Burbage

right-clicking Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > A new initiative cooked up by Boris, seems to > offer a glimmer of hope for those struggling to > afford the extortionate rents/purchase. > https://www.sharetobuy.com/london Not so much new as salvaged from the remnants of pear-shaped housing association schemes. This appears to be simply an aggregating website (and marketing wheeze), endorsed by the mayor or, in other words, subsidised by taxes, for schemes that aren't shifting very quickly. Shared-ownership schemes were supposedly very popular in the days of Blairite largesse and easy credit, but housing associations swiftly shifted to the more traditional rental market once the headaches became apparent. The reasons they didn't work are various but on the whole lenders didn't much like them. The properties were often overvalued, repossessions weren't going to be straightforward and, because they couldn't be sold to just anybody, they could be very slow to shift. As a result, shared-owners often ended up stuck with a less-than-amusing triple-whammy of rising rents, negative equity and little chance of remortgaging. And that's without the more practical problems. Such as having to pay the full set of service charges as well as the rent, and that those rents, though only around 80% of the market average, still shot up at the rate of the average. More insidiously, once you'd got a shared-ownership property you weren't a first-time buyer any more, and thus wouldn't be eligible for another. So if you ever had to move house, you'd be stuffed. This appears to have been deliberate. The people who invented the scam are the very people who imagine that everyone has a job for life with bonuses, promotions and pay-rises, and thus naturally assumed every part-owner would regularly buy extra shares in their home until they'd bought the whole lot. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority didn't. Possibly out of pure stubbornness, but more likely on account of a global economic crisis, pay cuts, mass redundancies and rocketing rents. It's not all bad news, and flogging the horse a bit more might not be entirely insane. But, unless they've changed the way they work significantly for the better, you'd need to be a very twisted optimist to see so much as a glimmer. To my mind, it's a very bad thing indeed - removing property from the general market isn't likely to make anything more affordable for anyone. There again, if I was about to start a family and the only alternative was renting, I'd be very interested indeed. But that's not an argument for shared ownership (not as it exists, anyhow), that's an argument for more secure tenancies.

StraferJack Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I have no idea why anyone else wants to stick > their nose in. Let me enlighten you. This is the Lounge. It is the light-entertainment department of the forum, and it's the ideal place for silly games, pointless whinges and the sort of cries for help that brighten everyone else's misery. It is not the Advertising Department. A post in this section is an invitation for discussion, and vituperative discussion is at least as good as any. If unhelpfully swarm-snaffling beekeepers, poet-exposing chancers from Peckham (or possibly Leeds or Suffolk or Cambridge - I've not tracked them down yet, mainly because they're more tedious than annoying), or even the proprietor of Woodrot's Special Clinic have to suffer as short a shrift as it amuses anyone to bother with, I see no good reason to make an exception for second-hand dairists from over the border. I am only surprised that, so far, nobody's pointed out the rancid fatuity of advertising milk to people forty minutes off by bus in the height of summer. Especially if they can only be bothered to sell it once a week. But then, tastes differ, and it's not as if the self-selecting subset of the population who might be tempted to fall for the wheeze are in any sense undeserving, or will suffer much hardship by maxing out their Oyster cards on what, to normal people, would be part of a routine grocery trip. They might count as vulnerable, but the ethics of saving people from themselves has always been a little contentious, and such matters are best reserved for the philosophical sump of the forum, and that is not the Lounge.

woodrot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I have just reported the 2 posts above for > seditious anti cat sentiment. This is ED. We love > cats. cats can do no wrong. never trust a person > who doesnt like cats thats what I say. You shouldn't trust a person who doesn't publish their dissertation, either. Especially if they use the results to justify both vigilantist censorship and opinionated flim-flam.

To an extent, I agree. Though mainly to the extent that I don't see why I should pay good money to watch ads. But according to the BBFC 15-certificate films can contain: strong violence frequent strong language (eg 'f***') [the occasional c*** is also permitted, presumably for artistic reasons] portrayals of sexual activity strong verbal references to sex sexual nudity brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence discriminatory language or behaviour drug taking So the ads might be the least of your worries.

Two possibly relevant bits of news have appeared recently. First is a BBC piece that seems to vindicate the fears of some that Help to Buy would just push house prices up. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22794816 Second is a Guardian article about the rent-to-rent market, which seems right dodgy to me. Though I admit I'd be tempted if I wasn't a rancid pinko. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jun/29/rent-to-rent-property The main trick seems to be renting a flat like a proper tenant, dividing it up and subletting it at a healthy profit to those poorer, more desperate or with iffier references, without the need to own the property or hang about if things go pear-shaped. Being a Guardian article, it should probably be taken with a few pinches of salt. But, like the beds-in-sheds thing which seems to have been bigger than anybody thought, there might still be a lot of it about.

Poplar, apparently. Specifically hybrids of the Black Poplar, and probably 'Railway Poplars' which, quoting from the Collins Tree Guide "are female clones with variably dense snowstorms from June to August". The Dulwich Society website has a little piece that may be relevant.

edhistory Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The designated area between Sydenham Hill (road) > and the disused railway line is a woodland > re-colonisation on the extensive gardens of the > large 19th century mansions. I don't think there > is anything "ancient" about it at all. Happily, whether it's been continuous or replanted doesn't matter for the official definition.

edhistory Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It's certainly in the same location as the Great > North Wood, but I can't identify any part of > Sydenham Wood that qualifies as "ancient > woodland". > > I hope I'm proved wrong. If you follow the instructions in the link you gave, both Dulwich Woods and Sydenham Hill Wood get a nice gold-coloured border on the map when Ancient Woodland is ticked (zoom in to the right bit of the map, tick 'Habitats and Species' on the left, then 'Habitats' then 'Woodland' then 'Ancient Woodland'). Which strongly suggests that the woods in question aren't just 'ancient woodland' in the literal and obvious sense, but also in the bureaucratic sense.

jamesb Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Difficult to tell. Looks like mine have a black > head/fore-body, an orange mid/lower body, and a > white (tipped) tail. Can't easily identify them > online, nor get a decent pic. I'll persevere... > Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boomhommel_op_prei_Bombus_hypnorum.jpg They're Tree Bumblebees. They're one of our newer species (a happy addition or a noxious invader, according to your taste in ecological delusions), and have been turning up in London for the last five years or so. The year before last there was an active colony of them in the big oak nearest the boating hut in Dulwich Park. But it's not there now, so won't be much help.

Townleygreen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > This gives you the cheapest site for your area and > your energy consumption, plus it's unbiased Are you sure about that? The whole business is an utterly rotten scam. uSwitch (other weaselish chisellers are available) gets about ?60 for every switch. Doesn't matter who to or who from, they always win. And where does that money come from? Correct, it comes from you, via your utility bills. The more people switch, the more money uSwitch makes. Everyone else loses, but that doesn't matter. uSwitch spends a lot of time and money virtually forcing people to switch all the time, as if there weren't any global markets or regulators, because if they stopped switching, uSwitch would be dead. Of course uSwitch lets you "compare" tariffs, which looks useful. But tariffs are always changing and even uSwitch won't deign to make anything simple, even if you do hand over all your demographic data and tell it what you spend, so it only every gives you half the picture. And what should be s simple unit price ends up being a bunch of calculations based on your guesses and their noxious assumptions, neither of which are going to be right, based on the increasingly desperate attempts of the billing companies (which is what they are - they don't generate or buy or sell energy, they're just arms-length brands set up to do the paperwork) to game those calculations. Which is why those tariffs are always changing and why they play the silly games with the fees and bundles and gimmicks. It's also why whatever you choose today is bound to be a bad deal tomorrow. Whichever way you slice it, they've got to claw back that money somehow, and it's only customers' money they have to play with. In short, it's a stinking, immoral, self-perpetuating vortex of pointlessness that we all end up paying for. uSwitch is impartial (though it has been caught fiddling and, like Which, is more of a media owner than a public guardian), but only in the same way as a bookie is impartial. They don't care who, or if anyone, wins. They just want as many customers as possible to think they've got one over on each other, and not in a nice way, as often as possible and possibly oftener. They just sit back, let their customers think they're ripping off each other, and pocket a percentage. As customers, we have a choice. We can join this sordid little game, going round and round the plughole of privatisation like the flies at the back of a cat, or we can just choose a billing company, ring them up and see if their rates are cheaper. In the end, it won't make much difference, but at least you'll have the satisfaction of not handing yet another chunk of money to someone who hasn't earnt it.

the-e-dealer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is this the same woodrot who ... ? I think so. But that's no reason to be suspicious of her motives. It's not as if people can't see the error of previous ways and change direction in response to circumstance, justified criticism, conscience, deity or parents. Just look at Jeffrey Archer, Peter Mandelson or David Icke, all of whom have profitably recovered from earlier misunderstandings and are now back in their rightful positions as leaders of the free world, albeit modestly from behind the scenes. There comes a time in every person's life when the realisation dawns that the romantic novel is indeed a work of fiction, that the glittering galaxy of future possibilities has imperceptibly coalesced into the jittery blur of an evening star and that the cheerful balloon of hope has gradually turned from a beribboned beacon of optimism into a limp and flaccid memory of what might have been. And that's the time that we choose to dress in beige and learn to love a cat. It is good to see that Woodrot is taking something of a stand. Although tertiary education is little more than a futile kick against the dictates of fortune, especially for mature students who, if we're honest, have little chance in the internship market, what with the lack of working-age uncles and the fragrant attributes of their juvenile competitors, it is something to do, and that's of considerable value to the purposeless. But, ultimately, it will only stave off the inevitable for a short while, and as one enters one's jam-making years and start to takes an autumnal interest in watercolours, you need all the support you can get from friends or, in this case, randomly anonymous strangers who might, at least, pretend to take an interest. So yes, I have no reason to believe this isn't a reformed Woodrot and deserving of, if not exactly sympathy, at least indulgence. It's not as if we've anything better to do.

The consultation response is now available from http://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/cycling/cs5 TfL has now "decided to substantially recast the previous proposals for some sections of CS5", which means that, up to the Oval, quite a lot of the changes have been abandoned or postponed. But not the 20mph limit in Camberwell (the town centre and Peckham High Street/Peckham Road), which will be going ahead. From the Oval to the centre of town, including the Vauxhall Gyratory, all the plans are back on the drawing board, and there'll apparently be another consultation on those later. That means the really horrid bits are going to stay horrid for a while longer, but at least they won't be getting worse.

Huggers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > We have just returned from South Bank on the 176 > with normal-ish traffic,and it took one hour- a > journey that usually takes about half an hour. We > progressed completely averagely until we got to > the Nags Head in Camberwell for driver > changeover.Today there was a ten minute wait for > this. Then once we had the new driver everything > slowed right down- for no apparent reason we > stopped for another ten minutes at the stop just > past Camberwell Green. The driver was extremely > slow until he got to stops, when he was extremely > fast on the brakes, leaving us hanging on for dear > life as we descended the steps. So, if I've read this right, your bus was late. It happens. Quite a lot, all things considered. Especially when there's a bunch of diversions and road closures in central London. As, according to the local news, travel reports, stop indicators and websites, there were going to be. The reason it happens is that, if the buses can't get through for an hour or so, they start piling up. So the bus companies start turning them round in the middle, effectively carving the fleet into two hapless halves, and sending each on one of two shorter runs, according to location, keeping the termini as termini, as you'd expect, and making two additional, if hypothetical, quasi-termini in the middle. Clearly, although this does solve, to a degree, the issue of staticity, it doesn't solve the bunching which will have already happened, as implied by, and in consequence of, the blockage. To do that, and bearing in mind that all the timetables will now be well out of kilter, which will have a variable effect on the passenger burden, and the variability of that burden, at each stop, they have to slow down some buses, speed up others and put some out of service, to accommodate the numbers to be accommodated, and so the buses can better approximate being where they should be by whenever that is. Of course, when a bus goes out of service, they have to put the slow-down on the one in front and the hurry-up on the one behind instead of the vice-versa they started with. And then, when the blockage does clear itself, the whole process must be carefully reversed so that everything's back to where it should have been, though not happening at the time it should have happened, but at the time that it is. And that's not as simple as it looks. The fact that the drivers are only obeying orders is, of course, no excuse for having forced you to grab a grab-rail. But in the extensive and imaginative catalogue of the things humans have done to each other down the millennia, it would be at the milder end of the spectrum for anyone but a lawyer. If you don't have one of those, but still want justice for the abuse you have clearly suffered, I suggest you complain to the bus company. Although the manifestations that populate this forum must have their uses, the dispensation of swiftly merciless justice in response to bus-related complaints isn't likely to be one of them.

KidKruger Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Burbage - Sainsburys sell Lemon Puffs. Thanks. I shall check out the shelves in the vasty orange halls of the overweening grocer at my earliest convenience and, should the information be reliable and the exercise be more than a futile ornament in the vapid catalogue of a broadly purposeless existence, report back accordingly.

Abbey Crunch Lemon Puffs Hope

jomchugh Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi. I am planning to move to one of the streets > behind Denmark Hill station All you need to know is here. All Salvationists and "sluttish meals", apparently.

Bellerophon Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Outstanding service IMHO Well, yes. But you want to be careful. The council do a lot of stuff like that, and you never see threads about the absence of litter or dog poo or leaves, that most kids in care turn out quite nice or that most occupants of social housing don't perish in preventable fires. Although this particular item breaks the mould a little, I'm willing to be this is the last thread we'll have about the absence of a shed. But you pay for all that, and you don't want to go round being nice and appreciative because, before very long, you'll be off to wave placards about the council tax or the lack of refuges or some newly-murderous cycle facility, and you can't do that effectively if you're open to the suggestion that they're not a bunch of corrupt, lazy, self-serving, faceless, unhelpful, complacent, indifferent, bureacratic and evil scum. Sad though it is, that's how democracy works. It's also human nature. While we are happy to oathfully vituperate a broadly illiterate, innumerate, light-fingered and mendacious Royal Mail, it's all smiles and chat about the weather when we meet a postie face to face. We cheerfully call for the guillotine in public but, if we could get away with it, we'd kill far more people to get an invite to a garden party. We scream blue murder if we find a neighbour's put half a wheel across our dropped kerb, but when we get a fine for parking our land-yacht on the zig-zags, it's tantamount to a declaration of war. Which, naturally, begs a question. What, exactly, is your beef with the council this time?

bint_cj Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i must be having a slow day, i'm sure thats meant > to be funny Not necessarily. Woodrot is one of the forum's wiser members. The solution to your actual problem is a litter tray. London (and Paris) are full of 'house cats' that will never know the pleasure of defecating in a neighbour's garden, or breathe anything fresher than Glade. Some people are less than sure that this is a very nice way to treat cats, but it's better then the sack-and-housebrick method, and cats kept permanently indoors don't seem particularly loopier than the ones that get to play with foxes or spatter themselves over the lost and founds.

woodrot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Do these people contribute to art or are they just > the Fixie riding arts management Blitzkrieg shock > troops of the bearded culture brownshirts looking > for lebensraum? It's just a branch of the fundraising industry and, apart from the moral flexibility, there's nothing wrong with that. Admittedly, it's more often a self-starting branch, what with fundraising traditionally relying more than most on appearance and charisma, and, because they're effectively scraping a living from other people's work, they're on the same ethical plane as the fence or the gangmaster. But we live in a world where 'adding value' is what keeps our economy turning, and if it wasn't for the burgeoning rafts of questionable middlemen, we'd all be well sunk by now. My advice would be to treat their activities as performances and not worry too much about whether it means anything or what it'll cost you. Think of it as stimulus. Besides, there'll always be someone, somewhere subverting something, and the ones you know about are not the ones you need to fret about, however objectionably self-serving they may seem. In any case, kind words cost nothing, and giving people the benefit of the doubt is exactly the sort of thing that'll make your sunless innards feel a little better. I hate to be presumptive, but your question suggests they're not in the happiest of states this afternoon.

Mick Mac Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Jeez. This thread reminds me of when I was > completely skint and life was a bedsit. When I was a lodger I dreamt of bedsits. Although HMOs weren't a complete escape from psychological games and passive-aggressive notes, and you could rely most surely on the meter being rigged, it was a step up the social ladder, and I can still remember the sense of pride I had in having a telephone to myself, a whole Baby Belling to watch and no curfew on the wireless. Lodging is probably better now, as telephones aren't the battlegrounds they used to be. But I imagine it can still get diplomatical if you've the nerve to own a bicycle or want to wash your clothes. I never had any visitors, so that wasn't an issue, but I'd imagine entertaining could be awkward business and, along with the unspoken expectation that you'd do away with yourself in the run-up to any festivities, lodgings are probably best suited to those who enjoy the great outdoors. As a rule of thumb, however, lodgers want from a home more or less what a human wants from a home. Shelter, privacy, safety, comfort and a degree of freedom and dignity are the basic requirements. They won't, naturally, expect the full set of human rights, and those relating to family life are usually forbidden, but the basic principles are suprisingly similar.

binary_star Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > every restriction which applied to all vehicles in > the royal parks now only applies to motor > vehicles. Thus, speed limits do now not apply to > bicycles in Royal Parks, just as they do not in > general elsewhere. NO LIMITS FOR HORSES EITHER IS THERE NOT EVEN PARKS WHERE PEOPLE WALK IN ITS ONE LAW FOR THE TOFFS AND ONE FOR THE MOTORIST UTTER DISGRACE IS WHAT IT IS DO THE GOVEMRNET KNOW WHAT IT COSTS TO RUN A CAR FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE ITS AT LEAST HALF MY INCOME AND THE FINES ARE EXTRA THEY JUST DONT CARE AND I CANT AFFORD A HORSE WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO TAKE THE BLODDY BUS IT MAKES ME WANT TO SPIT Sent from my iPhone.

If I was to try to identify the most prominent of the numinous shadows that have shimmered through the gloom of this miserable year, it would probably be the lumbering truth that I'm not dead yet. I am aware that it's hardly a highlight and, according to a surprising number of religious authorities, is much worse than the alternative, but it's the best I can do. That's not to say that the embers of hope haven't vomited the odd spark of schadenfreude, and Mr Huhne's charmless antics in particular have added a little spice to life's bitter gruel. But, on the whole, I'm not sure it's been worth bothering. It is possible, at a stretch, that I might be unusually left of cheerful. But I'm inclined to suspect that UncleBen is right and that most people, if prompted to count their blessings, might find it sufficiently hard to reach the single digits that a trip to the South-West of Eastbourne would seem comparatively profitable. There are consolations, albeit of a negative sort. I do not sell insurance, thinktank policies or indulge in Street Art (a phrase that, for some reason, inspires thoughts of salt mines), which means I can, more often than not, get some semblance of sleep at night. And the passions I am slave to are easily, if not cheaply, slaked, putting me, at a rough guess, amongst the top 4% of the undemanding. But however askance I gaze into the debilitating decades ahead that pave the way to inevitable death, I can't see much that's pretty to look at. Not even Eurovision.

A summary of the issues, and the surveying/lending industry's views on it, is more-or-less here. It's a draft from a couple of years ago (the final version is a secret known only to those who can profit from it). The upshot is that, unless the council are kind enough to commit to a plan to tackle it, lenders will remain twitchy (assuming knotweed is the real reason for refusal). All you can practically do is write and ask the council to deal with it, or hope the next buyer's lender is more relaxed. The council is only obliged to ensure that the knotweed on their property doesn't escape into the 'wild' and thanks to an incompetent legislature and an absence of case-law, the 'wild' means whatever the council chooses it to mean. As freeholders, the council does have a responsibility for maintaining the property, but in this context that just means they're able to charge you (and the other leaseholders) for repairing any damage that the knotweed might eventually cause. In theory, leaseholders might be able to take the council to the LVT if they've neglected a problem that does later cause serious damage, but that's a very distant gamble, is likely to cost you either way, can't be done before the damage has happened and might become horribly complicated if the council has tried to outsource the management. A better possibility is that the council's insurers (should there be any) kick up a fuss before things get too expensive, but they'll only do that if they're at risk of having to pay out. If not, they won't bother.

TopTree Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- Have looked without > luck on HMRC site. Thanks. There's a prominent link to the PAYE stuff on the HRMC homepage. On a positive note, that suggests it's not luck you're out of. Alternatively, you can get straight to the good stuff here.

steveo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yes, too vague. > > No humans The answer's still no.