fl0wer

What about the refugee centre up at the top of Barry Road?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/02/plastic-waste-thames-marine-life-report

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/29/equality-investigation-cleaners-low-pay

ED has at least one good flock of LTTs. About 1 doz strong at the end of last winter. They enjoy the treetops around Peckham Park, flit along via Dunstans Road to the Cemetery on Underhill Rd, cross to the shrubs and insects at Dawson Hill. A lovely territory for them and they are always on the move. They are dependent on spiderweb and moss to make nests, so garden gently and leave these materials to help them.

I think you need to ask a policeman or someone from the vet's or the RSPCA to come and help investigate. If some poor animal is tied up or trapped by accident, and desperately thumping at a shed door or post to get out, then it needs releasing, full stop. Could it be a squirrel stuck in a roof space?

Wanted: your sightings of bees on winter flowering shrubs. See paragraph at end of linked article here http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/28/alys-fowler-winter-scents. Easy data collection made possible through the internet, brilliant.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/british-doctors-syria-abbas-khan

Strornery. Almost Christmas and the Autumn Raspberries still look fresh and edible, growing in the little gardens at junction of Underhill and Friern. Quite a few to pick, if they are yours?

The NHS should get off its backside and help you see a specialist ASAP. Years ago it was difficult to persuade the GP to refer us.... Our 5 yr old D had a huge allergic reaction, it really made her suffer, no I didn't want to just spoon anthistamine into her, I wanted to find out what triggered it, of course. Once we got to the specialist, she was working in a portacabin out at the back, as if it wasn't real medicine. Astutely, she used a simple food-dye test to see what had brought on that acute reaction. It was very easy to do, and thereafter very easy to avoid. The modern world puts additives in so many foods, and cosmetics, plus there are strong vapours in chemicals such as fire retardents and insecticides, present when you buy new furniture and carpets, for example. I wouldn't recommend a private practitioner because there've been fashionable theories and profiteering, grandiose claims in diet books & things... worried patients easily persuaded to part with high fees, e.g. for hair analysis and I feel we deserve the serious attention an NHS specialist provides, we need to insist.

Dawson's Hill is actually a wildlife sanctuary. In the midst of human habitation, if we don't garden and manage parks in a wildlife sensitive way then the biodiversity dies down, until all we are left with are a few crows and matted monocultures like buttercups. The challenge for councils and wildlife trusts is to look after wild spaces so that they are sheltered from vandalism, and built spaces so that they have safety designed into them. Fly tipping is a problem at the foot of Dawson's Hill, showing that not everyone understands & respects this site. The council will look at ways to discourage repeat offending. Plenty of ED folk really appreciate the lovely trees and views and left-alone wildflowers. Essential habitat.

If not, someone's just advertised they want donated ones here => http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?28,1237132

News => http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/heathrow-gatwick-airports-expansion an update

Memorably happy game we set up for a bunch of 7-9 yr olds = treasure hunt. It takes a bit of preparation, worth while though. Children as a group solved each clue one at a time, return to base for adult to read out the next one. When 'treasure' was located, we explained that we'd provided prizes the finder would share out. (Little items, tiny boxed raisins, stationery, badges, small cars, joke spiders, etc - enough for everyone.)

What is that weekly increase due to, then? - find us a link?

Just been listening to Boris Johnson being interviewed on BBC R4 morning news. Defensive and quick-talking, he was unable to listen to the interviewer's questions, or present anything except the Big Vision of his own. The talk was what one of my tutors used to call a boys pissing competition - who can aim furthest. No mention at all of where it lands, on life in the estuary. He elaborated purely on the 'benefits' to humankind, carefully not mentioning what it is like for those who live beneath flight paths. BUT - to my ears this is far worse - expansion into a 'Boris Island' will be devastating to marine life and the huge flocks of overwintering birds who need areas of wetland to survive. Right, that's about the Thames runway idea. Now to look at the propaganda that "we" need more aeroplanes at all. A lot of air freight is fresh, out of season foods and flowers grown far away. Shoppers can be aware that paying out for these products contributes directly to their ongoing profitability especially for middlemen and for supermarkets....and airlines. Here in ED we get an extra din of Heathrow plane noise from Friday through to Sunday. Most probably from budget companies like Easyjet. The more frequently people use air travel, the more fossil fuel is jettisoned overhead, the more propaganda we will hear that another runway is essential, and the more everyone will suffer urban blight. So it seems to me that consumer choices have the most bearing on what happens next.

Live updates of reaction to Commission's report here =>http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2013/dec/17/heathrow-expansion-airports-commission-publishes-interim-report-politics-live-blog?commentpage=1

Tell him straight away what's happened, and ask him to decide. I'd say it's better not to put it off, because the returns date will soon get swamped by crimble.

Beanstalk said s/he had already tried freecycle. Just a quick note to say that Emmaus, W. Norwood will come & collect, their van does the rounds once a fortnight. All they ask is that donations aren't broken or dirty.

See what you make of this article that's in the news today. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/16/business-case-airport-expansion-wwf

My children really loved the Altair geometric colouring books. http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Altair_Design.html?id=PSyOAAAACAAJ

Dear ED shoppers, help to persuade food manufacturers and supermarkets to stop selling us this muck. It is costing the rainforest a terrible price and this was predicted several years ago. Direct action = simply withdraw your ??? - that's effective as a blunt way of changing what stocks the grocery shelves - but if you want to do more, write to the head offices & complain verbally to managers where possible. Also investors make sure your stocks & shares support trade which is ethical and environmentally sound. Write to them, to ask: if they don't tell you transparently, they probably have something to hide. Circulate & sign petition (see links below). http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/orangutans-fight-for-survival http://a-z-animals.com/palm-oil/products/ Thankyou.

Having raised a family in the 1970's I was used to hearing this 'boys are lazy' idea, so it didn't seem like a weird post to me. In its many other forms the stern judgement from older family members was that sons easily became 'mother's boy' or 'spoilt' if you kept them at the breast longer than 10 minutes, picked them up at night, or kissed them when they cried, and other natural things like that. I rebelled and worked with the beautiful child I'd got, at the pace he wanted. Aaaaanywaaaaaay.... Only much more recently scientific articles about testosterone affecting the unborn baby have been published. The gist is that all babies after conception make their first few clusters of cells at the same pace, but only up to the point at which their gender is decided. If the XX/XX pattern persists then your girl baby will keep growing steadily in utero, and her developmental markers will remain a short way ahead of a boy child's for many years to come. For the male, XX/XY foetal stages slow down very slightly because it is "harder work" forming itself into a boy. More energy goes towards differentiating the body of a son, whose testosterone levels will be that of a 25 yr old man at birth (soon dropping down to much less) and the boy's brain at birth is at a slightly less mature stage of growth than a girl's. The comment that a boy's milestones take slightly longer to reach is thus not about laziness but about capacity. It is only slower by a matter of a few weeks. I think the slower onset of puberty for boys is a fairly universal phenomenon & a clue to the way it goes on being slightly out of kilter for male & female children. The girls mature sooner. But the earlier and earlier m?narche of today's girls, compared to the slow adolescence with a first period typically not until 16/17 yrs old which our great-grandmothers expected, could be a topic for a separate thread. Another interesting thing is that the skeleton M or F does not finish growing completely until you are 26, suggesting that full adult strength takes that long to reach.

Bad luck. I do believe however clever the burglar alarm systems get, there'll be people who think it is OK to crack them and ignore the emotional impact this has on whoever lives in the house. I am just glad none of you got hurt.

Dear ED neighbours, for the last 24hrs choking bonfire or fireplace or incinerator smoke has been fouling air somewhere in this district. The layer of fog keeps it near ground level and it's not dispersing. Worse, some of the stink is clearly coming from plastics being burnt. We are all being poisoned by the chemicals released when this happens. Many times I post re: wildlife, but this air affects humans too. Combined with exhaust fumes and the extra cold-season output from domestic boilers it adds up to a lot for lungs to deal with, even for people in robust health - for newborns, the older generation, anyone already ill it is very serious. The 'burnt plastic' chemical vapour is really toxic to anyone in pregnancy. I am not interested in blaming anyone, only requesting that whoever can do something about this, acts pronto. If it is your fire or if it is from somebody you know about. Please.

Something A.S. Neill used to do: invite children themselves to contribute ideas about what would be fair when there is a dispute. If this is done enough times, they develop a 'library' of ways to think about problem-solving, dealing with conflict. This rests on the premise that for every problem there's at least one solution which will turn out to be good for everybody.