grabot

My own take on it is that I don't have a problem with people setting up a charity and asking people for money. But, Dulwich Estate residents are coerced into handing over money. That is not charitable behavior in my view. Not everyone that lives on the Dulwich Estate is fantastically wealthy.

"I'd love to hear somebody from Dulwich estate give their side. It could well be that theres more to this than meets to eye" Yes, I'm not sure. The accounts give a pretty detailed breakdown http://www.dulwichestate.co.uk/accounts/the-dulwich-estate. Perhaps I am missing something too. I am more than happy to be corrected!

"The problem with The Dulwich Estate is what they DO as a "charity"" I agree, but I don't think that the two or disconnected. Cancer Research UK is a large organization with complex considerations around fund raising and distribution. The Dulwich Estate, as far as I can see, employees four people. Money flows in automatically by virtue of its legal position and distribution of funds largely involves slicing the pie into n chunks and handing it over to the local private schools. Perhaps dividing ?9,000,000 by n is marginally harder than dividing say ?9,000 by n. By only marginally...

Let's not forget that they provide highly paid sinecures too. One employee of the Dulwich Estate earns over ?130,000!

Indeed. Take Haberdashers', they employ an accountant to ensure good financial control and look what happens. How many bank frauds originate from the compliance department? I sometimes suspect that the watchers become watchers because they can perceive the threat within themselves. My general philosophy. Most people are good. Most people will do good things. A small minority will do bad things. You can probably stop a lot of it happening, but there has to be a balance it in terms of the cost of watching them and the risk that the watchers will in turn, turn out to be bad people. Beyond that, in any human endeavor I am afraid that there is always going to be some level of waste and corruption. But, we get by pretty well all the same.

The problem then is, and you find me at my most cynical, that the people brought in to guard against abuse are equally if not more likely to abuse the system themselves. In any event individual responsibility is diffused.

Having seen the destruction that narcissistic individuals can unleash in an organisation, in my experience they are perfectly capable of bypassing process in order to gain some small advantage. I think that HR have a role to play in identifying rogue individuals. But, that would require a change in focus. Beyond that, how do you stop bad greedy people in any walk of life? Is that not the perennial question?

Yes, I'm normally live and let live when it comes to spiders. But on reading this, I hit it with a can of Raid. It's dead now... Mr Hine said: "In spider terms, it has to be said that this is an aggressive spider. "If you approach it, it raises its legs and bares its fangs. "Most spiders will back away - this one will jump at you and bite."

Not entirely relevant, but in the general arachnid field. We have one of these in the front yard at the moment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segestria_florentina (tube web spider). Green fangs, nasty thing! After years of telling my child that there is no need to fear spiders in the UK, I am proven wrong.

Ha, what a silly thing to get upset by. It is a known fact that all drug dealers are lovely young entrepreneurs and there is not a single reported case of drugs having a negative effect on anyone's life!

I suppose, drawing positives. On the assumption that this is a pseudonym for a person who is still in the developmental stage for literacy skills. We should praise their willingness to put their fledgling skills in the public domain; like a small child playing its first public piano recital.

Thanks LondonMix. To me that circle seems to represent a potentially sensible criterion without any need for further embellishment.

I'm a bit lost on this one. The op concerned a new school for East Dulwich. So is this a new school for Peckham or East Dulwich? If the scope has fundamentally changed should the selection process be reset and restarted?

"In fact his assertions are confused: action demands by necessity that artificial limits are placed on debate; that at some point you must stop talking and do something" Indeed, but those constraints can be derived from observation or, on the other hand, purely abstract ideas. Both approaches have the potential for infinite musing. From my own experience the materialist tends to be more inclined to confront the problem at hand, whereas the idealist seeks to solve all potential future problems. So, I accept his contention.

I'm liking the absence of animated advertising hoardings. Always found them distracting and irritating. Changing to a new static advert every minute or so, fine.

Did you see this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2317640/Michael-Barrymore-gets-time-job-working-local-garden-centre.html? Quite sweet really. He's happy now working in a garden centre.

Will do, I like Danny Baker!

Yes, I thought he was very funny on Strike it a Lucky and always had such an easy rapport with the contestants. He had a horrible childhood growing up in a Bermondsey, his father regularly beat his mother and in his community, if you believe the interviews, spousal abuse was accepted as normal. The show House That Made Me with him, paints a truly depressing picture of growing up in Bermondsey in the 60's.

The use of generic you can be problematic. Particularly when you does not include me...

Quite right. Commas were invented to save us from suffocation!

Failure to capitalise the first letter of a sentence...

It means that the European central bank will start charging other banks to hold deposits. The idea is to encourage the banks to lend to business instead.

OK, reducing scope for resits is sensible. I hadn't realised how prevalent it is nowadays. It seems like a charter for pushy parents and schools to squeeze students through the system to the general detriment of educational welfare, mitigating factors aside...

Chumleigh Gardens, in the middle is a nice little garden. The cafe has a nice outdoor space that is a pleasant place to while away time while the kid play on the zip wire, slide etc.

I am finding his spat with Theresa May distasteful, it smacks of schoolyard Machiavellianism. But, I have to admit that I have not really bothered to fully understand the arguments on each side for the reasons stated in my OP.