SimonM

That must surely be one very long shortlist then! :)) Of course, as he never ceases to remind us, Colin did turn down Chelsea once...

I blame the smoking ban......No more "Hamlet" ads...

I saw the same series. It never occurred to you that the presence of the TV cameras was in any way influencing what Colin was saying/shouting/ranting about then? :)) It's funny too how he always finds employment. I see the latest rumour has him heading for QPR if Palace go bust...

When Colin made that gesture he intended no such thing...he just wanted the guy to get stuck in. Roughly half Sheffield United's supporters thought he was a poor manager too, but they were idiots really, given how many of Warnock's predecessors had ignominiously failed to get United into the Premier. It was a 10 point gap and they were cheated out of it...West Ham supporters like to cultivate the opposite myth though..

How nice at last to be able to admire again the views from the bridge in the Japanese Garden). I don't know when it was actually repaired but it's nice to be able to watch the waterfowl there. I suspect the restoration might attract some criticism though, as the gaps along the sides of the bridge are quite wide...certainly wide enough to let a small child through.

I've never claimed the doe either, even though it is quite deer to me... All conspiracy theories are thought up and disseminated by a secret government department you know...

Nope..you get 30 lashes for that. The bulb still needs feeding from the green stem, unless it is completely broken off, obviously! >:D

I have mentioned it before (ages ago) but... "train station"

I did not think Adrian Lester lived here any more...

Er no I disagree. This point of view has always been around. There's no evidence it is "growing". "Selective grammar schools", one of which I attended, took only the "top" 20% of the population. Of that only a tenth or so were acadmically 'gifted' to any meaningful degree. Each of these schools could only co-exist with five or six secondary moderns dotted around, many of which were simply dire. Parents who yearn for the return of these schools should ask themselves what they would do if Wayne or Calista failed the 11+ - as around 80% did apparently. But of course none of this has anything to do with coaches obstructing Townley Road. I don't think they just ferry the school's own pupils, but also visiting sports teams. State school or private school, there is no excuse for coaches to do this until the kids are actually arriving or leaving, not using the road as a car park. There's other places they can hang around without parking illegally or dangerously.

This comment is absurd at so many levels as far as Mandela is concerned, and I would just have let it if pass, had it not been for I suppose, as ways of crushing dissent South Arican-style go, being bullied to silence simply for holding a different view, from a different perspective, on an a cossetted internet forum is preferable then to "clumsily fall" from a high window in Police HQ like Steve Biko did. (A cheap shot I know, but I did not drag this down into the gutter) A "proper perspective"? What could that possibly be I wonder?? Originally I was trying to address terms like "criminal" and "terrorist". Mandela was a criminal in the way the American revolutionaries and the French Resistance were "criminal". It may seem obvious, but a "criminal" is someone who breaks a law, and laws are made by governments. But where the "government" is demonstrably a minority, white supremacist, repugnant and generally anathma to the *civilised* world the term "criminal" becomes largely irrelevant. . Why does this not surprise me? To understand why Mandela is admired and respected, for one thing you only just to need to look at the "statesmen" who have lined up with him on the world stage over the decades - both Bushes, Thatcher, Blair, Mugabe, Gaddafi etc etc...Rightly or wrongly these and others all seem to ooze with self-serving hypocrisy of various types and degrees. None of them "suffered" in prison for their beliefs and on largely trumped-up charges... edited to correct a really really stupid error!

Wow....the only cliche not (yet?) resuscitated is that one about black South Africans being "like children really, not capable of running the country". That was a South African favourite back in the 1970's, although not one used by my college tutor, who had been forced to leave SA after being imprisoned there for anti-partheid campaigning...

>>It seems Simon - that you comment that the ANC / Nelson Mandela were only criminal because the SA govt categorised them as criminal - is incorrect - their military wing meant business, in violent term.<< He was a criminal only in a narrow technical and not terribly useful sense. He was certainly no terrorist. There's more to resorting to "terror" than merely employing or threatening violence as a form of self-defence.

I think Capello is pragmatic enough to write Cole out of the World Cup finals if he really takes 3 months to recover. So perhaps an opportunity for someone to make a name for himself?

That Yahoo summary is total bollocks. Whatever acts it carried out, the A.N.C. was only a "crimial organisation" because it was outlawed by a government neither it, nor the majority of the citizens of South Africa nor indeed much of the outside world regarded as legitimate or representative. IIRC he was imprisoned only for blowing up electricity pylons. Mandela is by no definition a "reformed terrorist". "former terrorists in Sinn Fein"??? Hmm...wasn't SF the ballot box half of the "armalite and ballot box" strategy? Was McGuinness even in SF? It's long been a cliche that one's mans's terroist is another's freedom fighter and, eventually, distinguished statesman of course - but Mandela's long prison term and stoic reaction has marked him out as special.

This week's episode was pretty bleak though...

I agree with Louisa. The occasional toddler picking the odd bloom is really neither here nor there. But what we do tend to see is idiots picking dirty great bunches and leaving a trail of discarded flowers, which is depressing on many levels....You can grow your own daffodils in window boxes too you know, if Mummy needs to be impressed! :))

Thames bridges closed: North London cut off. :))

Dennis Skinner has long been my all-time favourite MP. Agree with him or not, he has principles and has always stuck rigidly to them.

The guy's religion had no bearing on the verdict or on the length of his sentence - only on whether to suspend it or not. Suspending a sentence for a first and not terribly serious offence is pretty much the default outcome. At worst Booth was just tactless.

I am by no means a big fan of Ms Booth but she has done nothing other than follow the rules on sentencing on this occasion. She was bound to consider suspending the sentence and the guy's previous good character - however derived - was always going to lean towards a suspension. This is just the pro Tory Murdoch rag having another gratuitous kick at Labour IMHO.

Hmmm...are you sure these were coal tits? They are smaller than great tits, roughly the size of blue tits...

Only seen 1 of these pics. Dulwich Hospital was named "King's College Hospital - East Dulwich annexe" for a period to the mid-70s, and did still have a maternity ward then: it was also thought a good nicer than the one at King's by a mother of my acquaintance...

>>This means I am in the yellow box and turning right with the lights on Red. Is this wrong to do<< I believe this is perfectly legal as long as the road you are turning into (Peckham Rye here?) is otherwise free to enter.

I am still struggling to get to grips with the idea of Mrs Doyle as a sex siren leaning provocatively against the mantelpiece...