mockney piers

Hey there hyounan. Welcome to East Dulwich and welcome to the forum. I spotted your earlier post advertising your services and did think it pretty unfortunate timing. This isn't a usual topic of discussion but everyone does like a nice debate every now and then. This one was pretty entrenched from the beginning really, but don't let that put you off. It's a very friendly area, and I'm sure your average lurker is much more MadWorld74 than they are the like of boring old me, and I echo Mark in wishing you the best of British luck.

I just got past the bit where Francis Wheen quotes Diamond's experiences with cancer. "Have you tried squid's cartilage? Establishment doctors scorn it, of course, but my aunt is still alive on it two years after her oncologist gave her six months to live (well, yes, since you ask, she is having radio therapy as well). Or there's this wonderful healer who practices the laying on of feet, with astonishing results. Apparently it's all a question of tuning your holistic (or is it holographic?) energies to the natural frequencies of organic (or is it orgonic?) cosmic vibrations. You've nothing to lose, you might as well try it. It's ?500 for a course of treatment but what's money when your life's at stake"

He he, yep, mediums are the worst of them, ghouls feeding on the grief of others, who are so desperate for some connection that they gloss over just how rubbish these people are. You only have to catch five minutes of that idiot Colin something or other on one of the freeview channels to squeal with embarrassment at how bad he really is. "Is there a Bob, no, Alan? No, Louisa? Spadetownboy that's it, yes i can sense he's african...no? err....eskimo? Saarf London Scottish, ooh warmer am i...errrr Irish. Yes Spadetown boy from Ireland, see how I commune with the spirits..amazing!!

Yeah, it seems to happen when a thread gets lounged from the gossip room. And it does it in a really haphazard manner too, shooting fish in a barrel as it were.

A couple of choice moments from Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights Black Bin Bags Sammy the Snake The Real Slim Shady

So let me get this straight, we're being close minded because we don't believe some japanese bloke who, while up a mountain, discovered a jedi-like way of focussing the universe's 'energies' is really on to anything. But you're happy to dismiss christianity out of hand, one of the three pillars of Western European civilisation?!?!* Or is it do-gooders (people who try to make other people happy) that you have an issue with? *for the record, so am I.

Yes of course Jah, sorry I try to avoid both if at all possible. And yes Louisa, the BBC can be pretty bad too.

Anyone who reads private eye will be acquainted with how often the Daily Mail drags up old news to serve its nefarious ends. This is a terrible story, but would have been front page news when it happened. It's just scaremongering to give it a huge profile in the middle of a trial, not even at conviction or sentencing. If we believe the Daily Mail, then anything Diana related, no matter how spurious or old hat is deemed newsworthy!!

"Christ on a plastic dolphin" "Gutted from Ilford"

A foreign house guest this weekend bought the Daily Rail this weekend. I perused just for a laugh and loved the huge editorial, a conjectural fiction written in psat tense reportage style charting how jackbooted gendarmes kick down the doors of terrified shop-keepers in Throcking selling produce in pounds and ounces. Hilarious. I obviously tutored the lad in the modern mores of English newspapers. *found it, superb* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=474658&in_page_id=1811

Wow, that site completely crashed firefox twice. What on earth do they have down in Ilfracombe? Malware factories?

It's how Louisa will pronounce cider once she has become a born and bred west country girl.

Well I suppose ther was always big brother, but if ever there was an enemy of reason.. Maybe that could be Dawkins next tour de force project, "Reality TV. It's sh!t" That should get him that nobel prize.

Phoenix is ok I guess. Lots of zoider which is a potentially lethal brucey bonus.

True, we've both had a pop at panorama before, and yes, last night's could easily have been fronted by Fiona Bruce. But it was monday, I wasn't in a reading with music mood and there was nothing else on at all!!

To be honest so did I. Surely if he's such an intellectual heavyweight, picking on some chanters and a couple of rubbish mediums should be well below his station. Panorama following a couple of lads in Newham trying not to avoid gang culture was much more interesting and a little heartbreaking.

it was indeed. I'm more often to be found at the george, but short of the fox on the hill, Ivanhoe is still the closest pub.

Close a Mr Dale, but no cigar, I'm not quite in the Dulkhawell area. Just over the road closer to denmark hill.

and talking of favourite forumites...welcome back after your summer madness.

I can't wait for a great schism, a reformation and the heretical burnings!! Huzzah!

Hey tina. Sorry we all collapsed a bit on friday night, end of a long week. But cool to meet up with you guys and definitely hope to see you about in the hood. Ooh, and welcome to the forum (I too read it as tingawee, which I thought was quite cool!!)

Toto?

Hehe, absolutely Huguenot. Apparently some villagers in China have been using dinosaur fossils in their medicine for thousands of years because they are parts of the dragon. Or bits of stone. I suppose a dose of mud with some minerals thrown in won't actually harm you, but just because something's Asian and/or an old practice doesn't lend anything to its legitimacy as a treatment in my eyes one jot. Having enjoyed a bit of sparring at my door the other day with a Jehova's witness, the one fall back argument he had was that it's an old book. Riiiiight. I'm not arrogant enough to dismiss anything out of hand, and for sure there are more things in heaven and earth than ...err .. Horatio Hornblower thought about while having a number two, but I don't appreciate being accused of being closed minded when all I want is a greater burden of proof than 'people have been at it for ages'. Thuggee in India went on for almost a thousand years, but I still think it's a pretty bad way of appeasing your gods. But I'm all for positive thinking too.

Hugenot, inclined to more or less agree with that chap. As you know I'm all for live and let live, and the likes of Dawkins do seem to push this country closer to the nasty divisiveness of the United States. I like the fact that the majority when asked about religion sort of shrug their shoulders, mutter something about believing in god and if pushed say something like "dunno, church of england s'ppose" with a questioning inflection. It's nice, and I'd rather we didn't drop that for militant atheism, any more than I am partial to evangelicals. MW, my mum's a rakey healer (I do wish she'd eat more) and her missus is a shaman. It's all a bit bonkers if you ask me, but if mum's healing alleviates mrs mockney's toothache, regardless of the explanation, I'm happy enough with that. Like I say we're all sorts here and there's room for all of us.

I've been enjoying Francis Wheen's "How mumbo-jumbo conquered the World" immensely which has an interesting chapter on alternative therapies. A whole chapter dedicated to the deconstructionalists who posit that reality is merely a construct of language. A physicist invited them to demonstrate their confidence in theories by leaving his office from his window rather than the door, he was on the 22nd floor.