Friday 28 January 2005

Boy Scouts of America: NSW Right division

Finally the rest of the world is starting to appreciate the groundbreaking work of the major Australian political parties. Even the Boy Scouts have started branch stacking,

Boy Scout volunteer Tom Willis knew something was wrong when he saw that 20 youngsters on the list for a scouting program all had the same last name: Doe.

Willis said it appeared someone was listing fake members to boost enrollment, perhaps to bring in more funding from agencies like the United Way or to make paid Boy Scout recruiters look better.

“It was just so blatant. They didn’t even try to make up names,” said Willis, a dentist from Decatur and a former Eagle Scout who serves on the board of the Greater Alabama Boy Scout Council, which runs scouting programs in northeastern Alabama.

Now the FBI is investigating whether the council padded its membership rolls. It is just the latest investigation around the country into whether the Boy Scouts have inflated their numbers.

Couldn’t you have assigned them twenty different surnames? I’ve seen a lot of membership lists with suspicious names before but never one with every name the same. Twenty people at the same P.O Box address maybe.. An entire branch paid for on one credit card perhaps.. But never the same name.

Somebody very close to me (*cough*) once made an even more cack-handed attempt at branch stacking about five years ago that foundered when somebody rang the two ‘new members’ in question and were told in no certain terms that they hated the party in question and could everyone involved please fuck off. I look forward to the Federal Police visiting that particular person any day now.

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