civilservant

FtG, fair enough, I just wondered why no mention (or not much). I'd have thought it was a red rag to the good old EDF. Since it's been done, no point starting up another whole thread about it. Simples! and thanks Alan M, I'm assuming that's a compliment? I'm smiling about your assumption though!

There's a blue plaque to Dan Leno just off Myatt's Fields in Camberwell. But I think Quids is right. I couldn't find any info about a Camberwell prison either. You might however be interested in Millbank prison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbank_Prison - this stood where the Tate Britain now stands. The Prison Service HQ is still on that site

Rites of passage are important I guess. But I've always been interested by the fact that proms seem to give rise to conflicting emotions in their home territory. In most US movies involving proms, the prom is presented as the pinnacle of a suburban life. The prom queen will shine for one night - at the age of 16 - before she vanishes into decades of dreary domesticity, while the prom king usually progresses into some dead-end job e.g. used-car dealer and develops a spare tyre of his own. Or else the prom is the vehicle for a revenge fantasy a la Carrie. Luckily I've got a few more years before I have to make a final decision on where I stand on end of secondary school rites of passage!

I think we've forgotten what it could be like for girls and women in the days before the pill and readily available contraception. In those days, if a girl from a 'respectable' family 'fell', the consequences were so much more serious for her than for anyone else. So maybe being mysterious and prudish about sex and reproduction might have had a protective function. I don't know for certain. All kinds of things have been done in the name of 'protecting' men and women from themselves. It's good to know that openly talking about this is helping to move us away from that. I saw this the other day - advice from the excellent Mariella Frostrup - and remarked to my partner that this was exactly what I would tell my daughter when she is older. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/10/mariella-frostrup-stable-tempted-ex. However, this is parental advice that I can permit myself now at the beginning of the 21st Century. A hundred years ago, I know that my advice would have been very different. And my partner agreed. A hundred years ago, what might he have said!

Cologne is 300 miles away and in another country but Westminster is 5 miles up the road Mick mac, why don't we talk about interesting decisions made by courts closer to home instead? Such as this one http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18835915 I'd have thought that this was ideal discussion material for the forum

sorry - should have read back a bit further on thread than I did

Saffron Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just b/c FGM may not be in the "same league" as > male circumcision, does not mean that male > circumcision is not also an awful thing. The > foreskin is physiologically functional tissue. > You wouldn't cut off a baby's finger tip. Why cut > off the end of his penis? Whatever its origins, > modern medical science should seek to discourage > this practice on infants. Agree, but there are degrees of awfulness - and it's not comparing like for like to say that FGM is against the law so male circumcision should be too. This is a minefield, and while I too think circumcision is a barbaric practice, I'm in the comfortable position of being neither Jewish nor Muslim (nor African for that matter). But I am getting uncomfortable with the tone of this thread. Are people discussing issues of consent? Or are they complaining about Muslim/Jewish religious practice?

I'm with Saffron re terminology, and calling things by their right names IF one is using the terminology. However, there's the whole issue of medicalising female reproduction, and so why not use 'common' or 'vulgar' terms to designate the different bits? IMO it just indicates that these are normal body parts that are referred to in ordinary language. You can call a femur a thigh bone after all and no one will contest you on that. And why isn't anyone asking anyone else to talk to their little boy about his 'penis' rather than his 'willy'?

going to bed with a good book

El Pibe Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is there any reason why it shouldn't be deemed > assault? Are ritualistic scarrings and female > circumcision banned, if so why *not* this? 'Female circumcision' is nowhere in the same league as ritualistic scarring or male circumcision. The correct term is Female genital mutilation, or FGM for the queasy. It involves EXcision or completely cutting away external genitalia - not just the removal of a flap of skin as in circumcision. These are all local cultural practices which seem to have become conflated with religious practice in the days when culture and religion were the same thing. Edited to add - FGM has sometimes been identified as a Muslim practice and exported to other parts of the world as such. It is not - it is a predominantly African cultural practice.

It was claimed by staff at Mary Chipperfield Promotions that she was the baby Asian elephant that famously appeared on children?s TV?s Blue Peter ... http://www.ad-international.org/animals_in_entertainment/go.php?id=2228&ssi=10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd-LtWtNvDw female elephants: teamwork, problem-solving, compassion, strong useful noses - what's not to like?

in ED possibly!

Sillywoman, don't get me wrong on this! Having been one of the protected ones, I'm very keen for my girl to learn independence earlier than I did. (Although being over-protected as a child has made me value independence that much more highly) My point was that it's important to consider how easy a route would be for a child to negotiate on his/her own. Even a quiet road can be a challenge to children - or even older people - if there's no properly marked crossing on it. Anyway, I think you'll agree that there's no point making a child do something that they aren't yet ready for, on the grounds that 'it's good for them'.

'smelly paddles' is this due to a. the fish van, about which many have already commented on other threads b. the rain, keeping everything wet and puddly? increased sightings of rats the rain and attendant flooding has driven the poor creatures out of their usual haunts and they are having to go out and about in daytime outside their normal hours street cleaners I've seen them hard at work right through the week dealing with the stuff that people insist on dumping on the street I wouldn't expect a street cleaner to be working after hours on a Saturday, would you? The stall holders also have a responsibility to clean up, and from what I can see, most of them do a decent job - although the smelly fish van could do more to hose its bit of the pavement down.

My nieces identified friends and older girls who were heading the same way when they started travelling to secondary school at age 11/12. They have a bus and a train ride to get there, but at least they have safety in numbers, and don't feel that they are being forced to rely on adult support. Before that I do feel that they are too young. When I walk with my daughter to her school, we sometimes meet a child walking alone to primary school. She's about 10 I think. I've noticed that she is quite nervous about crossing the road where there's no pelican crossing or lights and waits until someone else crosses and follows them over.

actually it's the front end that Moos... Nette for Dame-in-Chief, no contest!

My 8 year-old (girl) has known about 'mummy nappies' for ages but we haven't gone into the details of what they are for. She knows all about the different bits, and knows all about where babies grow, and about how they are fed etc - but we haven't yet had the discussion about exactly how they are made. I find that answering questions up-front - like Quids - means that she goes away satisfied, at least for the moment. IMO no point beating about the bush ;-) on the subject, although admit that I'm not sure how sanguine I'd be about little boys' pride in how 'big they'd made it'!

I agree - a primary school prom is an especially weird idea. Dressing "formally" at age 11? Whose idea? Where are they the new 'thing' in town? Seems like a classic example of the creeping ITV-isation of popular culture. I wouldn't want my daughter at a school that supported this kind of thing

Annette Curtain Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > We did suffer with mice here (before he came) > though not any longer. In all, he's just doing > "cat-stuff" and loving it. We too had a mouse problem until our pup arrived. In fact, he's rubbish at chasing mice (I saw him watch a mouse scamper across the room in front of him, while he gazed at it with mild interest) but THEY don't know that and stay away... > And for those 'pussys' that do break the rules, > i've got a GIANT PUMP ACTION WATER PISTOL You tell them, Nette!

DJKillaQueen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > A: Cats bury their crap. > > B: Most cats are pretty useless at catching birds > and squirrels have never been the natural prey of > cats. A: Maybe the cats that crapped in my garden could be trained by a crap-burier cat? Oh, I forgot... cats can't be trained As for B; having watched a pair of cats savage a baby squirrel in my garden, which was then left to die, and having had to deal with bird carcasses before my small daughter saw them, I can be excused for being very sceptical about this claim I'm generally inclined to make excuses for animals behaving 'badly', but cats test my patience, as do people making excuses for them.

DJKillaQueen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You seem to think cats and dogs are the same. They > are not. No indeed. A handy guide for the perplexed below: Dog: dog craps in street and owner fails to clean up, this forum hears about it before the night is out Cat: cat craps in someone else's garden/street/etc - owner supports cat's freedom to dump anywhere Dog: dog attacks squirrel - this becomes headline news on this forum, eliciting cries of 'tsk tsk' and 'barbarians' Cat: cat kills defenceless squirrels and small birds - owner supports cat's freedom to 'be itself' Since our neighbouring cats moved away, we've had a (very welcome) population explosion of squirrels and small birds. So if any cats visit my garden, they will have to discuss their right to roam freely there with me or my dog.

What SJ said I originally wrote in support of LC against what I thought was some rather silly criticism. But of course the gag means that you can't check that out any more... And I won't be going out of my way to sample their wares any time soon.

having rammed white hat on head and waded into the fray all guns blazing, now see that fellow Forumites have been quietly toiling all night long to support the Forum's right to free speech and to diss those who would not be dissed http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?20,915483,page=1

Siduhe, thank you for the link. I hadn't seen it as I rarely venture into the About this Forum section. Very interesting to see the names of the only two (or is it three, Admin?) businesses which wanted their names to be made off-limits.