Blah Blah

No Otta, I'm just fed up of the recurring same bs, and it is bs. I've had it since the first time I posted, and it's a bit tiring now - change the record please. How would you like it if I start accusing you of being every person you have a similar style to? But it wouldn't even occur to me to do that. I have better things to think about. And just to add, it's that kind of constant nonsense from (I'm guessing you are) established posters that makes newcomers like me turn off from the EDF. Is that what you want Otta? You want me to become one of those people that has little good to say about it and it's group of established posters? Maybe THAT is what the clique is.

What are you talking about Otta? So you now think I am two other people as well - that's now makes four people I am supposed to be? What kind of sad person do you take me for? Oh wait, you actually don't know anything about me, apart from me being a vegetarian bloke with two kids (because that's all I've revealed about myself on here). Anyone else get subjected to this nonsense?

Quite Alan, who cares indeed. It doesn't really matter. But if posters are being 'cornered' as suggested above then that does matter. It might be easy to spew bile and accusations when anonymous, but so too it is easy to keep on at a poster until they cave in. What is often described as bullying on forums is more a case of soemone having to have the last word. If you then have several people having to have the last word, then it gets quite messy. It should be enough to express a view and be ok about others expressing a different view, without a need to keep emphasising the point. Tone also plays a part, as well as written styles of expression. It's so easy to form the wrong impression of someone, and of what they are trying to say.

Well said Sue.

I haven't been around long enough to know all the characters but I tend to associate the idea of a clique with recurring themes, behaviour. In my own case it the accusation of being a troll or another poster after a handful of first posts. That is a recurring theme of a small group of people, who never apologise when shown to be wrong it seems.

There are cameras fining people for being in the bus lanes in Lordship Lane, so a camera on this junction surely is possible?

it's playing up tonight. Keeps redirecting my connection, even though I am logged in.

Surely this e-petition is a waste of time? No government is ever going to ban fireworks.

No dv1, sorned vehicles do NOT have to be insured. Taxed vehicles have to be insured, wherever you keep them and whether you drive them or not, but sorned vehicles are fine as long as they are not on the public highway. And if as suggested above, that part of the pavement is private land then the vehicle can sit there as long as it likes if it is sorned.

The owner would have had to renew the sorn until last year, so there is an owner somewhere. Technically a sorned vehicle can't be kept on a public highway, so technically it shouldn't be parked there, but.........

I love how human beings have the audacity to call any animal a pest, when it is they who do the most damage to the planet and kill more of their own for no reason than any other living species.

The vehicle has been sorned since 2010.

Totally agree, and it's all very tragic. For part of my post-graduate degree I looked at the psychological impact of conflict and war, on those making the decisions, doing the fighting and civilians impacted. As I'm sure you know, there's a slow but steady mental health breakdown that occurs and ultimately, the longer it goes on the more that psychopathy triumphs. So it is no suprise to me that what we can easily distinguish as war crimes in peace time (and be rightfully shocked by), seem perfectly normal and acceptable at the peak of war. And by he end, ordinary people are so broken that they have no resources to call their leaders to account. Even terrorist acts/ bombings have a trajectory of response. The first bombing/ beheading brings a reaction of shock, the second a reaction of outrage, and the third becomes a call for revenge. The point being that an act of terror goes from being a new experience to one we get used to. Human beings can get used to all sorts of things, and just as the norm can shift, so too can the accepted norm of reaction.

I'm guessing that oil/fat is the stain cuplrit (can't see how turkey would stain otherwise) so anything that removes those things should work.

I'm guessing they all died from poisoning?

Now you sound like missteak ;) I take your point. I think all I'm trying to say is that hindsight is selective and a wonderful thing (and that includes historical recollection). At the time things are far more complex, and yes everyone thinks they are right - which is why wars start in the first place!

Well because the IRA ultimately was a splinter group of it's former self and ended up fighting it's own former members who supported the 1921 anglo-Irish treaty, something that was certainly a compromise, but none-the-less a negotiated one between the concerned sides. And it cost Michael Collins his life. The IRA that we are all familiar with achieved absolutely nothing through it's terrorist activities. If anything, the modern IRA made sure there would be no further concession through it's stance for decades to come. And in the end they had to come to the table and enter into democracy. There was never going to ever be any other option.

Another vote for Dawsons Heights. Went there with the Mrs and kids last year.

Labelling is always going to be biased and serving the agenda of those doing the labelling of course. But that doesn't mean there's no universal truth in there somewhere El Pibe. And can we really judge Harris next to the atrocities being committed on all sides? Isn't that just the nature of war? Most of us have never had to experience war thankfully, but at the time you would have been hard pressed to find any sympathy for Dresden from the millions of British civilians living night after night through the horrors of blitz. Horrors that go way beyond just the bombing of homes. The same can be said for the treatment given out by Russian troops on Germans. Hard to criticise after the horror enforced on Russian men, women and children as they invaded. Not condoning any of it of course, but it's what happens in all out war. Davis, there is argument on both sides regarding many aspects of WW2, all of them valid. It's like saying the British invented eugenics and therefore we can't really blame the Germans for using that 'science' in justifying there views of jews and russian slavs. No-one forced germany to invade her neighbours. Civilians die in all kinds of bombing. Many of the strategic targets of docks etc were in amongst civilan areas in the UK. So in targetting those areas the Germans were also targetting civilian areas. Any notion that the Germans had a regard for civilian life that the British didn't, is nonsense. Just as we can't make any assumption that had Hamburg or Dresden not happened, the Germans would have behaved any differently. Hamburg was not terrorism because terrorism is as defined in my post above. The official definition is 'the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.' Hamburg clearly does not fit into that because we were at war. Was it a war crime though? That's a different question. But in a war where people were being interned and enslaved because they were Jewish, communist, black, russian, etc, even before war had been delcared, it's hard to argue that the Germans were somehow 'clean' until the Brits started bombing civilians. This is the problem with retrospective analysis. We weren't there. Everyone could clearly see at the 1936 Olympics what direction the Nazi Party were taking Germany in. It was a fearful and horible place to be if you were one of those groups the government was targetting. In light of everything, by the time of Hamburg, it's not hard to see why the British had little stmpathy for a nation that was essentially a tyranny. It's doesn't make any of it right, but again, look at it in context, not as an isolated inceident, and then how we get there starts to be more clear. War is a process, not a series of events in isolation. That's what history turns it into though. Now the same could be said for terrorism too. It doesn't just arrive out of thin air. But terrorism is a specific tool of those without armies and resources, for political or cultural gain. Terrorists aim to maximise the impact of their acts and that's why they attack civilian targets. Btw I didn't say that war and terrorism are different things per se. They are just terms we use to catagorise different types of aggression. All I said is that an all out war, like WW2, is very different to an isolated terrorist attack in London. The differences should be obvious.

That's a bit simplistic Alan, but even there, terrorism didn't achieve what it set out to do. Ultimately opposing sides have to talk to each other and find a middle ground they can both live with.

I think that is the local average min price Sue for any journey. I seem to pay on average ?10 for short local journeys. Those private cabs have to pay huge amounts to the companies they work for as well - even though they are using their own cars. They don't make a very big income at the end of the day sadly.

'why are the RAF men who fire bombed Dresden and Hamburg considered heroes while the 7/7 bombers are considered terrorists?' You are not comparing like for like there. The contexts are entirely different and context is extremely important. The former an act of all out war between nations throwing everything at each other. The latter, an act in isolation. A better comparison would be with any battle in Vietnam. Terrorism is so called because it's the method of groups without armies, designed to strike disproportionate fear, hence the term, and also hence why it never succeeds as a method in itself. So an appropriate use of the word for the 7/7 bombers.

A lot of people begging have drug and/or alcohol problems. But begging is better than stealing. When I see someone begging I always ask what they need the money for. If it's food or electric for example (so necessities) then I offer to buy them some food or put electric on their key for them. If they won't accept that help the chances are it is for alcohol and/ or drugs.

That's definitely not good. You can't be the only person he talks to like that.

Even I'm a little suspicous now Davis, and I have lost my temper at people accusing new posters of being fake. But no way would it bother me so much that I would feel the need to absolutely prove those people wrong. It's just a forum. Who cares what anyone thinks about who is who? And if some people choose to be rude to, or suspicious of new posters, then that's their problem. It's not worth wasting any time bothering with it.