indiepanda

Buying a bunch of flowers to cheer yourself up after a rubbish day, only to discover the head is broken one of them when you get it home (you don't get many sunflowers in a bunch :'( ). People wanting to know if something is in full working order when you are giving it away for free on the forum. If I knew it was broken I'd chuck it in the bin not post it on a forum to get messed around by umpteen different people who may or may not be interested, can't quite get around to collecting. If I was using it regularly so in a position to know it was in full working order I wouldn't be giving it away for free!, I'd be keeping it. Oh, and people who are sore they didn't get in first on a free offer saying they hoped the person who beat them to it isn't just going to ebay it, presumably in hope you will give it to them instead and robbing you of any warm glow you might get from doing something nice and replacing it with a feeling you might just be being taken for a ride. Seriously, it's almost enough to make you just lob things in the bin instead even when someone might enjoy using it.

lol, the only thing I can think of that would be worse than having to read the Mail on Sunday would be having to read the Mail AND an extract from a Dan Brown novel.

happy birthday :)-D

especially from someone who started out bitching that the counsellor hadn't knocked on their door. If a PM is an "invasion of privacy" surely knocking on your door is more so! Some people just seem to be looking for a fight for sheer fun of it.

JBARBER Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The resident on CPR should have received a letter from council officers. Don't think we all did, but nice to know some work is being done on the road anyway

I'd pick Danny Wallace - someone cheerful for the mornings. Or put Mark and Lard back in the morning - I enjoyed their morning slot on Radio 1 - they used to play my kind of music as well as being quite funny.

Nice to have one in really short stumbling distance for a change. I don't think I've been there since the summer pub crawl last year, (the day after I moved in), which is crazy given I am only a block away.

iaineasy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > wow we have a resounding crumble vote, but as I am > new on here what does "this gets lounged" mean? Things that aren't really about East Dulwich, just general banter get moved to the section called "The Lounge" Now, when is this crumble getting made and are we invited to help you eat it?? ;-)

Well, after reading this I feel quite lucky as a working class girl I wasn't shovelled off to the nearest sink school as befits someone in my position! Seriously though, as far as I can see in this country we have lots of (mainly middle class) kids going to university when there aren't enough graduate jobs for them all (and the tuition fees don't cover all the costs), and plenty of (mainly working class) children leaving school without the basic 5 GCSEs most eomployers expect. Something feels wrong, and it seems to me the top priority isn't the amount of money invested in education for the better off.

I'll be there... trying to avoid over indulgence... in a mad moment I signed up for a running course starting the following morning!

I'm on Crystal Palace Rd and have lived here over a year and haven't ever received Living South

I've had all my sofas and armchairs from sofa workshop, lots of choice of styles and huge range of fabrics.

SeanMacGabhann Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But I don't believe it helps them choose the > "best" people. Depends what you mean by "best". Some jobs are genuinely quite intellectually demanding, and a good academic background is vital for that, if not the only necessary skill. But for plenty of jobs its more "soft skills" - ability to work in a team and get on with your collegues, plan your work to meet a deadline etc that makes the difference between the good and less good staff. Or practical/technical skills that you wouldn't learn in an A level anyway. However, it seems to me many A levels are academically focussed, and to be honest I still think of them as a university entrance exam for the academic, and I think they should be scored in such a way the universities can tell who are the best. It's a nonsense when Oxford and Cambridge are rejecting lots of people who get straight As. I know a lot of people go on to do A levels even if they aren't especially academically minded, and I don't really understand why - perhaps it's some silly stigma about doing more vocational courses. Coming from a more working class background, I don't feel like that. My sister didn't want to go to university, so she didn't do them, she did a BTEC in business and finance. Many years earlier, my dad left school at 15 and once he was old enough he signed on to do his electrians apprenticeship. And surprise surprise, my sister still works in finance and my dad spent all his working life as an electrician. I think the governments focus on higher education is completely misguided, it's too narrow and other forms of training should be seen as a valid alternative. I can't see that getting a so so degree and a call centre job is really a better life than getting a trade like being a plumber, electrician etc - and lord knows we all struggle when we try to find a reliable tradesman - often have to wait ages to get the good ones to be free to do a job.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think it would be better if the > results were fitted to a distribution, rather than > giving a quarter of all the candidates an A > grade. I'm inclined to think As shuld be reserved for the top 10% of students, it was much closer to that when I sat mine though. Which was about the time the current crop of students was born. I gather they are introducing an A star grade for A levels next year, which to me seems to be recognising it is too easy to get an A and useless for universities to distinguish who are the academically most capable and will really benefit from a degree. Also agree with Keef's comments. I wasn't quite the party animal the he was at university, but I defintely did not appreciate how easy life was as a student and relished the chance to escape the clutches of my over protective parents. I think it would be a lot better for most of us to have gone to work for a bit first, would appreciate the experience much more and get more out of it. I can recall a lecturer telling me he always thought I was bright enough for a first but didn't show any signs of working hard enough to get one, and he was spot on. I got bored of some of the course fairly early on - they didn't push us nearly hard enough. I reckon I put more energy into getting a good job than I did preparing for my finals, which was probably the best choice given we were only just coming out of the last recession and jobs were thin on the ground, but a bit of a waste nonetheless.

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Education is something that should never cease really. Oh, I'm with you on that. I get BORED if I am not learning new things, both in work and out of work. Though I haven't done any formal study since finishing my professional exams (and they'd put most people off), I learn through reading outside of work, and am starting to think about doing another A level on my day off, if I can just find a day time class that fits.

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I happen to think that education is a good thing > in and of itself, the very valid point about the > burden of debt notwithstanding. I wouldn't disagree with that, am just not convinced the model for delivering education is the best one given the financial burden it puts on people. Suspect a lot of people would be better served by a model of ongoing learning by day release from a job to learn things relevant to that career, rather than three years full time getting into debt. Things learned for the pleasure and challenge of learning rather than any career goal in mind could still be pursued at night school etc.

bigbadwolf Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > When in the solitary company of chocolate they can > think of nothing else but how to snaffle the whole > bar without anyone noticing. The notion of male > company is alien to the female mind after she's > opened a cinema bag of Malteser's. Please, chocolate isn't that good. The only reason the woman wouldn't want sex with a boyfriend after troughing her way through a cinema sized bag of malteasers is because the action might make her hurl after eating so much. Trust me, if I had a nice boyfriend at home I wouldn't need chocolate.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But not as disheartening as getting them to do a > degree, get into debt and then find out that their > degree is worthless and they'll end up in McDs or > a Call Centre.....universal HE is utopian pie in > the sky rubbish, HE should be elitist and > competitive. I wouldn't have put it quite as strongly as that.. but I do agree. There are way more people going to university than there are graduate posts available, and that would be ok if students were going into that with their eyes open, but am pretty sure a lot of them still believe a degree gets you a career, otherwise why would they take on all that debt? These days I think a really vocational degree gets you a career - like nursing, or a good academic degree passed at upper second or first from a well rated university might get you a training post at a good graduate employer in law/accountancy etc. But a so so course from a so so uni at lower second or third will probably lead to a McJob - and you could well be reporting to someone who left college at 18 and has been working their way up for the last few years, whilst living rent free at home and not getting into debt. Anyone who thinks employers don't know which the good academic universities are and which are the former polytechnics are is naive.

I think it's a mixture of more focused teaching, continuous assessment giving students the chance to resit things and dumbing down of content. When I took my exams at 16 I was the second year of GCSEs and it was so obvious the GCSE maths had a narrower syllabus than the O level, our class finished the whole GCSE syllabus by November of the 5th form and just spent the 6 months till the exam revising. When I got to college to do my A levels, I did maths and further maths, and our tutors told me we spent the first term getting our maths up to O level standard, the next two terms doing the A level and the next two terms doing the further maths A level, exams in the final term. I really don't believe kids these days are so much more hard working - they have a lot more distractions from their study after all. When I was a kid all I had was what TV my parents would allow me to watch because we only had the one TV downstairs and reading. These days loads of kids have computers & TVs in their room so plenty more temptation. I've interviewed graduates for jobs before with strings of As and firsts in their degrees, and then put them through the same verbal and numeric reasoning tests that I was have been put through when I went for my graduate interview, and plenty did a whole lot worse than me despite their superior grades, so not convinced they were really so much brighter. Pretty sure I've read stories on the BBC before about universities complaining about the standard of students reaching them despite their top grades, which says it all.

I heard it from crystal palace road a block south of the CPT.. not loud enough to wake me, but enough to irritate me when I was having trouble sleeping anyway

I'd echo that. To be honest I don't bother looking in most of the clothes shops in ED - they just look like those places where an XL is a size 14. I think in the year I've lived in East Dulwich I bought one skirt in white stuff (sorry, I know not "cool" by most people's standards) and nothing else. I've spent plenty of money elsewhere.

With a full no-claim discount you get up to 60-70% off the rate that someone with no claims experience to draw on would have to pay. If you claom, you don't necessarily lose all of it but you might find yourself with say a 30% discount instead of the 60%. To work out whether it's worth it, I would quiz the insurer about what impact it would have on your NCD if you claim and what you are getting now, and compare that potential cost, and how likely you think you are to claim against the extra premium to protect. ?30 sounds like a good deal to me, ?150, not so sure.

I got bitten by those black flies last Friday - vicious things, drew blood. And they must have been munching on something pretty nasty before they got to me because my bites got horribly infected - ended up down A&E to get horse strength antibiotics to kill off the infection and having to rest with my feet up and ice on my leg while the inflammation went down. Now, nearly a week later, I still have some nasty bruises - never seen anything like it.

the-e-dealer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > They extened all of the trains that used to > terminate at Blackfriars. I just hope that this is > permanent and not just while Blackfriars is > rebuilt. Incidentally since these services were > extended they have become somewhat unreliable. I've noticed this too, and the trains seem to be a bit less frequent too, if I miss the 8.45 train the next one isn't for about 20 minutes which is rubbish for rush hour. I could get the train to London Bridge instead, but that would leave me with at least a 20 minute bus ride instead compared to the ten minute amble from Blackfriars. Oh and Markjonathan, agree it's fair game to ask about Peckham Rye, am sure lots of East Dulwich folk use it, I live in East Dulwich but use Peckham Rye because I work near Blackfriars, so the 12 to Peckham Rye + train to Blackfriars is way quicker than any route via London Bridge, and I see plenty of others doing the same in the morning

Brendan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Oh blah, blah, blah. The important thing is > whether or not it?s going to make women want to > sleep with you. If you think most women would notice which guitar you are playing think you'd be mistaken. Am sure when it comes to pulling, it comes more down to the style and confidence with which someone plays than what guitar they play.