civilservant

PB, people make all sorts of polite (and not so polite) requests on EDF - I nearly didn't read this thread beacuse I thought it might be about asking people to confine their use of tomato sauce to their chips, or about not being able to buy things out of the charity shop window, or even asking people to drive more sensibly why don't you just re-post on the main drag with a title that alludes to driving down the middle of ED roads to straddle the speed bumps? also, why the humility i.e. 'proabbly pointless request'? With any luck, Admin (Peace be on him/her) will feel compassion for you and your post and let it be, you will stir up loads of EDF argy-bargy about the right to drive any damn way they please, whether it's on a fire-breathing unicorn, a 4X4, or just a 10-year old Corsa, and you might even have influenced a few people into driving on their side of the road...

EJTH, really sorry to see this shower add insult to your OH's injury! I'd like to see if any of them was quite as up for a laugh if it was them that got squirted.

lovely to see so many hedgehog pals. You might want to sign up here http://www.hedgehogstreet.org/pages/hedgehog-street.html "Through Hedgehog Street, we are asking people to become Hedgehog Champions to rally support from their neighbours and work together to create ideal hedgehog habitat throughout their street, estate or communal grounds. Please sign up to receive a pack which will help you get started. The pack contains hedgehog factsheets which can be handed out to neighbours, posters to help advertise the project, tips and hints on how to get neighbours involved and how to keep them interested and a pack of action cards which explain what people can do in their gardens. Sometimes people want to help wildlife but they either aren?t sure how to go about it or they think that doing something in their small patch won?t make a difference. This is why we are providing everything you need to do the project and explaining what you can do to make your whole street good for hedgehogs."

who IS Justin Lee Collins? I'd never heard about him before this trial, and no one else seems to know either

We are so envious that you have a hedgehog in your garden! Do please look after it! They are an endangered animal in this country, because they are such inoffensive and undemanding little creatures which suffer as a result of human impact on their habitat.

Dan Leno on Akerman Road near Myatt's Fields Holst was Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School, as well as at JAGS - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Paul%27s_Suite ,

Fly, this is excellent news. I was told that there are almost no hedgehogs left in SE London, and they are a threatened species everywhere in the UK. You should get in touch with the BHPS http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/carers.htm (They also say on their website: IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE IF YOU ARE EMAILING ABOUT A HEDGEHOG THAT MAY BE INJURED, ILL OR ORPHANED PLEASE CALL US ON 01584 890 801 INSTEAD AS EMAILS MAY NOT BE SEEN IN TIME). There is a bloke called Hugh Warwick who works with them who is really keen to find out about local hedgehog habitats - his blog http://www.urchin.info/ .

I suppose the water would be hot enough to cook the salmon if it were securely wrapped up en papillote. But did she do her dishes at the same time? Now that would be green!

ffs

Thanks for the clarification, James. I appreciate that M&S weren't to blame but surprised that they don't seem to have undertaken any due diligence activity on their side. Noone in ED would want such a prominent site empty for any length of time. I hope that a way can be found to keep it occupied.

Interesting that most of the terms quoted in your link are British slang rather than 'correct' usage, Saffron. Overall, I think that we are more influenced by them than they are by us and the impact is much more fundamental. I'm thinking of words like 'billion' - which is now accepted to mean a thousand million (originally US usage) rather than a million million (old UK usage) American English is influenced by much more than British usage, though - there is a lot of Italian, Spanish and Yiddish influence. I was told that their use of 'hopefully' is a literal translation from German usage. But many of their their strange spellings (losing the u in words such as "colour", for example) come from early attempts to rationalise English spelling, which succeeded in the States but failed to catch on here. Anyway, here's another of my pet hates - 'DISinterested' when one means 'UNinterested'. That's wrong both in the US and the UK!

We went into this in some depth when considering what to do with our trees. This is Royal Horticulatural Society advice on the subject http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=225 and here is advice on safe planting distances from another source (possibly a less disinterested one than the RHS) http://www.subsidencebureau.com/subsidence_trees.htm What both concur on is that "in all cases it is wise to consult a qualified expert." BEFORE planting. But has our Council done that? If it did, and I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that it might have, we'd all live happily ever after in my fairy tale!

Group hug!

Saffron Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > A good year for port wine, so I'm told. :0)

Ah! Even I wasn't around in 1896!

... and a proper horticulturist could advise about appropriate street planting. I like Barry Road, and the chief thing that I like about it is the trees. I think urban tree-planting is an excellent thing, and have two large trees in my garden - one is next to the house and we have taken steps to ensure that the tree and the house can both stay in such close proximity (we inherited the tree as a mature speciment when we bought the house). Squirrels, birds and creepy-crawlies live in these trees and i fully support their right to have their existence there. People who know me would even say that I am a bit of a tree-hugger. So I am not sure what Huguenot's beef with me is, but I now feel that - having suffered his wrath - I have come of age on the Forum!

Is that the latest OED, Saffron? My pre-1970 OED specifies DISS-ect as the only pronunciation. I accept that things have moved on, but not strictly correct to say that DYE-sect is the original pronunciation. Agree that PGC's bio teacher was a complete wotsit

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What kind of tree is this civilservant? Not one planted by a council horticulturist, that's for certain. I remember large swathes of North London in the days (a long long time ago) when I lived there, when subsidence first became an issue. The councils responded by severe pollarding of roadside trees. Barry Road is flourishing compared to how those trees looked then. Those trees should never have been planted where they were - any decent horticulturist would have advised against it. So if the council is undertaking road-side planting of trees without the advice of a horticulturist, then it is behaving very foolishly - because it is laying itself open to insurance claims, which, however hard it tries to duck out of, it will be forced to pay eventually, once people have dug the necessary trenches etc. for proof. OK, now back to Huguenot. What exactly is your problem?

oooh! takes one to know one is all that I'll say

And then the council punitively hacks back fully grown trees - see Barry Road - to prevent tree-related subsidence and leaf-fall. It sounds as if they need better horticulturalists.

Hopefully, people will stop saying 'hopefully...' when they mean 'I hope that...'

I too am from the past and proud of it. I was brought up to say diss-ect as in dis-respect. But I've noticed that some people - particularly medics - say dye-SECT. And they pronounce cervical "cerv-EYE-cal" instead of "SER-vical". My own bugbear is people who say 'har-ASS-ment' instead of 'HAR-assment'.

Does this mean that the site is going to be vacant after Iceland vacates the store? That is not good news. I would have expected better and more socially responsible management of this whole issue from an outfit like M&S.

I'll keep that in mind next time I'm in Exeter ;0)

Saffron Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > El Pibe Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > ffs, it has nothing to do with him being gay, > it's > > about how getting into a stranger's car is a > > massively unkonwn quantity where you > effectively > > lose control of the situation. > > Can be risky as an adult, it's an unthinkable > step > > to allow a child to take. > > > > Agreed. seconded Loz, I appreciate the point about Faraday cages, but there are also all kinds of risks that need to be weighed up here. Very very few children or young people end up suffering a fatal outcome (terrible phrasing i know and I apologise in advance to anyone who might be offended), but there are thousands who encounter predators in the way that Monkey and El Pibe have bravely admitted to. These are very traumatic events and children end up blaming themselves and suffering needlessly as a result. BTW was I the only one who was completely gobsmacked to hear Michael Grade and David Hepworth dismissing the Jimmy Savile allegations on Ch 4 news the other day?