To think IF what dd says is true these parents are freeloading horrors?

[listsandbudgets]

DD has just come back from Brownie camp. It was £80 for 3 nights away including some great activities and all food etc which I thought was quite good value.

She says one of the girls in her dormitory kept saying that other girls parents were really silly to pay the full £80 as Brownies would pay if you asked and you just had to make a contribution based on what you could afford. She told DD endlessly that "her mum and dad only paid 1p for the whole trip" and kept telling her what a great bargain it was.

AIBU to think that if this is true then the parents are complete free-loaders? Surely even if they were on full benefits, they'd have been able to find £5 at least towards it. 1p is almost insulting - however perhaps that was all they could afford and I'm a judgemental cow

To make your voluntary contribution one penny is just insulting to the organisers. And very calculated too - lets contribute the smallest possible amount!

I can imagine there have been words amongst the Brownie leaders

Yes, and re school trips, the parents will say, "the school gets pupil premium for my child, so why should I pay". Meantime they spend the money on fags and booze and everything is the fault of the EU migrants who are taking all the jobs. My God, there is a very significant chunk of the English population that needs a good kick up the arse.

Thats a lovely sweeping generalisation. I dont pay for some school trips, some I only have to pay half for because of PP. I dont drink or smoke though and I have no issues with EU migrants, I'm also welsh, so is that ok?

Duvet if you are paying nearly £2k a year on activities for one child you shouldn't really have taken £300 off scouts for camp.
When people say they can't afford things they usually mean after all the essentials have been paid I can't afford it.

^^This.

I'm glad you feel a 'bit' bad Duvet...

Augusta, Scouting here, and we just talk to them. We have to take many things on trust, but we can usually tell when we're being lied to. If we want to apply for HQ funding there is a very tedious form to complete that usually sorts the wheat from the chaff ...

retro
My God, there is a very significant chunk of the (English - no you mean the UK ) population that needs a good kick up the arse.
just to correct your blaming the English for everything when you mean the UK

You were definitely freeloading duvet and I am that you couldn't see it. There are plenty of similar parents like you at DDs school. Live in big houses, go on foreign holidays, have nice cars and yet when it comes to school trips they 'brag' that they have only paid the bare minimum.

Some people just won't pay. Our school, (in Ireland) asks for resource money. With that money the school buys all the students text books, pens, pencils, IT, swimming lessons, 3 tours a year etc. Basically everything the child needs. It's not voluntary because it is actually paying for items.
The alternative is to give parents a list and they go and buy everything themselves. The school get discounts and so the resource money is good value.
However every year there are parents who don't pay. There are parents who have never paid a penny in the 8 years their child has attended the school. And these are not the people that can't pay. I know some of these people and they have new cars, go on holidays etc. I'm on the governing body of the school and we've discussed the problem at length, discussed forbidding the students who haven't paid from going on tours etc but it always just seems too unfair for the kids. At the end of the day it's not their fault their parents are stingy, dishonest, brass necked etc.
(BTW I know all this because I do the schools accounts.)

"Can Brownie/Cub leaders round here tell us what they do to check on parents' means if they ask for help with these trips?"

Augusta, as with Waltons, I just talk to them. I tend to know 'my' parents enough to know who might have problems but, as I said, it comes up very infrequently.

We are a low income family, and I would be extremely annoyed if money we'd carefully budgeted to save to pay for our own kids' trips and activities was spent subsidising other children.

I do not care if they couldn't otherwise afford to go. We have to miss out on plenty due to lack of funds. That's life.

Duvet 'The scout leader has known us for twenty years. He knows we're not poor. '

I know lots of people with big houses, nice cars, etc. If one of them told me they couldn't afford something I would initially think 'that's a bit strange', and then I would assume there must be something going on under the surface that I didn't know about - one parent facing possible redundancy, for instance. You rarely know the full truth about other people's finances, so if someone told me they couldn't afford something I'd trust them!

saucy I completely agree. Especially subsidising the kids of parents who can afford it, but choose not to!

Little girls in Brownies can not always be the best to relay facts. I've heard some whoppers come out of my girls troop lol

At the last 'own clothes day' at DS's school a £1 contribution was asked for as raising money for new school books (for reading and library) and I was really shocked to see people on FB posting that it was was 'voluntary' so nobody needed to pay.

It is not a school that asks for a lot of money often - hence the desperate need for books.

I went on a residential trip when I was around 8 ish, maybe 10 at the very oldest. I told all my school friends that my Grandad and all his family were haunted by King Charles because of their ancestors involvement in the civil war.
They weren't - obviously. I'd just made it up because I thought it sounded good.

Maybe the girl was telling a tall tale, maybe there were elements of the truth or maybe it was true.
The thing is though, I do think the majority of people out there are decent, I think they're happy to pay their way if they can afford it. I'm not the sort of person to moan if someone doesn't pay the full amount if they can't afford it.

I feel a bit bad. But now I'm really hoping they don't think we're a bunch of freeloaders

Wow. You're a massive free loader! Where did you think that money was coming from??? You basically took money off other people under false pretences so your child could go to Europe and on other fun trips. FFS of bloody course you should feel bad, even if you did have to manage without a family holiday that year.

Brownies are not like schools in England, they don't normally charge a contribution, it's either pay or you don't go

Not really, as has been explained above. Parents can approach the cub/brownie leader to see if they can get help with the costs.

We are a low income family, and I would be extremely annoyed if money we'd carefully budgeted to save to pay for our own kids' trips and activities was spent subsidising other children

Children who can't afford camp would not be subsidised by other parents, usually the money would come from group/district funds. We do a lot of fundraising to cover things like this, plus buying equipment etc.

That's definitely very off Duvet. Could you not pay it back over a year or so if you have such a long association with the Scouts?
I agree, that is off. Duvet, you should have just said that your DC cannot attend due to other activities. Of if you genuinely couldn't find the money at that point, paid it off in instalments after the event.

Duvet. That's definitely taking advantage of the Leader wanting everyone to go. Of corse when you said 'we can't afford it' theyd imagine something had gone arse up for you, not that you had plenty of money to pay for the trip but chose to spend it on other things.

I think you should make it a priority to repay the balance.

Well, we genuinely couldn't have afforded it which was why I said they couldn't go. He asked if cost was the issue and said not to worry about it. I did pay what we could afford.

We give a lot of time to Scouts and always get involved in fundraising events, as I said we've been involved in Scouts for twenty odd years.

And things have gone arse up. I had to give up work due to ill health and we've busted a gut for the past year to keep things normal for the dc, we go without so they don't. My parents helped us pay for the Europe trip.

duvet I do think you should feel bad, saying "we can't afford it" wasn't true, what you really meant was "we've spent quite a bit on other things lately so don't want to pay for more stuff at the moment". Not the same at all!!You shouldn't have accepted, it was freloading imo

I can clearly remember class members being excluded from school trips in the 1970s & 80s - they had to attend classes instead - this seems a shame if being unable to afford it was the reason sometimes it was the troublemakers

I do think however that everyone ought to contribute a proportionate amount - means-tested I suppose - how this would be organised I have no idea, particularly since everyone seems to get free school meals in primary school now.

When something is free at the point of use, it is not valued - look at the poor old NHS - if everyone paid something, even just 50p per prescription instead of getting them for nothing, then fewer would take the piss & abuse the system

If you've made it up in other ways, by volunteering your time etc then that's not so bad. But I do think that your definition of 'can't afford' differs from a lot of other people's definition.

Duvet, they do think you are a freeloader as does anyone who reads this.

I'm surprised at the number of people saying the girl is making it up.

There are plenty of greedy freeloaders out there, and plenty of crap parents.

I can well imagine them cackling to a child that they'd be going for a penny.

The specificity of the amount simply because it's the lowest coin.

I doubt they would have actually paid a penny, just said it - and child being young believes she's on the trip for a penny, when actually it's free.

It's shitty behaviour but far from unbelievable and actually the most likely explanation.

Or perhaps as likely as misinterpreting an joke about only paying a penny. But it's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility!