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) would you recommend where we can get to with a direct flight from the UK and why?

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 taking girls and the Brownies who shared the church hall with us were furious. But a year later we were bigger and so were they, there really was nothing for them to fear at all.

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 50 million are English. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all want an element of independence so they have their own assemblies that deal with certain devolved issues such as education and health but stay within the UK for things like defence, currency and foreign affairs. Scotland has more powers than Wales or Northern Ireland in that they can, within certain criteria, raise their own taxes (but thus far have stuck with the rates that apply elsewhere). There is due to be a referendum on Scottish independence in the next couple of years. The smart money is on them staying within the UK but that is up to the good people of Scotland. Worth remembering that if they did break away most of the North Sea oil would fall within Scottish territorial waters.

And yes there is the issue of Scottish MPs in Westminster voting on matters that do not affect Scotland. What is known as the West Lothian Question. I don't think they should, and indeed some Scottish MPs don't as a matter of principle but some still do. It's all part of our rather bizarre constitution. It doesn't happen the other way round as English MPs only sit in Westminster and that does not make laws that affect only Scotland, only the whole of the UK or just England.

A council.... this is basically local government and comes in a varierty of forms. Most places have two layers, where I live Cambridge City Council deal with things like planning permission, social housing, some benefits, street lighting, minor roads, waste disposal. The larger Cambridgeshire County Council deals with things like major roads, fire brigade, social services (child protection etc) and most importantly schools. In more urban areas there tend to "unitary authorities" which essentially do both. All layers are directly elected on a first past the post system, just like parliament. The nature of local polictics though means that generally the different parties work together with a bit more cooperation that at national level.

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 they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

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 nation grow up and get rid of that circus and have a democratically elected head of state (personally I favour the Irish model of a non political ceremonial head of state) the better. And a directly (as opposed to appointed) upper house. I have no personal issue with any of the royal family, they are a largely inoffensive mob (that is their job to be fare) and have no actual power but I would rather be allowed to chose who it is represents me.

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 right?

2. The technicalities are that if someone wins a state in the primary they get to select the delegates from that state to attend the convention in the summer and it is those delegates who technically elect the candidate. Is that right?

3. Question, could, in theory, one of those delegates decide hes fed up with the candidate he was going to support and vote for someone else? Unlikely as that may be?

4. In years when there is no presidential election is there still a convention? If so who selects the candidates?

5. Do Democrat primaries work exactly the same way?

6. As the incumbent president is a Democrat and is in his first term and wants to stand again he automatically gets the Democrat nomination. Is that right? Or could someone in the Democrat party, theoretically, stand against him (internally I mean) to get the Democrat nomination? Or does President Obama just get to select all the delegates for the democrat convention?

Thanks for any pointers!

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 doing something unexpected, you might just be surprised at the reaction you get and how broad minded your scouts are!

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, but it's how it is. This is more of an elephant test. Often one will come off worse than the other but I think we all know the difference between two lads who have fallen out and exchanged blows, even if one of them does come out of it with a bloody nose or a nice shiner, and an outright assualt. I would find it very surprising if an outright assualt was carried out by someone completely out of the blue, I suggest that there would have been a history of very poor behaviour.

Exactly a year ago my troop parted company with a 13 year old boy. He had had a history both with us and at school of poor behaviour and had an explosive temper. I won't go into what happened but suffice to say he jumped before he was pushed. A couple of months later we heard that he had been expelled from his school for smashing another boys head against a wall till he passed out. Did it surprise me? Not really and neither did it surprise the school. These things are rarely one off events.

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 say the EU produces rules about fruit and cheese then you write nonsense. There are certain rules. eg certain foods have to be produced in certain regions but please don't tell me you believe nonsense that gets printed about bannanas having to be a certain length or similar. It's wrong. It's lies. It doesn't exist. Alas many of my country men believe such rules exist simply because we have gutter press like the Daily Mail.

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. Germany's underlying economy is remarkably resiliant. Unlike the rest of the western world they are still fundamentally based on manufacturing. They make stuff that people want and need and export it. At the end of the day people need steel far more than they need insurance derivatives.

China - potentially the biggest economy ever if they play their cards right. 20% of world population, tons of natural resources. One day they will be the biggest kid on the block. The USA will become to China what the UK is to the USA now ie a significant player but forever playing second fiddle and keeping it's seat at the top table by keeping the new guy sweet. It will be a few decades yet, a country the size of China has quite some inertia to over come but it will happen before I plan on meeting my maker I'm convinced of it.

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 time they get home from school and are hopefully going to do something about it.

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 their kids). Including one girl with an Argentinian Dad, Italian Mum, was born in Denmark, moved to Brazil when she was 4 and to the UK when was 9.

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 along to have their own programme and do exactly what they would like for a weekend.

The Problem the weekend is not only in half term school holidays(hence lots of scouts on holiday) but also a week away from the troop winter camp (hence lots of scouts being told they are off to see relies etc). Combine that with short notice and result is, at present, 2 solitary scouts signed up. (both aged 12, one boy, one girl) Means any site activities they want to are likely to cost a fortune divided just between two.

So Im looking for programme ideas that 2 scouts (although we may yet get more sign up, but it wont be many if we do) can do with minimal adult supervision for a weekend in February. I have already offered them as slave labour to the site (have I told you how much my scouts love and adore me?) for a spot of campsite service.

I will of course be asking them what they would like to do but it would be nice to have some ideas to throw at them as starting points particularly as they are still relatively young (although both very level headed)

My scouting brain seems to need a touch of WD40 today!

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 what happened. If no one was in any danger, if there someone perfectly ok to drive and to administer first aid and deal with anything else that occured. If no one was drinking to the point where there behaviour deteriorated then I think that taking action about it that may result in formal disciplinery procedures is using a sledge hammer to crack a nut. Worst case scenario is you lose a perfectly good adult leader over something pretty minor. A simple warning along the lines of "look, I've heard about what happens with alcohol on camp, you do know it's against the rules don't you? You do know you could be in hot water if this goes further up the chain don't you?" should be sufficient.

The other side of that coin is that if someone was in danger, if the behaviour of the adults in question meant that they were incapable of supervising cubs then it certainly should go further up the chain, there is no question of that.

And this doesn't just concern alcohol, it concerns any rule that is there for the purposes of safety, no matter what country you are in or what organisation. In the UK we have strict rules about hill walking and the qualifications needed to go into certain terrains. I know of a leader who was not meant to take a group above 500M but who took them to the top of a peak that was at 507M. Theoretically it should have gone further up the chain but in reality, as the weather conditions were perfect, the ground under foot easy no one was actually in any danger. Given this he was quietly warned (not by me) that what he had done was against the rules and it would be a good idea to take a closer look at the map next time, and that was the end of it.

It's all about common sense.

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 in danger? If that is the case I would say that you need to escalate matters.