Ah here we go, the twice-yearly grinding of teeth!
Honest questions. Do our colleagues in the Scout Movement or those working in the Local Authority Youth Service moan that they don’t get State recognition? What about the ACF, SCC or VCC? Do they also feel they are hard done by? If the answer is no, why do we feel we’re any different? After all, we often say on here that we’re nothing more than uniformed youth leaders, so why is there an expectation that we should get more than other ‘youth leaders’ do? I recall a previous Regional Commandant C&E of short stature saying he’d never come across such a medal-hungry organisation as us! You just have to look at the comments on the QPMJ thread and the hopes for a KCIII Coronation medal to see why he thought that. Are we over-egging our own pudding?
And by the way, in my experience, State awards to the more junior ranks and by that I mean the lower levels of Orders such as MBEs and OBEs are most definitely earned; I can’t comment on those for the high-priced help