mockney piers

Oh yeah, with you on the concorde thing. That was a nice loud noise, and a majestic sight out of my old sitting room window. Gawd bless 'er.

It's a pain when the wind blows this way, but it has seemed worse than usual. Maybe there's a shallower approach due to winds, or just something about the atmospherics? Purest guesswork from me, but it definitely seems louder than usual to me, and those planes this morning seemed awful low for this neck of the woods.

from beau bo d'or on channel 4

Yeah, I know Brendan. But at least the day might go a bit quicker if I'm actually doing something other than whacking the refresh button on about 20 RSS feeds all day.. Cheers BB & Keef.

Sorted a new job. The countdown to my the end of my ridiculous posting rate begins today. 28 days...

Blimey, there is almost nothing on this topic on previous threads at all. These are the best I could do. Dulwichmum on a mother and baby group. http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?9,1957 and err...dulwichmum talking about the same group on a different thread http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?5,1958,1962#msg-1962 Couldn't really find anything on the Southwark Council site specifically to single parents either I'm afraid. I tried :(

Does it involve Keef in a basque with a hoover down the CPT perchance? Eek.

Unsurprisingly this has had the daily mash treatment. School Leavers To Pledge Allegiance to Some Old Cow

I said most Steve, not all. But Fawlty towers is based on Basil's desperate fawning aspirations and his horrific misplaced snobbery. I'd say it's the quintessential class based sitcom. You're much closer to the mark on Porridge, though it does have many elements of it there within.

Most successful UK sitcoms have boiled down to exploiting class differences or class aspiration to comedic effect. That Hyacinth Bucket one was based almost entirely on the above situation.

I think number two already exists. When my dear old gran was found to have a terminal tumour, having been barking mad for the est part of a decade, the medical staff, with the consent of her kids, decided not to treat it. She still took an aeon to die; strong as an ox she was.

That makes a lot more sense. I thought you were dismissing the concept out of hand earlier. Quite right, it probably had gone too far for a peace time society and needed redressing. Inertia and momentum of 60 odd million people probably mean that such redress will move society too far in the other direction, and now we clearly need to move back a bit. Hopefully as time progresses the societal lurch will lessen in intensity and we can eventually hover somewhere that more or less functions.

Does the nice young lady from Mitchell & Webb count as 4 or 3, or even 2 as she was in Hot Fuzz?

I think you're missing a few points there Dom. Indeed a community is an artificial construct, but that's not saying a great deal as friendship, money, even family are essentially artificial constructs. Community came about because cooperation gave us a much better chance of survival. Even at the level of the palaeolithic clan I guess there was the possibility of some lazy good-for-nothing troglodyte taking out more than he put in from the tribes communal efforts to gather enough food for the winter. Yes ultimately the goal is for each individual's needs to be served, however had the community not been considered more important than the individual they would have all died, so there is very good reasoning for such a position. People being people, this is exploitable, whether a tribal king gathers the resources of many clans to pay for pointy sticks and men dedicated to using them for the 'tribal interest'. Move on a few thousand years and the Soviet Union was just the same logic on a much larger scale, indeed ours is not so very different, it's just we now have the luxury of being able to have less pointy sticks and use more of our resources for personal enjoyment. Our modern society with it's relative safety, it's use of money (or at least digital numbers in electronic transfers) for goods and services means that much of the reasoning behind that is gone, but people are still communal creatures, we pull together in time of crisis (the crystal palace road water shortage of 2003 for instance), and depend on each other for support, happiness and good mental health, whilst having the ability to achieve some of those through an individualist manner and use of our trading credits to achieve that. A decent society should be able to strike a good balance between use of communal resources and contribution towards that against the individual achieving the means to and having the ability to serve their own ends. I think our society has gone too much to the latter, the emphasis on achieving happiness through consumption and being measured by our consumer power (and the status symbols that allows us to attain) atomises people and erodes our sense of communal responsibility, a feeling that we should look out for each other and not behaving in a manner which affects others ie not littering, not spitting, not playing tinny speakers loudly on the bus. Baaah, I blither.....

I love the way he slipped in about the vale's veneration. Vindication? Possibly. Renovation? Probably. But Veneration?!?! No way Jos?!!!

Very good point PGC. I can only guess that the 0 tally means nudity was banned at the polling stations.

In madrid none of my parties made it. The greens very nearly got themselves a representative with just under 10000 votes, only about 100,000 short of the total needed. But the naturists (0) and the non-smokers (1500) where nowhere to be seen. PP won it in Madrid.

Come on chaps, stick to the point. Less of the naming calling, it's beginning to resemble a game of ping pong. If you were referring to me SMG, I've avoided this thread for a couple of reasons. Mainly, it was an era I experienced, but was still too young to fully understand. My parents were of a socia-list/liberal disposition who had no love of Thatch, but one at least ended up voting Tory purely out of self interest, and presciently said that unless Labour courted his vote they would never get voted in. Labour offered no viable alternative and like her or loathe her (she is very marmite isn't she) we were stuck with her. A mirror of the Blair years. From a historical perspective, breaking the back of the Unions was necessary, after all the Unions should be about serving the interests of the workers, not the political interests of the unions (much like political parties seemed more interested in serving the interests of the parties than in the people as a whole). But I understand that those in the communities that immediately suffered are bitter, and the buy in to Geckoism (greed is good) has indeed contributed to a more selfish society that is spiritually poorer as it's grown richer. But we can't lay that all at her door, that was a wider trend globally than Thatcher, though she was at the forefront. Falklands? I don't think it was done to win an election, and if she exploited the political capital she gained from the hugely risky enterprise, then as MM said, can you blame her? I think it was fought 1 part national pride in the face that we were no longer the world players we once were, and 2 parts there's a lot of oil under them thar islands. It'll be very costly to drill and impossible without Argentinian buy in, so watch this space for a increased cooperation leading to a phased handover over the next 30 years or so. (And do try to remember that we nicked it off them in the first place) I'm not going to delight in the infirmity or death of Thatcher, but she's an old woman coming to the end of her time and I will not mourn her. If it was Blair I suspect I might lean a little closer to Schadenfreude however.

I'm not sure I could, I'm not sure many people can really, especially as it's much less clear cut than it used to be. No better in Spain. My dad has always insisted he is working class, but his dad ran a newspaper (until it was confiscated by Franco after the fall of Almeria, and he was bunged in prison for trying to claim it back) and after his release, ran a corner shop until he died, a broken man, a few years later. Hardly traditional work class professions. I think it's quite often linked to your politics. "Traditional" labour voters will probably consider themselves working class even if their kids have gone through university and do white collar work. How those kids see themselves is anyone's guess. For my part I grew up on a nice estate in a home counties sleeper (and sleepy) town. I'm about as middle class as you get, but nothing to be ashamed of and I sure as hell am not going to apologise for it; apart from the lack of angst in my life means I don't seem to have much of a novel in me.

Wise head on your "northern" friend's shoulders there *Bob*.

I've one of th CPT you're more than welcome to.

Fascinating posts chaps. How on earth has the situation been allowed to come about. Shouldn't the monopolies and mergers had something to say. And if, as it sounds, the pubcos are running a cartel, how the hell have they not been brought before the courts for this? All sounds jolly unfair, hats off to you for hanging in there.

I love you too Jah. it was best part of two decades ago!! Quite snorky, quite. Though I kind of regret not having done more studying now, and spent less time in the pub, down by the lakes or in Shelly's and Kinetic.

snorky Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > IM sorry, but that would be giving the game away & > maybe my anonimity Still avoiding those pesky students loans people huh? ;-)

indeed it was, did that myself a couple of times. It wasn't so easy in the snow though. When were you there? And let me guess, politics and criminology with a biophysics subsid?