What's going on at the Tea Club ......

A snowHead

That was so funny, expecially the Northern bit. Having lived in the Ribble Valley all my life some of my "new money" neighbours are less Northern than most Southerners.

A snowHead

OK then, as someone who's only interest/knowledge/involvement with the (ahem) Tea Club is looking at their snow reports and the occasional glance at their off piste/ski touring hols, can somebody summarise - without naming names - what's going on? eg. Longstanding employee has been sacked/disciplined for trouser dropping episode in Head Office - or is it not as juicy as that Puzzled

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

mountainaddict, as far as I understand. Caroline Stewart-Taylor, CEO of the Tea Club for the past 16 years, left recently at rather short notice.
Typically for the Tea Club, no one who knows anything is saying anything about why she went.

For anyone interested in the job, it's advertised here:
http://www.berwickpartners.co.uk/candidates/assignment/38738/

Interestingly, an interest in snowsports, although 'an advantage', is not pre-requisite for running a ski club, or this particular ski club anyway rolling eyes

That is a very funny video though Laughing

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x7, strangely there doesn't appear to be an option to select snowHeads as the place you heard about this vacancy when applying wink

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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Whats the point of applying?

Surely DG will get the job Toofy Grin

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What constitutes an attractive package? I know all the girls think the bigger the better, but Shirley personality comes in to it?

After all it is free

anarchicsaltire, I have to admit, I was tempted... just for the sheer hell of it... Laughing

If I do, then I'll let you have some fun writing the reference - deal? Toofy Grin

musher, Tea Club? Personality? Confused

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Schuss in Boots, go for it. I once applied for the job of Director General of the BBC. I got a polite letter explaining that engineering graduates with 0 years exerience was not what the BBC was looking for at this time...

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Schuss in Boots, you will probably have to change your user name, Schuss-in-Boots should sort it!

snow reports

I know someone who applied for the CEO job. IMO he has a brilliant CV and loads of relevant experience in business, travel and managing large teams. Didn't even get past stage 1. Apparently, according to the recruitment company, they have been swamped with applications.

I'd like to see someone like Malcolm Tucker in charge (if you don't know Google is your friend).

anarchicsaltire, Laughing

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I vote uBrain Twisted Evil

A snowHead

According to a reliable source (ie I phone hacked), SCGB appointed a new CEO a week ago. Said to be starting in July sometime. No more info than that. Come on own up, which one of you is it?

A snowHead

OK I'll fess up - tis me

My starting priorities

- New rep uniform of Tall Tees and underbum slung pants
- Reps will no longer host pootling tours of cruising the blues but basically run a week long game of GNAR for members
- No cravats or pink corduroy trousers
- Copies of Ski n Board to come complete with new "Nuff Respek Da Massif" wristbands
- Mandatory gangsta rap and old skool beats training on rep's course
- No more PC crap with boarders, they are welcome but will be taken to ganarly traverses then laughed and pointed at when they can't keep up

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

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Not wishing to appear toooo daft, but what is the Tea Club? Google is not my friend!

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

martinm, it's how some like to refer to The Ski Club of Great Britain.

SCGB is normal but some like to change that slightly to SKGB.

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martinm, It's a club for skiers of all main abilities which has an excellent pool of representatives who are Members of reasonable to very good skiing ability, one or more of whom are available in around 36 major ski resorts around the world to ski with Members who may be holidaying there. It has about the same number of subscribers as Snowheads but all of them pay a subscription,which is fairly equitable, and if all the SHs paid the same sub then SH would be able to do this also. It has negotiated discounts with many retailers and travel companies so Members can easily save their annual sub by using this and not having to do unseemly horse trading. It also runs excellent holidays where the participants will find fellow skiers of a similar ability level . These can be holidays simply of sociable on-piste nature, or perhaps learning weeks, or off-piste weeks with a Guide , according to choice. Like constant bashes thro the season on a graded basis so you get what it says on the tin.
The people one meets in these groups are very pleasant in my experience and I have no reason to fault the organisation.
Unfortunately the lack of principles apparent throughout much of the current British populace means that many may look to legal avenues to sue the organisation in the event of some skiing accident and this has curtailed the scope of the wide ranging skiing experiences which used to be on offer in exciting places but that is no fault of the Club, just a necessary reaction to a nasty society.They still offer exciting days out and give people ski fun they might otherwise never get.
For some reason certain people have a down on this Club and many of them have gathered on this forum and periodically vent their spite. This place is very fine but it does not offer as much as the Ski Club does and I see no reason for the knocking.

After all it is free

Farley Goode, Perhaps a little understanding of why snowheads was set up originally may help you understand a little bit more.

And as you rightly point out everyone in SCGB pays for their membership, unlike some here

Farley Goode, The SCGB has many excellent reps, unfortunately there have also been cases of not so excellent reps, this is not the fault of the SCGB per sé, every large organisation especially where they use a high percentage of volunteers will inevitably attract a few idiots, I've been fortunate in having met some really good reps in resorts, unfortunately I have also come into conflict with one bad rep on the SCGB forums, someone I formally complained about because of what I termed " bullying behavior ", this was a number of years ago right around the time snowheads formed, which I'll get into in a moment, anyway nothing happened to said rep and as I understand things they actually improved their position within the club, so when it became time for me to renew my membership I cancelled, informing the club of just why I was doing so.

Snowheads was formed after the SCGB suddenly got scared about the ramifications of non members being able to read and write stuff on the SCGB forums and with no notice suddenly switched off non members' access to said forums, Admin/Ubrain very kindly set up Snowheads initially as somewhere for those people to continue chatting and the rest as they say is history. I believe that as of this year the number of posts on Snowheads in the last year actually exceeds all other UK snow sports forums combined making Snowheads one of the most informative sites for snow sports (and a few other things as well) that you are likely to find, anyway the reason some members of snowheads are not fans of the SCGB mostly dates back to that switching off of general access to the old SCGB snow forums.

As an open forum there are a number of us that serve as moderators, mostly this involves deleting posts by dodgy Chinese golf equipment suppliers and the like, though we do occasionally have to prune a post made by someone who has perhaps not read the rules about what is and is not allowed to be posted, in general however I'm happy to say that Snowheads continues to be an excellent source of information for people wanting to go skiing or boarding (or even checking out new cars/mobile phones/cats) and it also provides a good social function, with a large number of people taking part in the various bashes during the winter and BBQ's during the summer.

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Farley Goode, Nice defence of the thoroughly nice chaps at the SCGB and a robust defence against the "nastiness" of society. Unfortunately when something that's started at the club end of the spectrum becomes increasingly commercial it's only to be expected that the rules and perception shift a bit. I suspect sHs still faces this problem - with increasing numbers of bashes how soon before people skiing in a "mates" capacity become defacto "leaders" under at least local law. With SCGB it's definitely more in your face - there's no doubt in my mind that Rep guiding has been marketed heavily as part of the commercial transaction for subscription so saying anyone who calls the SCGB to account on standards or behaviour there unprincipled is stretching it a bit.

I've also been in mountain restaurants and huts when an SCGB group has arrived. How did I know? Let's just say they made themselves fairly conspicuous.

If there's a "down" on the club it's generally one that is concerned with pricking bubbles of pomposity.

(Disclaimer : I am not a member but if I were I'd definitely be plutonium enriched platinum standard on the SCGB scale as I am the best skier on the mountain!)

snow reports

Just being slightly smug here, I was once Skiing in Wengen with the DHO and our group leader who had to get back to the village to sort a problem, asked if I with my local knowledge would be happy to ensure that all our group made it to a certain restaurant for lunch where we were going to be meeting with the SCGB bunch, as we were going up in a Gondola I spotted that a adjacent chairlift had stopped working so took a different route to get to the restaurant, some 55 mins later the SCGB party came in, one of my DHO group asks what had taken them so long and was told oh we went down to the chairlift when we came off the Gondola but we had to wait till they got it started again, Oh says the person in the DHO group, David noticed that the lift wasn't working whilst we were on the Gondola and took us a different way, the look I got from the SCGB rep was one of absolute hate Laughing

I think a lot of single extreme instances are being taken as the norm and embellished to boot. Overall SCGB offers a service not found anywhere else. It has given me ski friends over the last 20 years that I would never otherwise have met.
Yes, they are "nice chaps" (and gels) and perhaps I would like to be considered one too. (chap, actually )
I think it is a commonly met stratification of society--- among people of the highest intelligence, and lower levels of same, one gets leanings of left wing and right wing , Cof E and Chapel, saloon bar and Lounge , extrovert and introvert. Ski Club is probably best suited to the extrovert , hail fellow -well met... and I think they are probably about 25% of the populus. The other 75% get on with the same things but in their own quiet way. They may be unmixable groupings in which case SH has by far the bigger pool to fish in but the others may be quite happy to be in a smaller pool but one which they perceive to be to their liking.Birds of a feather etc... I think it would have been that incompatibility, insofar as it might strongly affect just a few, that caused the Ski Club chatsite to be confined to members only---sniping from the disaffected is hard to stomach on your own chatsite. Whether it was a good commercial decision is hard to tell--SH has blossomed but there is no saying that Ski Club would have had the same appeal.
I would have thought there is room for both to exist, but with mutual respect, please.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Farley Goode, as a super snowHead

I think you will find the same on offer over here Very Happy

A snowHead

achilles, interesting, so there are 13,000 non paying members, seems a strange way to run a club.

Edit: and my original comment was a tongue in cheek dig at non paying forum members

A snowHead

kevindonkleywood, I am relying on vague memory. This thread starts with a report on how things were in 2005, perhaps a sH SCGB member can give us an update.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

The paying units are less than the total number of Members because Family Membership is one payment but can include spouse and offsprings who all count as Members. Agreed that does highlight the relatively small base and SH is probably 30,000individuals---or am I misusing that number ? got it from somewhere and it is impressive. In theory SH should develop to offer a repping service and holidays as that's likely to be what subscribers want as skiers, I would think. Then it could take over the original organisation. Then some in it would want things a bit different and would start a new faction.....

Perhaps just happily co-exist as we are and see what develops

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Farley Goode, sH already does have a series of holidays in the form of the bashes - eg the PSB, BB, SOPiB and EOSB which, bar raw beginners are open to all, flexible to individual needs, and do not indulge in age apartheid. I had a lot of happy skiing with the SCGB, but unless it changes considerably, I think it will have a limited future. Maybe sH has largely eliminated the benefit of the SCGB to the huddled masses (of which I am part).

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Farley Goode, I think the idea that SHs would like a resort repping service is a bit of a stretch. I'm always happy to ski with SHs but SH's role in it has largely been as an introduction or facilitation. In fact on bashes it's usually a matter of skiing with whoever you bump into or doesn't mind you tagging along rather than anything really structured, at least in my experience. There's lots of informal strangers hooking up to ski going on on the internet and in that context the rather rigid structure of a traditional rep service feels a bit last century, plus there is always the pleasure of going out with people in your hotel or chalet or that you meet on a chairlift (I've had far better tours of local sweet spots via the latter than I would ever get with a SCGB rep).

No offence to SCGB reps intended but they aren't in general day in /day out seasonnaires or locals to an area so their knowledge has limitations and with restriction of scope they have even less to offer to serious skiers.

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fatbob, While you're right on many aspects, the SCGB leaders DO provide a useful service for those of us skiing alone or with others who aren't of the same ability. This year I ended up choosing Avoriaz over a couple of other places as there weren't leaders in those other locations, and I was travelling solo. Even if the leader doesn't have a local's depth of knowledge, they probably still no more of the resort than I do.

In addition to having some folk to ski with, the 'social hour' was enough for me to enjoy a little apres, grab a pizza on the way back to the appartment and I was fit for nothing more than sleep anyway.

The PS/EOS/B/SOPiB are all good in themselves, but outside of those events it comes down to posting "who's going where when" on the offchance than another SH will be there at the same time.

After all it is free

feef, Do you not feel limited to choosing your holiday/resort on the criteria of there being a leader? I know what you mean about "who's going where when", but in addition to bashes, I've always hooked up with people when I've wanted to, particularly in Austria where there is quite a community. I've also met up with folk in Canada, albeit just for a drink, in fact with one it was almost the "excuse me are you frosty the snowman" moment as the only thing the other person knew was the colour of my husband's jacket and he spotted us in a bar and came over. I like that sort of randomness.

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I've never had a bad experience of the SCGB repping service. I've met some nice people who share a common interest, ie. they enjoy being guided around the resort and they are generally looking to ski with people of a similar standard - long may the service continue.

I have had two bad experiences with the SCGB Fresh Tracks holidays. In 2005 my father was taken ill and I had to postpone my trip. I had mistakenly thought that the club, being a club, would be able to help me out and move me to the next month's trip, but they weren't at all sympathetic. I remember having a rather blunt exchange with the chief exec, and I for one won't be sorry to see her go. On another trip we were supposed to share a mountain guide and an instructor, but the top group didn't want to part with the mountain guide, and the rep wasn't strong enough to overrule. It became my last Fresh tracks holiday.

Help!!

What's going on at the Tea Club ......

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