Cambridgeskip

Now then First of all forgive me if this is in the wrong part of the forum but there did not seem to be an obvious place for it but I wanted to pick some American brains. This June myself and the lovely Mrs CambridgeSkip have a week off and are pondering a trip trans Atlantic. Weve only been to USA once before to New York and if we come again (were also pondering Russia so dont get too excited!) would like to go somewhere completely different. So where on the Eastern side of the country (we don't really have the time or inclination this time round to get over West Coast jet lag)

The group exec, on the recomendation of all the leaders, decided to make the group coed. A notice up in the church hall and a couple in the local primary school soon had the phones ringing. A couple of weeks later the first girls walked through the door. Simples!

Eagle 92 - can't say I'd ever heard that one before but in 1995 I was 17 year old Venture Scout and may not have taken much notice! During the mid 90s there was a lot of research going on, indeed my Venture Scout unit (which would normally have been for 15-20 year olds) officially piloted the current Explorer age range (14-18) while I was there and was a fantastic success. I know elsewhere a number of other pilot schemes were in place all of which led to the massive shake up we saw here in the early 2000s. In 1997 I was cub leader with a group in my university town in Durham. We started t

Eagle92 - That is a new one on me. If anything GG were resistant to it for fear of losing out on members.

Just on a point of fact..... Scouts in the UK were NOT forced to go coed. It was purely by choice. The time line was something like this, 1960's (I forget exact date) - Venture scouting (16-20 year olds) is founded as coed section 1991 - All other age groups given the choice of being coed. 2000 (ish) - All new groups founded have to be coed and any group going coed can't reverse decision 2007 - All groups go coed (only exceptions are "closed" groups attached to single sex schools or young offender institutions) What is correct is it has had no effect on Girl Guide numbers.

Cucumber sandwiches? On a hot day with a gin and tonic they are a little taste of heaven. Preferably followed by a slice of lemon drizzle cake while watching cricket. Wonderful! Prestwick..... most people have no reason to go there unless flying in or out of "Glasgow" Prestwick airport (It's actually a former Royal Navy airbase in the middle of nowhere and is rumoured to be closer to Carisle than Glasgow) so can't really comment. Sorry!

Packsaddle - forgive me, I couldn't help myself! That description of cricket is quite famous! Incidentally the whole football related violence thing is mostly a thing of the past. There are still a handfull of clubs that still have a reputation (Milwall, Stoke City, Cardiff City, Burnley, Leeds United) but the vast majority of clubs have very peacefull if somewhat noisy and passionate fans. Now then devolution.... This basically reflects the fact that the UK is made up of 4 nations but one of those nations (ie England) is dominant. We have a population of around 61 million of which around

Cricket: As explained to a foreigner... You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and

Bevah - thanks for the detail, it's certainly complex! Skeptic - We have a similar problem in the UK with people not bothering to vote. And much as it is frustrating that increasingly the 3 main parties all sound the same we are lucky in that we do have an awful lot of fringe parties (Green, UKIP, SNP etc). If the 40% of people who didn;t bother to vote in the last general election all got out there and voted for the fringe parties maybe the 3 big parties would start listening and offer something different. Trevorum - As for our monarchy.... Oh good Lord! The sooner that we as a nati

Thanks chaps, I think I understand now. Although it does strike me odd that the government would have any part in running the primaries as it is a purely party political decision. Guess every country has its own ways! And Packsaddle, I meant delegates not candidates, but as there are only conventions in election years the answer is a bit of a lemon.

So here I am on the other side of the Atlantic, occasionally looking at the fascinating and, at times (and youll have to forgive me here) barking mad world of the US Presidential race and I wanted to check that I understand what is going on. So I have some questions. As here and there I am confused. 1. Right now the Republicans are having their primaries which is in effect selecting their candidate. I assume these are events run purely by the Republican party, includes only members of the Republican party and is nothing to do with the government either state or federal in any way. Is that

Running a programme I think it is very easy to concentrate too much on core scouting stuff, there is, I firmly believe, a place for doing something completely different now and then. No problem that it doesn't feature in any award scheme or provide training, just do something that is completely different. A few examples of what my troop have done in that vein.... A fashion show (done very tongue in cheek I hasten to add) A trip to the ballet A night dry slope skiing Local monopoly run (now a firm fixture in the calendar such is the popularity) All in all don't be scared of doin

DOn't know if it's a different culture in the UK but I think the line is between where they are causing harm just to themselves or harm to others. So with drugs it's a case of personal use means speaking to parents, potentially to child protection (depending on what parents are doing about it), if it's a scout event where it has happened probably suspension but I don't call this a police matter. Sharing with others, or selling, supplying etc, that's a different matter and police may well have to be involved. Fighting? Boys (and girls) will some times fight, it's not to be condoned, b

We did once give a fruit tart to one lad at the end of the camp for his persistent (but fruitless) attempts to chat up some girl guides camped next to us.

CalicoPenn - correct me if I am wrong but I am going to guess that you get most of your information regardimng the EU from the English speaking European (ie British) press eg The Times, The Daily Mail et al. Those elements of the media are incredibly biased and anti EU and try to make out that the UK are some kind of super power like we were a hundred years ago. And frankly they print nonsense. What you write has some element of truth. I don't think the EU and the Euro can survive in its current diverse form because the likes of Greece are too different to Germany. But equally when you sa

I think Iran will end up with a nuclear bomb and like the rest of us who have spent billions on it will find it's utterly useless and that the money could have been spent better elsewhere. I mean honestly, in what circumstances are they actually going to use it? Doing so would mean immediate and utter anialation at the hands of the USA. They may be very conservative and ultra Islamic but even then I don't think anyone is daft enough to actually push the button. The Euro, I think, will survive but in a stripped down form, probably consisting of Germany, France and the BeNeLux countries. Ge

Out of interest how widely dispersed are scout camp sites in the USA? Clearly you have a much lower population density than the UK so I assume the camp sites are equally more widely dispersed. How many would you expect to have within, say, 50 miles?

As well as thinking about the form of communication I think that predicatbility is best. I have now got into a habbit of sending emails to scouts and their parents on Monday morning before work. It may be that there are better times but parents in particular have now got used to this. Similarly our cubs send messages to parent son a Friday and again this predictability is convenient. For those scouts I have mobile numbers for if I need to remind them of something before scouts (which is Thursday evening) I tend to text them all at 4pm on a Thursday so that they are getting it around the t

We use yahoo webmail. Good functionality and also one of the best spam filters I've encountered.

I have a Buddhist boy in my troop in the UK. We also have official different wordings for the promise depending on the religiong of the individual. For Biddhists they replace "God" with "My Dhama". We gave this lad the option to use that version of the promise but he was happy to stick to God to fit in. Regarding other countries non UK nationals can replace "The Queen" with "The country in which I am now living" which is good for us as we currently have 9 different nationalities in the troop (comes from the university, they have accademics from all over the world and we get a lot of thei

This is the site http://www.phaselswood.org.uk/ The activities link on the left shows what is on site, a lot of which is fantastic but will be quite expensive between 3 (we've had a 3rd sign up in last few minutes). The indoor facilities are really just the sleeping accomodation. In terms of what is near by there is quite a lot if you can drive. If, however, you are 12 years old it is a little more tricky (and there is no way on earth I am allowing two 12 year olds to get a train into London on their own!)

Right, I thought I would try picking the brains of my felow the leaders the other side of the pond on this one. The situation The cubs at my group are doing their annual indoor winter camp 10-12 Feb. They have a few bed spaces left over and have offered them to our scouts. Being quite a young pack at the moment the Cub Leaders have asked that any scouts who attend mostly do their own thingand give the younger kids some space. (although they have a got a couple of activities they are happy for scouts to join in with). The Opportunity clear opportunity here for any scouts that go alo

Tampa Turtle - At the risk of teaching Granny to suck eggs (do you know that one?) Belt and braces means a straight forward approach that leaves nothing to chance. Generally a term you'll find used in northern England but southerners like me picked it up when I was at univeristy 'oop north in Durham. Nice to see that somethings are the same your side of the pond, ie the difference between the "rules" and "guide lines" is just as murky!

Eagle 92 - That, I think, is precisely my point. But I think I should expand. Whatever the situation we all have to react in a manner that is proportionate to the circumstances before us. As you rightly point out if this was in the UK it would be a non issue if it was just a beer round the fire, but this is not the UK, it is the USA. So the reaction has to take into account both the rules and what the actual circumstances are. BSA rules say no alcohol. Fair enough, they have taken a belt and braces approach to child safety. But in the situation I think you have to consider precisely

I would say the approach should depend on what exactly has been happening. Are we talking about leaders having a beer round the fire when the kids have gone to bed or a glass of wine with dinner? If that's the case I would say pchadbo's approach was probably best. At present no one is in danger but the adults in question would now be aware it has been noticed and it's up to them how they respond. Or are we talking about more extensive drinking with adults not capable of administering first aid or dealing with any other crisis that may be occur. ie the cubs themselves are potentially