted to sit and so on. The result was a bit too toastmaterish when in actual fact an element of role playing was required. So my advice would be to clearly separate the Toastmasters introduction from the role play of the award. Another thing to watch is time. My time was 7 min 24 sec (I recorded the speech with a dictaphone) but the Timekeeper started when the role play started resulting in a time of 8 mins 40 secs. So clarify that the time is to start at your first words of the actual speech.
WARNING! This is a made up speech made on some of my own personal history but with elements tweaked to suit my own purpose in the project.
Introduction by Toastmaster:
Acting the role of the Chief Scout, I will be presenting an award to Shay for which he will make an acceptance speech. He has asked me to point out that while such an award does exist in scouting it would never be accepted with a speech in this way. Each February 22nd is celebrated as Founders Day and a list of those receiving awards for their contribution to Scouting is published.
Intro by Chief Scout
For various reasons this is the first opportunity I’ve had to present a Silver Elk to someone who has had a long career in Scouting starting with 1st Dublin, then with 12th Cork and now with 1st Cork. Unknown to many people he has also had a long association with The Irish Girl Guides but I’ll leave him tell that story himself. So, for services to Scouting over many years, I would now like to present this Silver Elk award to Group Leader Shay McInerney.
Acceptance speech
My thanks to the Chief Scout for the very special effort that I know he has made to be here tonight. I know how busy he is these days. When I saw the list of names on the awards list last February I was suitably impressed. Many of them were people I’d known for many years.These were all people I knew deserved to be recognised for their contribution.I was surprised to find my name on the list.Over the years I had come to associate the awards list with a certain generation within Scouting.A generation before mine.It was a bit of a shock to find myself to be part of that older generation.
There are more than 28 million Scouts, youth and adults, boys and girls, in 160 countries.Add to that another million Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in 145 countries. So you have what can only be described as a global movement. Baden-Powell never set out to form a world wide movement.I never set out to receive an award. I joined because it seemed a good idea at the time. In fact I joined twice.
My first time was at about seven when I joined my local Unit in Finglas. Back in the 60’s I was given a booklet of prayers and told to learn them off. I lasted three weeks.
My second attempt was ten years later. A friend of mine persuaded me to join 1st Dublin Venture Scout Unit. That was 1977 and thanks mainly to people like John Fox and Paddy Halton, 1st Dublin was the place to be. It was a time of great change and 1st Dublin was in the centre of that change.
They had one of the first Beaver Units in the country. They ran the first, then experimental, mixed Scout Troop in the country. The Venture Unit had its own minibus. They were a specialist caving group and part of the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation.
Lads in their late teens on the north side of Dublin city were more likely to have a trade then be going to college. I was able to work with electricians like Dick Wilson, the unit leader. Plumbers like his brother Willie and carpenters like Sean Lyons. Helping these guys was useful and what you did counted. When I joined they were central to the preparations for the SAI 70th anniversary camp taking place the following year. Almost every weekend we headed for Inistioge to work on preparations for that camp.
The experience of being on staff on an international camp is the ultimate in Scouting for me. It ticks all the boxes in terms of contribution and fellowship. It can make a lasting difference in a young adults life. It certainly did to mine. I staffed the Electronics base and as a result made it my career. I met my wife on that camp. That brought me to Cork and to 12th Cork Sea Scouts. I could not have done Sea Scouts without the support of people like Tom McMullan, Dinny Mulcahy, Jerry Aherne and Mick Murtagh.
Several of these Scouters were involved with the Fire Service. Meetings were often held in the Fire Station in Anglesey Street. Many of these meetings ended suddenly. The Call bell sounded and half the meeting left to answer a fire call. “Be prepared” was at a new level.
Being married to an Irish Girl Guide leader also worked very well for me. We shared activities, camps, transport and equipment. We had a calendar on the wall in the kitchen with an A4 page per month. The rule was that who ever booked the slot first, the other one had to find the baby sitter. It encouraged forward planning, let me tell you.
Sometimes things happen that are not planned. Like when my family moved to France in 1989. We used to take our kids to the only local fast food outlet on a Saturday. We noted scouts going into a building across the street. After a few weeks we decided to say hello. Within a month I was their Scouter. No police vetting in those days. They had no leader for scouts and my being there kept that troop open until they found a leader. They spoke little English and I spoke little French. But it worked none the less.
And the work goes on. Now I find myself as an elder lemon and Group Leader. We have new age ranges, a new programme and the challenge of integrating two different traditions. We have one hundred years of Scouting behind us. We face into some hard economic times. Scouting is about using your initiative and making whatever you have work. I am confident we will succeed. Thank you, fellow Scouters.
