Jenny1

My view LM, is that this would have been an opportunity to innovate. Foodhall with added pants. It has a certain resonance. Would it have killed them to break the mould?

You see this is it for me, taper. A missed opportunity. Not a pant in sight.

I disagree Chief. A 'snacky freebie' is always welcome. If you happen to be on LL today, and don't mind a scrum, it's worth popping in for a sense of 'opening day fever'. There's a huddle of what look like M and S middle management convened on the pavement and the store itself is 'rammed', as Jeremy Corbyn would say. Apparently expectant queues stretched down to the bank on the corner of Ashbourne Grove by the time they opened the doors this morning.

If the cost of buying a narrow boat and paying mooring fees is feasible for you M.R. I would seriously consider it. My sister and her family lived on one happily for many years. Do you need to live in London? Moorings are obviously cheaper outside the city. They pretty much built the boat themselves - buying the hull of a Thames lighter barge and then constructing living quarters over about a year. During this time they lived in a portakabin welded to the top of the barge - they installed basic bathroom and kitchen facilities in it. They were lucky to have the skills to do this. It is of course quite possible to buy one 'ready made'. It's common to buy a boat in one location and then have it towed/sail it to the place where you've got your mooring.

Without getting into the deeper questions.....a narrow boat on a registered mooring counts as a normal residential address.

I guess time will tell. I'm sure the Traffic Impact Statement will have made a good assessment - but the process can't be infallible.

Picking up on Louisa's point that the new Marks is likely to be a 'destination' store to which many, if not most, customers will drive - I agree. It's too large to function properly in any other way. It must be designed to provide a service for a fairly wide surrounding area. Partly as a supplier of 'high end' groceries, and partly as a pick up point for online sales of other Marks products. Even if I lived relatively near another M and S shop in South London (Brixton, Lewisham or Walworth Road) I might well chose to travel to the new East Dulwich store to buy food or pick up my clothing order, as Lordship Lane is simply a more relaxed environment in which to shop. This is likely to cause a parking problem - as Louisa points out. I guess the upside for the Lane could be increased coincidental custom for other shops.

Good spot titch juicy! I'm sorry your garden didn't come up to female wrenly expectations, red devil. Apparently 'up north' there's none of this messing around. Males build one nest and the females just have to put up with it. The assumption is that this is due to the shorter breeding season.

For the first time since I moved in in '98 wrens have raised a family in my garden. V pleased. The garden is small and haunted by cats - so I can see why it would have been rejected in the past. A bit of light googling suggests that the mild winter might have encouraged them to branch out and use different nesting areas. Also the spindly hazel twig I planted five years ago in a corner where nothing would grow is now a fine specimen providing a lot of cover - so that might have attracted them. Fascinated and delighted to read that male wrens are obliged to build five or six nests. The female then gets to decide which is best!

Congratulations on the sparrows Sue! We see far too few of them these days. Who'd have thought they'd become so embattled as a species? I'm sure there are plenty of us old enough to remember them in vast numbers.

This article digs deeper into who is most likely to have voted 'Leave'. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36803544 To some extent it debunks the theory that this was a vote pitching the wealthy against the impoverished and the city dweller against the resident of the small town. This ties in with my own experience, explaining the aristocratic Chelsea lady and the retired East Anglian bank manager who I know to have voted 'Leave'. My hope is that the new PM does not closely espouse the 'traditional values' mentioned in this article. (post script - and if you look at the full breadth of what 'traditional values' incorporates - an attachment to the past, rather than moving forward, being the chief identifier - it applies as much to 'die hard' leftists as to those with 'right wing' sensibilities.)

...which would have been fine if he was a ten year old who'd run the lawn mower into the garden shed, destroying both. But it doesn't quite cut it in the circumstances, does it?

How kind of you to say that you see my posts as generally well balanced, adonirum! Thank you. But I'm puzzled as to why you disagree with the one you quote. I've no idea if the man interviewed was an aristocrat or of humbler origins. He could just as well have been either. The point I wanted to make was that it's not necessarily a good sign when people who have felt no sense of electoral responsibility throughout their relatively long lives, suddenly get the urge to go to the polling booths.

Quite. And his questionable 'charm' and 'humour' won't work outside the UK - or in fact, I would argue, beyond England. It's only a certain type of English person who's susceptible to that brand of buffoonish banter, mixed with half-remembered references to classical history. Some Tories have him marked down as the 'Great Communicator' - but to a German, Chinese or Indian person he'll just look like a childish fool. If the situation wasn't so serious I would simply regard this appointment as toe-curlingly embarrassing.

I'd agree that Boris is dangerous. Primarily to us.

Thanks Seabag. I wish you all the best with your business. I'm sure you'll find ways of regaining momentum. I quite understand the need to prioritise getting on with the job in hand. I'm just so sorry that people have been put through all of this.

Well of course, everyone is entitled to respond in the way that best suits them. Naturally you must 'move on' if that's what you want to do! But I think the reverberations of this referendum result will be deep and far-reaching. It's possible that our current crop of MPs (no matter what party they come from) are sufficiently lacking in initiative to duck making any real changes. But I suspect there are some key figures in the Labour Party, the SNP, the Lib Dems and even the Tories, who are trying to get to grips with the new landscape. And clearly there are other groups in society - like those who went on the London march, and the 1000 barristers calling for a Commons vote pre Article 50 - who feel very strongly about this indeed. These people will be braver, and have a greater chance of success, if we - as the public - back them. I'm still very angry. Primarily with Cameron. He was careless over this. Criminally so, in my view. Did he not see why it is that the US demands a two thirds majority for any vote that will make changes to the constitution? Did he not remember that the referendum of 1975 was only called to ratify a vote already taken by MPs in parliament? But I don't think Cameron really cared that much about anything when it came to it.

I think you'll find that's always the case ????.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > We - most of us anyway - can make a philosophical > case of why it could and even should happen. But > it won't - you need to move on Jenny/Loz. Call me old-fashioned. But I always think it best to try and influence events for the better, and to support others with the same goals. I believe one of our problems in this country is a readiness to throw up our hands in resignation. You might succeed, and you might not, but how else is anything ever going to get done?

uncleglen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Maybe he didn't vote because he knew that when it > boils down to the nitty gritty the EU would trump > our constitution anyway and poke it's snivelling > nose into everything we do... so what is the > point..... Yes. I suspect you're right. He was almost certainly the kind of person who had questionable, or non-existent, sources of real information - and paid far too much attention to the tabloid press.

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ...quite a few of the > Leavers were usually non-voters. This is a good point Loz. I remember hearing a man in his 50s/60s interviewed for a radio piece back near the beginning of the referendum campaign. He'd never voted in his life, but was going to vote 'Leave'. I felt at once depressed and very angry. My anger came from the fact that someone who had chosen to absent himself from public engagement for a lifetime should stir himself from his sofa only for this ill-conceived referendum. And depressed because I felt that it was precisely because of people like him that the 'Remain' cause would lose. But once it comes to a General Election these 'voters' will disappear again.

Wouldn't it be a joy if they could manage to arrange themselves so neatly?! I do hope so.

Whether Lib Dems/Likely New 'Common Ground' Party would have a chance in a General Election largely depends on how Remain/'Anyone But the Tory' voters were distributed via consituency. I think it might work for them. You can, of course, win an election while attracting a smaller per centage of the turnout than your rivals.

Well at least we'll now probably get a new political party emerging from the current turmoil. The consensus seems to be that with Corbyn in charge the old Labour party will split by the end of next year. I would hope to see that happen sooner rather than later, so that a new centrist 'Common Ground' party can emerge to challenge the Tories rapidly and effectively.

I agree with rahrahrah. I'm mightily relieved that we're not getting Andrea Leadsom. But I'm furious that the Conservatives (the party that sells itself as the guardian of stability and continuity) has, through careless government, created an unprecedented economic and constitutional crisis, which is likely to lead to the break-up of the UK, and is now presenting itself as a 'safe pair of hands' to navigate this storm of it's own creation.