miga

I think that all depends on whether your wife works.

Don't. If you cycle, ride extra hard at speed bumps while staying firmly planted on your seat. Otherwise you'll need two bricks.

As The Dude would say "that's just your opinion, man"....but, the crux of what DaveR said sounds legit - the concrete examples of corruption are actually quite difficult to establish/procure. Of course Big Business donates to the party that will lower various taxes - that's the environment they want, it's a shared ideology.

Are all violins gay, do you think?

Don't get me wrong, I would rather pay prices that included fair wages too. It behoves the owners of businesses to then pay their workers fairly. But current behaviour with tips (especially the "included" tips) seems to indicate that a lot of them, especially the chains, would rather pay themselves than their workers. So, pragmatically, I ask the waiters how they would prefer the tip and follow what they ask. Unsurprisingly, it's usually in cash.

Well yeah, that's rational. It'll never take off.

Or ask how they prefer the tip.

Ridgley Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Could it be the eastern block are just not use to > diversity of cultures, and feeling a little > threaten. Also was it Poland that only want > Catholics migrants in their country how can they > get away with that. Serbia and Croatia have been very welcoming to them, so it's misguided to generalise about Eastern Europe's reaction to the immigrants.

I think the Hungarian state has behaved terribly in the past few months. Hungarian politics is way to the right of here, and Jobbik, essentially a Fascist party (and I don't mean that lightly, they say things that would make the BNP blush) has 10% of the seats in parliament. Hence the razor wire fences.

I'm sure there are some posters with psychopathic tendencies who'll "bully" a business, but more often than not, it's a genuine bad experience that will lead to someone posting, surely? I actually find the opposite is the problem, people (including myself) don't post their negative experiences of businesses often enough. We've had a number of tradespeople that we found through here who've been so-so at best, whose reviews were glowing. The one time I posted a negative comment about a local business on here (following a couple of failed attempts to get the issue dealt with directly) - my problem was sorted promptly and courteously.

The bit on the east, near Colfe's School etc. there's lots of 30's housing, driveways, frontyards etc...hence my suburban comment. The bit towards Lewisham is Hither Green, no? About FH being a "smart move"...these articles really get printed once the horse has bolted, don't they? A place where a 1 bed flat is 10x average London earnings probably doesn't need to be "discovered".

I haven't heard the coinage "feminazi" in non-ironic use for more than a decade.

It's irrelevant, and LD was out of line for asking too, in my view.

New EDF rules: sign off comments with ethnicity from now on so our enlightened denizens can dismiss views as appropriate.

What does that matter?

And judging by Stinky Turner's ghostwritten autobiography - the younger punks did too (or at least Jimmy Pursey). Some great tunes, though.

"The Crime Survey for England and Wales continues to show steady declines in violent crime over the last 20 years. Between the 1995 and the 2013/14 surveys, the number of violent crime incidents has fallen from 3.8 million in 1995 to 1.3 million in 2013/14." http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime-and-sexual-offences--2013-14/index.html Some say it's the unleaded petrol.....

Righty Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What are the chances, do people think, of it going > beyond Lewisham? I found that difficult to gauge > from the report... Very surprised by the high numbers supporting the termination of the line at Lewisham - about the same number as oppose early termination.

I'm with BlueOrchid. I would feel slighted (based on what's been described). As it appears that they were unwilling to contribute to fixing the inconvenience they've created, posting this on a public forum is as valid a strategy as any. Shame can be a powerful motivator, it was worth a shot. As far as maintaining friendly relations and being an adult about things and taking it on the chin for the sake of keeping things sweet, I wonder whether this neighbour is likely to reciprocate non-compulsory niceties on the evidence above. To me it seems the possible option is to take the moral high ground on this issue by not pursuing it any further, and remember their behaviour for the next time they require anything more from you than that to which you're legally obliged.

Giacomelli Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Does anyone live in lee? I looked at a house there > and liked it We looked there before we bought. Some bits (further to the north AFAICR) are really nice, and it's overall a pretty decent area. It does feel strikingly more suburban than some of the other places in this thread. Hither Green next door to it is great (schools, transport, parks, cafes, pub).

BB, I really recommend that you read some of the many articles written about the 4000. These neither exonerate nor conclusively charge the Tories, simply because neither is sensible based on the data. Re: Heygate, OK 2 out of the many who profited weren't Labour, big woop. Re: RTB, in the first half of New Labour the sales of council homes steadily increased (would link to picture but writing on phone). But, the mantra of that era was home ownership rather than building of new social housing - so even if in the latter half of that government RTB sales dipped as a result of policy, the other part of the picture is increasing house prices, mad credit conditions etc. leading us into the affordability mess we're in. So, no, on the evidence, I wouldn't say Labour have proved to be the party with the solutions to the housing problems but the party that creates them. It's not that I don't feel bad about people struggling under this, or any, regime; I just hate it when arguments are reduced to such easy populism.

It's all so confusing for me! Maybe someone runs a class like this in ED?

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is "Amish" different to "Asian" then? (or is it > just a type of Asian, like "Arab"?) Are Amish > people Muslim too? > > I should probably find out - wouldn't want to > cause offence. They sound similar, Jeremy, but actually Arab is a type of Persian (which is why Iraq and Iran sound so similar). HTH.

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Jeremy Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > The "x-thousand dead after being declared fit > to > > work" thing is a great example of awful > reporting. > > The kind of thing trotted out by people who > have > > no grasp of statistics. For instance - how many > > claimants in total were declared fit to work in > > the same period? What would be the expected > > mortality rate for people across that age > group? > > > > You can't claim there's correlation unless you > > have all the relevant data. > > Is anyone actually analysing it properly ? If you click on that Ben Goldacre article I linked to, he outlines the problems with the data. But even beyond that, it's also a matter of what you want to prove.

Blah Blah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The E&C deveolpment was first put together under > the liberal/ con coalition council (and some of > those lib and con councillors involved were given > jobs by Lendlease when they lost their seats!). And actually - the second part of that is completely wrong - when you look at this list of shame http://betterelephant.org/blog/2013/04/09/report-uncovers-corruption-at-the-elephant/ - there are no Tories at all, just Labour councillors and non-political public servants who jumped ship to LendLease after Heygate...I mean...Tories eat babies.