ADUK Archive

daz6215 wrote:That's correct but it does give companies a professional trainer with professional standards not an amateur!

Amateurs like, say, Olympic athletes?

P.

Porker wrote:

daz6215 wrote:That's correct but it does give companies a professional trainer with professional standards not an amateur!

Amateurs like, say, Olympic athletes?

P.

We aren't talking sport though it's driving!

Sport - pah! Life!

P.

jont wrote:

crr003 wrote:

StressedDave wrote:Mere possession of a test pass is enough to enable you to become an observer..

There's a bit more to it than that.
Groups should run Observer courses.

Ours do, but only for new observers and there's no retesting/training requirement other than maintaining your gold/silver pass every 3 years. I've had some interesting discussions about whether this is sufficient to provide an acceptable standard of observer, but it's traded off against people being volunteers and some not willing to be reassessed regularly.

On another thread I posted about IAM doing 3 yearly Observer retests.
My group has been a bit lax re retesting - again the volunteer aspect was cited and the fact there are very few test fails.

Porker wrote:

daz6215 wrote:That's correct but it does give companies a professional trainer with professional standards not an amateur!

Amateurs like, say, Olympic athletes?

P.

<pedant>

Since the '70s, the amateurism requirements for the olympics have been progressively reduced.

Today, the only olympians required to be amateurs are boxers, and even that is in terms of the rules they compete by ("amateur" boxers fight with head protection and vests, "professional" boxers have neither) and has nothing to do with their status in terms of paid or unpaid.

http://www.usatoday.com/olympics/owg98/osytr01.htm

</pedant>

Not that it's all that relevant, or that I care... :-p

Cheers & God bless
Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny