I have never been able to make up my mind about the Boy Scout movement. I know I had no desire to join them when I was a nipper and in fact I didn't know anyone who did. Still, they never did me any harm and at least those of my age who did join them avoided the sort of mischief me and my mates got up to!
However, as regular readers of these distinguished columns - who said that? - will know, I am not above changing my mind when faced with incontrovertible truth which flows, so they say, from 'the mouths of babes and sucklings'. Well, young master Alex Rukin, a Boy Scout with the badges to prove it, is well past that stage of life and instead of growing steadily more stupid as most of us do, he actually retains his wisdom.
The Telegraph has a report, including a YouTube video, on yesterday in parliament in which Master Rukin, accompanied by his Dad - presumably for the purposes of carrying his brief-case - appeared before a Select Committee of the House looking into the 'porkies' the statistics of the greedy fat cats leeching onto this ridiculous HS2 train scam:
A nine-year-old boy scout has accused High Speed Two bosses of being "really really bad" at maths and making things up during a Parliament appearance amid concerns of the project's spiralling budget.
Alex Rukin, from Kenilworth in Warwickshire, accused the controversial rail project's managers of not being able to use a map properly and offered to personally help them work out the sums.
This, according to The Telegraph, instantly "triggered a detailed response from the Department for Transport's lawyers". I bet it did given that 'Dim Dave' stands foresquare behind the project. Need one say more?
