UKC

http://news.sky.com/story/scouts-used-to-deliver-conservative-election-leaf...

Their bribing scouts now . 

If I'd been asked to do this as a child I'd be seriously bothered about it as an adult as I've never voted conservative and could never bring myself to.  Probably my upbringing.

TWS

 > Probably my upbringing.

And your poor education.

Sorry Mrs May .

How many children have you had for breakfast ?

Um, so the post office should make a political stand about what they deliver?

The scout group leaders messed up, admitted it, reported to charity commission, resigned - that's a bit of a none story.  The fact that tory MP's asked in the first place - and they should know perfectly well that the scout group should not have done this - that's the real story. They said they thought it would be  'enriching opportunity' for them.  What a load of tripe.  Hope they loose tonnes of votes, and go to Hell.

On a serious note Mrs May.

I wonder which party was responsible for that ?

Your milk stealing, public service privatising predecessor. 

The bribe was quite interesting, the promise of an allotment, so that the Scouts could grow vegetables to supply a soup kitchen, if elected the Councillors would help ensure demand for the soup kitchen was high!

It's not clear from the article who said that - it is attributed to a "Mr Whall" who I presume is the scout leader but I'm not sure.

Anyway, it wasn't a great piece of judgement from the scout leader but seems a shame he felt he had to resign. The real story should be that the (prospective) Tory councillors thought it appropriate to offer an allotment in exchange for distributing election leaflets. You have to wonder whose allotment it was to offer out anyway...

Allotments quite often belong to the council.

Well obviously that is the real issue here, presumably the allotment is owned by the Council, ie is publicly owned, so the Tory councillors would appear to be guilty of using public funds for their election campaign. Pretty dodgy ground, maybe even criminal.

If I'd been asked to do this as a child I'd have taken their money and chucked the leaflets in the nearest bin. 

To be fair they were offering to pay the rent on the allotment, at least that is how I interpreted it, if their plan was to put pressure on the Council department which supplies the allotments to provide it for free, that would appalling.

The Scout Associate try to avoid having complete morons as leaders, they don’t always succeed, but in this case, so publicly outing such poor judgment will have left him with no choice.

My thinking, too; volunteer organisation loses volunteers, whilst weaseling politicians get away scot free.

Quite true. The fact that someone had the gift of providing a charitable group with the facilities to do public good, and made that conditional on personal gain is awful. This would have been less bad (but still wrong) if they'd used their own money as a conditional donation to the group.

The candidates should be charges with some sort of conspiracy to defraud. Or just hung.

Can we retain a sense of proportion here?    The Scouts have a long tradition of bob-a-job, where they offer to undertake tasks in return for funds.  If this was similar, someone offering a donation in return for delivering some leaflets, then it is not a big deal.

(Though, yes, the Scouts should have steered clear to avoid the perception of being politically partisan.)

Not for 30 years they haven’t.

The Scout do steer clear of being politically partisan, it is written in to their charitable objective.

Can you get real. This is councillors offering public money (allotments rent free) in exchange for political services, probably circumventing spending rules as well. This is totally illegal, this is not bob-a-job.

This.

Unphuqingbelieveable.

So some tories want the scouts to help their party, the party who are responsible for foodbanks, get elected and in return they'll pay the rent on the allotment the scouts use to provide food for foodbank and thus the starving poor who the tories have forced to rely on charity in the first place.

In a few years time their ambition, no doubt, is to normalise food banks. To dismantle that part of the welfare state that provides a safety net for the poor and destitute and leave their welfare to those private individuals prepared to spend their own time and money helping them. I imagine this is why I have seen tory MPs photographed at foodbanks. It should of course be something they're utterly ashamed of and to be honest it surprises me that none of these characters have been on the receiving end of a good kicking when they have had the cheek to show up at these places.

Running raffles at local shows, car washes, plant sales are not comparable with delivering propaganda.

But you've failed to grasp the point of the paragraph you quoted. It's not the scouts it's the fact that the reward offered was probably not the candidates to offer.

Well ok, but can you confirm that it was public money?  The article does not say that, and I'd be surprised if a reporter failed to make an issue of it if it were indeed the case, since that would be a far bigger story. 

Clearly, Bear Grylls?

The buck stops at the top, I presume he's tendering his resignation. 

I remember doing Bob a job week while in scouts less than 30 years ago.

Any reason why they may have stopped?

Decimalisation?

Child protection issues mostly I think. Even in the 1960s we found the whole thing excruciatingly embarrassing; we used to pay the minimum required amount (about 8 bob) out of out pocket money.

Why? What fraud has been committed?

When did foodbanks start? Was it before 2010? And who was in power then?

I doubt that, there is not one scrap of evidence to support that contention. Unless you are able to post a link showing that?

The article says allotments. Allotments are council owned. Of course one of the Tory candidates might be the allotment holder and was only promising to put "The Scouts" on a co-workers, but I doubt it.

Even so, the people asking the scouts to deliver leaflets could have been offering to pay with their own money.

"A bitter row has broken out after Scouts were used to deliver election leaflets for Conservative candidates. In return it is claimed they were promised money to rent space in an allotment to grow vegetables for a soup kitchen."

So it seems the candidates offered their own money in exchange for the leafleting.  The Scout leader then intended to use the money to rent the allotment. 

What you are suggesting would be a vastly more serious issue, so you should either back it up with actual evidence that it was public money being misused, or accept the more innocent interpretation.

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/tories-use-scouts-elec...

Allotments are not there for councillors to rent out in return for favours. So if they are promising that then they are in the wrong.

If the councillors are allotment holders then they do not have the right to rent out space. So they are in the wrong.

As you know I can't back it up, especially as I am in China with limited search facilities (but hey UKC works here so filling time) but bearing in mind what I said in the 2 above paragraphs I do not see why I should give them the benefit of what is a massive doubt.

And given that this is a small one-pub village, the most likely scenario is something like two mates meeting down the pub, and  one (scout master) saying:

"It'd be great for my troop to rent an allotment space, to learn about growing stuff, i've asked and there is one available", 

"Sounds good". 

"But I'm told it'll cost 50 quid rent for the year; we don't have that in the troop kitty".  

"Hmm, ok, tell you what, I'll give you the 50 quid if your kids deliver my election leaflets for me. You do bob-a-job don't you?".

"OK, done". 

So, obviously the scout leader should not have accepted the deal (in order to avoid being politically partisan), but these suggestions of misuse of public money and illegal acts are not based on an actual evidence, they are based on automatically thinking the worst of someone because they are a Tory. 

I will again quote the local newspaper (by the local reporter, who presumably originated the story).

"In return it is claimed they were promised money to rent space in an allotment ..."

They were promised money (money that they could then use to rent the allotment).  There is no suggestion in the report that this was public money or anything other than the candidate's own money.   There is no suggestion that the candidate had any involvement with the allotment or the renting of the allotment. 

So you are leaping to conclusions based on dislike of the Tories. 

The first "modern" foodbank in the UK was generally accepted to be 1997, just at the end of the Tory period in power. They have existed on and off since the 70's, and were prevalent in certain communities, generally in the north, between 1982 and 1985.

The trussel Trust are the biggest foodbank operator in the UK (yup, its big business..........), and in 2009-10,  the final year of the labour govt, they handed out 40.898 parcels. in 2016-17, that figure had risen to 1,182,954. If you are trying to infer that the tories and their policies are not responsible for the growth of foodbanks, well, lets just say we shall have to agree to disagree on that one. 

https://www.quora.com/When-was-the-first-food-bank-opened-in-the-UK-Is-it-t...

The tories are quite happy to be seen to support foodbanks; not so happy to do anything about the causes of foodbanks. 

I mainly used to mow lawns for it (well i did this for pocket money anyway) but I did all sorts of other stuff. I remember polishing a load of Tubas with Brasso at a local music shop, that was a few ££ well earned.

I didn't find it embarrassing in the slightest, what's to be embarrassed about doing a few jobs to earn money as a teenager?

Do teenagers just expect their parents to cough up for everything these days?

Had something similar ten years ago or so: I thought I had dropped off my daughter for a Saturday training session and BBQ at the Judo club, but when picking her up again learned that one of the coaches, a conservative councillor, had instead made them hand out leaflets to people on the cycle path next to the gym.

Easy solution for me, though: I just beat the shit out of the fat arsehole next practise...

CB

He (Graeme) isn't leaping to conclusions - he's making a conditional statement - "Allotments are not there for councillors to rent out in return for favours. So if they are promising that then they are in the wrong." My italics.

No I didn't say that, nor is that what you said in your post. You said they are responsible for food banks, which isn't true.

So is that a "No" to being able to prove that Tories support food banks so that they can get rid of the welfare state.

I have absolutely no issue with the contention that the use of food banks has soared over the past 9 years so actually we can agree to agree on that.

However, I do take issue with the portrayal of those who vote Tory as selfish baby eaters who warm their homes by burning poor people. It is precisely this binary "Left is good, right is bad" dogma (and the same from the other side) that contributes to the poisonous political atmosphere in the UK right now and it is simply not helpful. I think it is fair to say that, for the most part, that everyone wants the best for the country, economic growth etc, they just differ on how it should happen. If people started to look at each other that way we would have a more constructive dialogue. 

So you have just quoted a councillur circumventing allotment rules to gain an electoral advantage. QED. Good night.

Nope, wrong, I have not quoted that.   In all likelihood the councilor had nothing to do with the allotment, he was simply giving them money as payment for leafleting.

Better not underfund any schools then!

I agree.

This is a ridiculous non-issue.

We should really be worried about the actual damage the current politpcap class are doing to our country and our planet. 

But i'm not a labour voter. At least not until they come out against brexit.

Polishing a load of Tubas with Brasso?
That rather sounds like an euphonium to me...
 

a) child protection from paedophiles/abusers, b) avoiding child 'slavery' - Scouts would do a job then be given a penny or nothing.  It was still going in the early 90's, then it was whittled down to 'only do jobs for people you know', then stopped altogether. Our scouts still do work to raise funds but it's organised so the child protection issues don't occur.