With the announcement of the General Election on 6th May you would be forgiven for thinking I’m getting all political, but not just yet – today I’m going to rage against the banks.
Over the last ten years I have been a signatory on various bank accounts for Scout Groups – Ormskirk Network while I was on the Exec and currently Ormskirk Crew and Ferrets Explorer Scout Unit. All three accounts have been held with Natwest or Royal Bank of Scotland, generally because their “parent” accounts are also held with those thanks.
When leadership teams or committees change there is a process to go through to change the signatories on an account and this is the right and proper way to prevent fraud and other crimes that could be assisted by having a few hundred quid from a Scout Group but each and every time I have tried to change an account’s mandate the bank – RBS or Natwest – has screwed up.
Twice in the last month I have discovered that mandates sent in last year were not processed meaning I have had to once again track down the old signatories to remove themselves and round up the new signatories to go into a branch and prove to the bank who they are.
Staff in the bank are usually very apologetic but never have they been able to offer me an adequate explanation as to why it happens – “it’s just one of those things” they’d say. No. It’s not one of those things, it is systematic incompetence and it needs to be sorted out now.
So would someone from RBS group’s social media team (you do have one of those, right?) please contact me with an explanation of what changes you are going to make to stop this happening again and personally take responsibility for the latest changes to our mandates – one for Ferrets’ account with RBS has just been sent in and I’ve just received forms to complete again for Ormskirk Crew’s Natwest account after the last set submitted last May went AWOL. My email address is michael@michaelnolan.co.uk. I’m waiting.
Image creative commons licenced by Howard Lake.
Update 7th April 2010: Received an email from a representative of HSBC offering their services. Still no reply from RBS Group.
This place was a big part of my childhood. This is the location of 5th Ormskirk Scout Group, linked to the Parish Curch, hidden next to the graveyard from all but those in the know. I attended Cubs from age 8, then Scouts when I was 10½ before helping as a Leader up until I went to University.
The 5th didn’t have a Venture unit so I joined 9th Ormskirk (Christ Church, Aughton) and coming back to Ormskirk after University, a few of us started up an Explorer Unit in Parbold but the 5th is where my heart will always be.
It was sad to see 5th Ormskirk close ten years ago but changing populations in the town made it near impossible for three groups to survive and prosper. A few weeks ago, the building having stood empty for years was finally demolished.
It was strange going back to see the space where the hut once stood but this isn’t a time to look back with regret, as Lord Baden Powell once said:
Scouting is a movement because it keeps on moving forward.
If it stops moving it becomes an organisation and is no longer scouting!
Elsewhere in the District things certainly are moving forward. By the summer there will be a fantastic new Scout and Guide headquarters in Parbold. Plans for a new District Headquarters are under-way in Lathom. Nationally, the number of young people enjoying Scouting is growing.
So here’s to 5th Ormskirk – gone home but not forgotten.
Explorer Leaders weekend up in the Lake District was this weekend. Stopped over at Rydal Hall in the bunkhouse. Well, we were going to be in the bunkhouse until the electric went out:
Large quantities of candles came to the rescue until we got upgraded to the main hall which looks like this and has a library, drawing room and even a “Bishops Room”. The Bishop wasn’t in so we sat in there for a few drinks.
Saturday was supposed to be a day on the hill but with the weather forecast looking ropey we spent the morning in sessions before heading for a little walk to Ambleside.
Sunday involved a walk round Rydal up to Grasmere. Lunch at Greens Cafe involved a 30 minute wait for coffee but a very nice cumberland sausage baguette. Blagged a lift back to Rydal from Ash (fresh from his stomp around Fairfield) to give me enough time to pop in at Booths to buy some beers for the Ormskirk Baron.
One thing to come out of the weekend was the suggestion of running a course for Explorers to help them get organised. Thinking of calling it something like Getting Organised… now where have I heard that before 
See the full set of photos on Flickr.
Ferrets started back this week and since our planning meeting was just after a large quantity of snow had dumped itself over West Lancashire we decided to have a go at building a snow hole. By the time we met on Monday evening, the snow had started to ice up and the plan was looking considerably more ropey. Not to be put off we grabbed a large cardboard box, some spacehoppers and started shovelling. The results were far more impressive than I imagined!
Not only was there enough space in there to crawl through (getting very wet in doing so) but it was able to take a bit of weight:
It held under direct pressure for a while before finally giving way:
See all the photos on Flickr.
I spent a good proportion of last weekend doing web development – what an exciting life I lead! First up on Friday night I finally managed to get a few moments to knock up a new Advent Calendar. Basically the same symfony-powered site as last year (which is also available for them’s that missed it) but with a new colour scheme and now using the commentable behavior plugin instead of my homebrew effort.
On Saturday I headed up to Waddecar to work on the new West Lancashire Scout County website. Mark Charlton, Pierre and myself did most of the work in a weekend before the summer but life caught up with us and it never got finished. So in 7 hours it was polished off, and that included accidentally running:
$ symfony propel-build-all
Learnt my lesson now 
I’m pretty happy with the site for a first release. The top navigation bar is quite neat – a bit of JavaScript created using sfPJSPlugin which can be included on other sites in the West Lancs “network”. Should hopefully build a bit more cohesion between the various sub sites. Options in the back end allow it to be customised with different colour schemes and functionality. Already Network are interested in having some extra buttons to use across Local Scout Network sites.
My already-infrequent blog entries might be a bit less frequent while I’m updating the Advent Calendar but I’m going to try to post occasionally to the Web Services blog.
I noticed earlier today that Google Maps seems to have improved its satellite coverage for the UK. I haven’t noticed any announcements about it but you can now see pretty cool images of all sorts of places:
It’s not complete, but it’s a lot better and more recent imagery that before, and it doesn’t have a join running right through my house!
Update: Seems they updated on 2nd June.
Really nice and pretty relaxed weekend up in the Lakes for DESC. Went up Friday night with Hugh (thanks for driving!) and the realisation that I had to camp in March came to me all of a sudden. Tent looked its usual saggy self once put up on a GT slope but managed to find a line for my thermarest between the mounds. Wasn’t too cold at night once I’d wrapped my towel around myself for a bit of extra insulation.
Saturday Martin and I got permission of go off and do our own thing so we met up with Tim for a little walk. Parked up in Patterdale and walked St Sunday Crag, Fairfield, Dollywaggon Pike, Nethermost Pike and Helvellyn. About 20km in all taking 8 hours. Tim’s done the business on spareweekend.com so check out the details there.
Sunday the Explorers tried out the new low ropes course at Great Tower. It’s pretty cool and a great asset to the site. Unfortunately one of the trees has fallen down taking out a couple of obstacles so it’s not a complete circuit at the moment.
Numbers were down for DESC but in terms of atmosphere and activities it was as good if not better than previous years and I think the Explorers catering in smaller groups is a model for future events. But please someone stop me from making scrambled egg next time
