there is a few people who have correctly identified that bear is the chief scout, (unfortunately) and suggestion is that as he is chief scout he must represent scouts (fair point) and therefore all scouts are going to copy him and go down a flooding longchurn, or in fact all rescues from caves must be scouts,
reading through back issues of decent where reports of rescues and indeed the figures for the past years rescues I am unable to find any reference to scouts having to be rescued, I may have missed one as I have only skimmed through the last 10 years.
I know from my scout county that we take safety very seriously, and our kit is up to date.
I would like to say when I am out caving with scouts that all the cave parties I see meet the standards that our county set, very sadly this is definitely not the case.
Our sport has got to rely on young blood to come through, so if not the scouts or the universities where does the cavers in the UK expect to get them from.
So carry on bashing the scouts, carry on telling the whole world that there the cause of the problems, all the young people I know will appreciate it.
Or maybe lets try to encourage our young people, lets educate them and train them properly in caving.
as for Bear, fortunately for the caving world all the scout teams I know do not follow his example.