DuncanW

Are you sugesting that 'schools' is merely code for immigrants?

Current polling puts Khan on 53% and Sean Bailey on 28%, so that's a fairly safe bet - if you could find someone to take it!! Bailey is a spectacularly weak candidate. It's hard to conceive that the Conservatives couldn't have found someone more credible. I don't buy that he's a patsy though, in that he's been deliberately set up to fail. Labour don't have much to cling on to right now, but a centre-left mayor of London winning a landslide second term is something to celebrate and a beacon for what Labour needs to be to regain it's standing nationally. I am sure the Tories would rather win London if they could. So why Bailey? Difficult to answer, but maybe: No-one else really fancied it CHQ liked the idea of a black candidate Fundamental lack of due dilligence

Current polling puts Khan on 53% and Sean Bailey on 28%, so that's a fairly safe bet - if you could find someone to take it!! Bailey is a spectacularly weak candidate. It's hard to conceive that the Conservatives couldn't have found someone more credible. I don't buy that he's a patsy though, in that he's been deliberately set up to fail. Labour don't have much to cling on to right now, but a centre-left mayor of London winning a landslide second term is something to celebrate and a beacon for what Labour needs to be to regain it's standing nationally. I am sure the Tories would rather win London if they could. So why Bailey? Difficult to answer, but maybe: No-one else really fancied it CHQ liked the idea of a black candidate Fundamental lack of due dilligence

Is it possible we could have a few more threads on this subject? I think there are only about eight separate ones currently. Could we at least aim for double figures??

Cat, I don't think the lies that Boris Johnson has told and those that Nicoloa Sturgeon has been accused of are on anything like the same scale. Boris's lies have been fundamental whoppers. He has been dismissed from two journalism jobs for lying, and once as a shadow mininister. He has told inmumerable bare-faced lies whilst campaigning and in office, the most famous being the ?350M for the NHS. It is clear that he is deceitful in his personal life too - and indeed this has crossed over into his political life as when he was sacked by Michael Howard. The accusations against Nicola Sturgeon seem to be of a more technical nature. Did she know about the allegations (now legally disproven) against Alec Salmond on Mar 29th or April 2nd - was a phone call between the two recorded as government or party business, etc. FYI - I would fall into the Labour/Remain camp - but on that basis, have no particular candle for SNP politicians - I would also like the UK to remain intact, but at this stage - who can blame them for wanting to go their own way?

Bermondsey to Dulwich is walkable in an hour and a half

Hey there, that's a great age to get involved in football. I can recommend Athenlay - I help coach one of the older teams there. Based near to Harris Girls behind Peckham Rye, it's a relaxed and friendly club that has walk-in availability for players his age - you would need to register with the club but not commit. They start with teams/matches at Y4 - Under 9s - at that point, the teams start playing every Sunday during the season which is normally September to April. There are other local clubs such as Dulwich Village and Hillyfielders (Honor Oak) but I am not sre that any will offer *occasional* matches once the teams are up and running. Grass roots football is allowed again from Mon 29th March - the following weekend is Easter so it will be the next weekend (Sat 10/4) when it reopens.

Priti Patel was a longstanding advocate on reinstating the death penalty. She changed her public position, and would have been under pressure to do so as her political career progressed but who knows what she really thinks about this.

I think that's pretty much it. It wasnt a Death on the Rock style execution. In the heat of the moment, they thought he was a threat. Cressida Dick was in operational command and I believe gave the green light to use fatal force, but she made that decision on the basis of poor intel that was given to her. - I think.

I don't think JCdM was murder. It was a mistake caused by incompetence and the fact that one of the surveillance officers went off to take a leak and got confused about who he was watching. After they realised what a cock-up it was, they tried to cover it up by lying and saying he jumped the barriers and was acting suspiciously, when the CCTV recordings clearly demonstrated that to be false.

Of course if a place comes up before September, then it's no harm, no foul, right? I'm glad your two are at a school you all like. But for many families it's not a case of missing out on one super-oversubscribed, Outstanding school in Dulwich and getting another super-oversubscribed Outstanding school in Dulwich. Many families are missing out on all the great local schools and their kids are having to travel much further, and to schools that are not as highly rated (possibly unjustly) as the ones local to where they live. I genuinely don't know the prevalence of how many people move in and out of catchment to get school places, but I know it does happen. There's also a case to be made for families who just move out of the area for unconnected reasons to not have the sibling priority. Anecdotally, my two siblings and I all went to different schools, and it didn't cause any problems at all. The same is true of my own kids. Obviously, situations involving children with SEN should still be handled with sensitivity.

Soylent, I'm not certain that's right. If you have two kids or more and at the time your eldest is applying for secondary schools, they can't get a local school because other families have moved into the area to get their eldest in, and then moved out and the younger ones are getting sibling priority, would that not be a disadvantage?

Hi Spartacus, I did the inferring, which literally means reading between the lines and drawing a conclusion. You're not really putting the record straight as you have answered a completely different question from the one that you originally posed. Thinking about your question a bit more though, possibly the best answer I have is that as two out of the last three mayoral elections have been won by a Conservative candidate, that the actual candidate plays a big part in it. But that is me reading between the lines again, so may not be the rationale at all... :)

How would anyone be able to answer that? I infer that you don't think he has done a great job and can't comprehend that others might have a view that is different to your own. Am I way off in thinking that? Spartacus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is that down to half of London believing Khan has > done a good job or a case of not wanting a Tory > mayor ? > > Would be interesting to understand rationale

Shaun Bailey is that candidate. If you are confident that would be a vote-winner, maybe get yourself over to William Hill as they will give you 16/1 on that currently.

Northern Monkey, I think you could be on to something there! I would suggest that such a change might be borough-wide, rather than just at one or two, currently popular schools. This has been done in two other London Boroughs, Brent and Wandsworth a few years back. As well as making school admissions fairer, it should have a positive effect on traffic/pollution in the area. It may take some of the heat out of property prices in the area if people no longer rent short-term in catchment. There may be other benefits around levelling up the desirability of other local schools. I would be genuinely interested to hear any arguments against doing this, maybe it deserves it's own thread as if people are interested in discussing this idea, it would take this one away from the intended topic.

Deleted - posted in wrong thread - sorry

Who is it that wants to have a pint with him?

Regardless of your standpoint on the lockdown issue, this is just nonsense. According to the roadmap, most restrictions will be lifted by then anyway, with a full return to normal scheduled for mid June. But more critically, the Mayor of London doesn?t have the power to lift the restrictions anyway.

I see Lawrence Fox has enetered the race, funded by a ?5M donation from CPFC shareholder, Jeremy Hosking. As a Palace fan, I think his money might be better spent on a new right-back, but each to their own.

Given that we live in a free market economy, I'm not sure that being more attractive to customers than local competition is grounds for denying a business that chance to operate.

> > I think I saw some yuppies by Goose Green the > other day. They'd arrived in 4x4 Volvos (because > Goose Green is on a mountain) and were head to toe > in Belstaff, all with takeaway coffees. Do they > sound like yuppies to you? > No, they just sound like middle-aged people in a park - also that you imagined most likely

Serious conflation of terms here, I think. Yuppie is short for Young Urban Professional. So if you are middle-aged, have kids, drink IPA - you are almost certainly not a yuppie. Have some sympathy though with the lady quoted in the article. I go the Cemetery often and though it's widely accepted that the old part especially is also a recreational space, visitors should treat the surrounds with the respect they deserve. On my visits, I rarely see people doing otherwise to be fair, but she obviously has. And I would imagine that she is talking about the newer part of the cemetery which is worse as the plots there are more recent and clearly having living relatives who would visit. My only concern is that it's also yet another case of othering a group of people due to the perceived behaviour of some individuals.

Thanks for the update. Great to have you back!

Locale was a bit of a flop. There weren't that many places to get pizza back then in ED and they still couldn't make it work. I quite like the split level. I don't think that's the problem. That layout worked fine when it was Greens/The Green? I hope the new owners make a success of it.