miga

Great, and very local, band.

Me too, though usually after a very fibrous working class meal.

Here's what I don't get about very loud music in cars: if the bass is strong enough to shake my house as you drive past, how does it not actually hurt to be inside? Or do the occupants wear ear plugs and the loud music is for entertaining the suburbs....

Otta Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But I guess the point I was really making, and I > stand by it, is that people with more money don't > tend to really consider people below them on the > social ladder. That is obviously not the case for > everybody, but it's more common than you may cre > to admit. I think it's more accurate to state that most people are pre-occupied with their own existential worries, whether that's affording next week's groceries or private school for little Johnny. Yet a lot of people at all levels of income help out in their community or make charitable gestures.

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > miga Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > > I also agree with Loz, if I may paraphrase, that > any broadly based social justice movement will > > have inconsistencies and imperfections and > logical flaws. > > Sort of, but not quite what I said. I was > suggesting that BLM chooses its battles more > carefully. Defending someone using a 5 year old as > a human shield I think reduces the potency of > their argument. > > But what you said I agree with as well. That's why I said "paraphrase". To be consistent and logical - the group would have to pick only the pure as driven snow cases, behave totally ethically and consistently and wait until all evidence was revealed about every case they protest before saying anything. Admirable as that would be - that's more how a law firm or a government inquiry works than a broad, decentralised social justice movement. It also means that nothing would get done. Some people in the BLM camp ran with the case you mentioned - I agree it weakens their case, but it's the nature of this kind of thing.

Pollyanna here again. I think both LM and Loz have valid points. I completely agree with LM's earlier point that BLM doesn't need to have any other agenda apart from the B bit, since there is a specific issue that they're addressing (spinning out of a context of huge disadvantage as it does). Stats aside, there's been a spate of innocent black people killed by the cops in the States in the last couple of years. That's not debatable. I also agree with Loz, if I may paraphrase, that any broadly based social justice movement will have inconsistencies and imperfections and logical flaws. But, these kinds of movements sometimes change society for the better - if as a result of this campaign American cops stop barge-arsing people around and become more accountable, everybody wins. Further, and this doesn't invalidate any criticism of the movement, in my view it's sometimes worth noting who's criticising the BLM movement, and thinking about whether you'd like to align yourself with those people.

In fairness - the thread seems to have been started in reaction to the BLM protest at Heathrow, and should maybe have been entitled - "the applicability of BLM to the UK".

There are several conflated issues that people who have a problem with BLM seem to grab onto. It's a violent, armed society - gun deaths happen. Police over there seem very trigger happy and overbearing - some part of the population seem to think this is fair enough, others accept it as a fact of life - I guess both these groups would have an issue with BLM. As in some other societies, there is a demographic over-representation of one group in violent crime - what some other posters further up alluded to with some stats. Etc. But, as others in the thread said, there's clearly a feeling in the community that there is systematic racism in policing. The hard evidence that says American cops disproportionately shoot more innocent American blacks is missing - to me that doesn't invalidate BLM, but the feeling in the communities is real. BLM is the tip of the iceberg, since so many factors of disadvantage go into creating edgy interactions with police in the first place. To fix BLM issues, sure, more police transparency is key. To fix all the other underlying stuff, who knows, maybe the movement will evolve.

So what do you think Loz, do you think BLM are misguided (in the States, let's leave the very different local issues aside)?

Nigello Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I agree with the sentiment and acknowledge the > facts but I still think there is an element of > confection, a syntheticness about this UK version > of the movement in the US. I guess the local version would be "Black youths deserve not to be singled out for stop-and-search, given that so few arrests are made following these and it creates ill feeling in the community" but it's not as snappy. On a more serious note, all this stuff makes me grateful to be living in this state where the police don't typically behave like overbearing neanderthals and the gangs are thankfully still just a soft version of their Yank inspirations.

Does that make you happy?

I'm with you bobbsy, that's annoying. And now I will notice every time I go to the pool.

DtR - yes, foreign buyers are part of the issue, but also unprecedented cheapness of credit, low supply, government intervention to prop up the housing market, (until very recent times) convenience of using BTL as a nest egg....as discussed a million times.

That was meant to read a synonym for tosser.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Coffee on a chopping board: > http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-02/deconstructe > d-coffees-for-snobs-not-hipsters-cafe-manager/7470 > 080 Melbourne is probably the coffee wanker capital of the world.

Much derided, but I think they've had a good tune or two.

"give me coffee, now"

Burbage Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Offering the pleasures of one's table > to others is not supposed to be a way of buying > flattery or displaying superiority, but a generous > way to express regard from one's guests. For one's guests, not from, no? But yeah, sounds like Lou's guests fairly recently learnt some "rules" and are now keen to show their learning off. The real point they've missed, I think, is that etiquette is a relative thing, defined by generation, class, region, ethnicity blah blah. Basically, what Burbage said. How about that Daily Mail etiquette expert - he takes the type of soap in a household as a class signifier. Jesus wept. Makes you wanna stick pubes on it, for avoidance of doubt that you give a fuck.

DovertheRoad Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > However post Brexit I'm deeply concerned that my > ordinary, slighty cramped terrace in a pleasant > but unremarkable part of South London is no longer > worth ?1.9M. In fact I'd planned for it to reach > ?4.5m by 2025 and fund my pension. Yep, definitely serious.

Otta Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > miga Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Good trolling DoverTheRoad, 7/10. > > > Nah, people just took it at face value and > answered politely. Poor trolling, 3/10. Disagree - surely the point is to elicit serious reaction from people who're unaware they're being set up?

Good trolling DoverTheRoad, 7/10.

Fusion innit...

Yes - I looked at those. Then I looked at the monthly stats. As I said, there's an acute problem on Southern at the moment, but TL is marginally better than Southern's recent worst - all of the time.

Cardelia Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > miga Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > say that Thameslink never got people's ire to this > extent isn't correct, it's just that FCC only ran > a few services through this area of London when > things were really bad so most ED-based commuters > wouldn't have been affected by the problems. OK - I get there's a history of TL problems, and am not arguing its origins, but within a few weeks of Southern services going south there was parliamentary discussion, front pages on the Standard, Sadiq chipping in etc. Thameslink continues quietly appalling - current performance levels are marginally better than Southern at its ebb (say 50% on time vs. 40% on time and 80% vs. 60-70% on the within 5 minutes measure) - but they've been that bad for a long time. I would argue that TL is also *really* bad, but much less noisily so.

As I've said before, I know things are particularly bad on Southern, but it baffles me why Govia's equally bad Thameslink never managed to get people's ire to this extent.