civilservant

wahey! carp on, Jeremy!

Jeremy, you only get to carp on about it if you pay the piper - if your fun was free, it's only right to take it as it comes for five or six years, rain or shine, local bands played at our annual street party, courtesy of the Goose. They got little more than a couple of beers and our thanks. and the Goose got nothing apart from the warm fuzzy feeling of having done something for their neighbours. Live music makes a big difference to events like that, so good luck, gnulover, in your search for a live band for your street party.

thanks jaywalker, i will get a bit of the seaweed and iron stuff, and hope to cure the poor little hydrangea let's hope the wretched alkanet doesn't lap it up as well! Sue, i think parks do quite a lot of soil conditioning for their acid-lovers - i couldn't afford anything on the same scale!

Green Goose Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > jaywalker Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > And what do all the Conservative voters who > read > > this forum hope for Barry? > > > > To be clear, if the Tories win, his country > > cousins will be torn apart by packs of dogs. > > Get a life and spare us your boring > politicalisation of every topic you respond to. > It's so repetitive, infantile and boring. > > GG pot, kettle, spring to mind!

as it happens i'm also trying to discourage alkanet - it overpowers everything else in the garden i see that it is said to thrive in soil with high (alkaline) pH, so i thought that lowering the soil pH might make it harder for alkanet to do well and also help my chlorotic hydrangea any suggestions for reducing the alkalinity of soil?

oh no! we had a nest in the roof, with an entrance just outside my daughter's bedroom window we got a wasp man in and he sorted them out, but they came back the next year, and again the next... do keep an eye out, Sue!

that's such a good story, marleylover jaywalker, i do hope you aren't suggesting that what the foxes or the cat feel for each other is cupboard love?

direct your boss to this week's Time Out there's a piece by Charles Foster (Being a Beast) on urban foxes - and she just might be charmed into appreciating them

Bluetits very busy this morning scavenging our dog's combings (which I leave out in the garden for them) to line their nests. Flying off home with furry 'moustaches' tucked in their beaks - very funny!

my daughter was allocated her 6th choice school when we applied two years ago, but about a month before term started, we were offered a place at our 2nd choice school. it was a hard couple of months, but all i can say is, see how it goes. Do not turn your place down, though, as it means that you're completely out of the running when any vacancies at schools higher up your preference list become available, as will inevitably happen. i think that overall almost all applicants got one of their top 3 choices in the recent past.

>Sorry stringvest: > "It is far from ingrained - dogs that are used for hunting need to learn how to attack and often have to be trained up specially" that wasn't stringvest, that was me. this post was started by stringvest to warn about some dangerous dogs. sringvest showed an admirable level of compassion, and I am sure you kk would do likewise in the same circs going back to basics - this post was about unacceptable behaviour by dogs and their owners if that behaviour was routine, the forum would flag it - this is the forum which sees every fresh dog turd on the pavement as news to be flagged I do not for a moment disagree that dogs'll chase anything that runs away (including children and adults) but to attack and continue to attack to the kill - that is very unusual and is either learned behaviour, or a sick dog

all my dogs have been terriers with well-developed prey instincts. they have chased squirrels, mice and rats and, when i lived outside London some years ago, my dog was known to chase cats up trees and kill rats. however a sustained vicious attack of the kind that stringvest reports, of a dog against a fox, is out of the ordinary even for dogs with strong prey instincts. It is far from ingrained - dogs that are used for hunting need to learn how to attack and often have to be trained up specially. these dogs have killed a fox. no-one to my knowledge has reported anything like that in the life of this forum. This indicates exactly how abnormal this behaviour is and what a risk these dogs pose to other creatures around

Good luck, buddug! what i've been trying to find locally are cookery lessons during half-term for teenage daughter. there are none locally, and all those up in town are expensive/fancy stuff (Leith school type) i imagine that's a niche market as well, although it would involve quite a bit of prep and admin to organise!

Thank you for doing what you could. this is unfortunate, not just for that poor fox, but also for those dogs, that have been allowed to run out of control.

it's right that he's been hunted down, captured etc, zelig but agree that the double standards stink - and that's why a load of us joined the march the saturday after the US election

all credit to Hayes for having the courage to vote the way she did Bic Basher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Kate Hoey voted for Article 50 despite Vauxhall having the largest amount for remaining in the EU. That is not surprising at all. It's always been a mystery to me how Hoey keeps getting returned in Vauxhall - she's not just a Eurosceptic but also pro-hunting, pro-guns, pro-Unionist, pro-smoking, anti-immigration, ...

yes, cherrypicking, and the reference to Fullfact is mischievous because it doesn't legitimise the assertion the correct metric is lifetime earnings (or expected lifetime earnings) until quite recently, women earned less than men in every age group, but it looks like there's been a bit of recent play-field levelling (which was first reported in the Guardian?). what WOULD be interesting is to see whether this earnings advantage persists as the cohort ages

TheCat Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > When I read banners like "the future is female", how am I meant to get on > board with such a divisive slogan, and also look my son in the eye and tell him that according to > these people (who claim to espouse equality) the future is not for him. many of us have a similar problem with regard to our daughters, TheCat how to look them in the eye and reassure them that they might have an equal future, just like you'd hope for your son, in spite of the divisive rhetoric spouted by generations of men, of whom Trump is just the latest the difference, though, which is that these girls actually live, here and now, in a world where they are worse off on every metric, and no sign of it getting better.

Abe_froeman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Did anyone point out to the women's march that in > this country we are so progessive and egalitarian > that our prime minister is actually a woman? a distinction shared by Ceylon and India >50 years ago, and Israel, Pakistan and Bangladesh >40 years ago (of course mustn't forget us in 1979 for 11 years!) but unlike our current PM, all of these women were elected to the role by their putatively progressive and egalitarian countries

there were loads of men there as well, an inclusive and positive event with estimated attendance 100k many carried banners reading 'girls just want to have fundamental rights' - nothing wrong with that!

TheCat Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So this protest is named after only one gender, > and all of the speakers and performers are > exclusively one gender.....but it's for > 'everyone'.... > > Hmmmmmmm..... hmmmm indeed it's quite possible that marches don't achieve anything - but at last they give people a reason to assemble visibly to support or protest. the right of public assembly is precious and people have suffered to protect it so no men are assembling - why don't you do something about that instead of hmmm-ing and hawing?

very sorry to hear this. I do hope your children have recovered. how old were these other kids?