Huguenot

Oh gosh, being told I'm talking inane drivel by Vickster, oh the shame. ;-) You'll notice that what drew my attention to this thread was the demand that other threads should be shut down and pinned to the 'top' of the page. It's the forum equivalent of saying "me me look at me, my issue is the most important one and my opinion is the most important one, and noone else is allowed to say anything on other threads that I don't control". You then fell into the trap of ignoring everyone else's point of view, claimed a mob support and generally became an overbearing self-righteous motorist. Most of your arguments are opinions masquerading as facts, and your desire to ridicule the councils efforts to establish the strengths and weaknesses of the current solution is almost as impressive as sticking your fingers in your ears saying 'la la la not listening'. In the face of exposure your bring up my residence in Singapore as if it means I'm not entitled to an opinion? That's not debate, just another example of smug bullying. Come on Vickster, you only want your own way, and you're willing to ignore facts, ignore other people's views, tell porkies and bully people until you get it. The best of British eh? But mainly, I have a thing about self-righteous selfish motorists.

RosieH, I know you're just espousing your very marvellous industry :) I don't reckon her blog just gave her access to the info, I reckon she was actively pursued by some friendly PR types who probably chucked her some freebies or other incentive to continue to promote the brand. In other words she's promoting a product for personal gain. Once people cross that boundary on a community forum, they've broken the unspoken rules of the relationship, let alone the rules of posting. I have no problem with marketing, I just think that it should say *advertorial* across the top and should be excluded on the grounds that the forum doesn't take advertising.

Except that as the spokesman for a non-existent entity he effectively is god. :D You're quite right, it was a slip of the keyboard 'the voice of god on earth'. I think there is some comedy in a religion claiming someone else made 'a howler'.

I think 'locked at top of East Dulwich Issues' is pretty clear. MM could have wanted it 'locked', he didn't, he said 'locked at top'.

Besides, Marmora Man, your 5:1 ratio is not only unsubstantiated but entirely useless as a reflection of local opinion. The pedestrians wanting to cross the road safely are very likely to be local - perhaps 500 to 1,000 people in the directly affected area. They're also likely to be OAPs, schoolchildren, busy families etc. They're disproportionately underrepresented on internet forum debates like this one. The motorists wanting to use this stretch of road as a commuter high speed transit road are less likely to be locals, so they number the entire residential community of a large swathe of south London who really don't give a shite about local people. Perhaps 20,000+. On this basis a 5:1 vote is a failure: it should be closer to 20:1 if it was to be representative. Come on - all of you in favour of removing of the lights, how many of you live within half a mile of the location and have children under the age of thirteen or elderly relatives over the age of 65 that you care for? I'm betting not very many at all. It reminds me of the Parking Zone debate - where everyone who didn't want one on the grounds of bureaucarcy and limited parking spaces didn't actually live in the area that would be affected. In fact those in the CPZ area voted in a large majority to have one. So really those who voted against it were actually voting to continue to rip off, oppress and make misery of the lives of local people. Same thing here.

Okay, being a pisstaker, here's a letter worth sending: ee text should others wish to use as a template. Transport & Streets Department Southwark Council
 PO BOX 64529 London SE1P 5LX Traffic Lights ? Junction Forest Hill Road / Colyton Road Dear Sir, I understand that Southwark Council are considering whether to retain the traffic lights at the junction of Forest Hill Road and Colyton Junction. We recognise that Southwark Council indicated, when the lights were installed in September 2007, that this would be a temporary measure. As I am sure the Council is aware there were many local motorists that objected to the initial installation of the traffic lights; however, we celebrate that there was a need to improve access and the environment for the entire local residential population rather than just high speed commuters and smug guys in gas guzzling SUVs. To decide now to retain the lights seems the only reasonable approach. Apart from the wasteful logic of investing heavily to reverse a recent succesful project which worked to everyone's satisfaction, there are 5 following rebuttals to consider: 1. The personal experience on road use of local libertarians who despise any concept of social management is not only distorted by their overall politics, but motivated by the ridiculous conviction that if we let anyone do whatever they want whenever they want, the world would be a better place. This clearly doesn't apply to anyone who isn't a rich tory. 2. Difficulties with 'traffic flow' cannot be attributed to a single set of lights, but more to the fact that there are 3 million cars in London. The flow of buses such as the 363 and the 63 are much more negatively influenced by lazy people driving to the local shop to get a newspaper than they are by pedestrian facilities. 3. Perceptions of the numbers and speed of cars employing diversion tactics would be better identified by research rather than the off the cuff opinions of empty nester local people intent on maximising their own house value at the expense of people who want to safely cross the road. 4. I understand a recent ?safety assessment? has been carried out. This is a reflection of the desire of the council to serve the interests of the public, and whatever the context we welcome the findings. It is particularly satisfying that decisions at a council level are made on the basis of informed knowledge, rather than the gut feel of Nimbys. 5. We are particularly pleased that the council makes the decision based on the benefits to all, rather than being swayed by wierdy emotional concepts like 'going against the grain'. We pay the council to make informed decisions, not to pansy about at the beck and call of the current 'in thing'. I recommend most strongly that these lights are retained. Yours sincerely etc. etc. ... oh, and ;-)

Vickster you crazy cat - this is a head count: "It seems that the overwhelming majority of the people who contributed were against the installation of the lights". There you go, you counted heads. QED. As with most agitators, you create statements like that because you're trying to create a hypothetical mob that supports you. It's not based in reality, you're just mentally excluding dissenting views. I appreciate that it affects your daily life, probably to the extent that you've lost a bit of perspective. That's what nimbyism is ;-) Councils need to take into account a huge range of things TJ, and I have no doubt that traffic flow is one of them. There may be others, including pedestrians, who do not share your particular prioritisiation. The question is whose priority is the most important one, and to what degree their opinion is honest (as opposed to prejudice). Is it egocentric drivers, is it socially averse homeowners, is it old people trying to reach the shops, or families with small children, or schoolkids playing tag? To what extent should we acccommodate drivers anyway? The freedom of the road is a fifties aspirational advertising concept that appeals to selfish people (see Tuffies comments on driving skills outside schools). Traffic is bad because there's too many people with cars. There's 3 million cars in London, if ten of them go down your street because they're going somewhere else it's because there's 3 million cars in London, not because someone's out to get you. Motorists are on the way out anyway, and not because the council are meanies. Why spend public cash on supporting them when in ten years time they won't be able to afford petrol because there isn't any? TJ, you call it political masturbation, I call it vision, sociability and radiant commonsense. There are plenty of people who don't have any. If that's what you feel about their views, I'd say yours is widdling in the wind!

Ha! Liars Dice. Used to play this with girls in a place called 'Maggies' in Beijing. Whatever the dice you had to buy the hookers a drink. Liars.

I don't think it is a lipstick like, I think it's DM being paid by TF. The repeated use of the name and the brochure speak is an example of that. It's a dismal commercialisation of the EDF of which DM, as a long time correspondent, should be aware. Whatever the f*** the PR goons have told you DM, they don't know even the half of it. They're silly little children in a big bad world. I'm truly disappointed that DM should stoop to such gutter behaviour, and I hope she catches herself before she loses her self-respect.

Charming and erudite regardless of the intake. Mockney hittee naillee though Magpie. There's a fundamental difference between protestantism and catholicism relating to how you find god. For protestants there is no essential authority - you find god in yourself. Hence guitars and tambourines are perfectly reasonable expressions of the wonder of his creation etc. Good News Bible whatever, it simply doesn't matter that much. Find the love in your heart and you've found god. For Catholics, it's a different game. Pontifex Maximus means 'big bridge'. The pope is the direct connection between his adherents and the almighty. He is [the voice of]* god on earth. The glamour and expenditure of the catholic faith is largely in recognition of the fact that the pope appoints people in a staggered hierarchy to do his bidding. The whole concept of holding his guys to account for paedophilia is a modern one. In catholicism you can't really hold anyone to account, because they are [the voice of]* god on earth etc. Geddit? Comments such as "The fact that the COE does not hold firm on doctrine and is far too keen to try and be trendy is one of the key reasons the congregation is collapsing" are pointless. Either you understand the key differences or you don't. I suspect magpie, that you dwell in the large majority that welcomes and encourages rigid hierarchy. It defines and offers you a framework within which to develop your life. That's cool. No worries. For atheist protestants like myself though, you're downright scary, because your rigidity is black boot fodder. *edited to reflect a semantic distinction that has no meaning, but Silverfox felt was important to clarify.

To resurrect a thread, you need merely post on it, and add a link to your thread here if you wish. What you're proposing is to make it a sticky - which means elevating your own interests above every other thread on this forum - and then locking it - which means forcing people to take the route you want them to take. I think that's a wee bit presumptive. Incidentally, your headcount on the number of people complaining on the thread is an inappropriate way of judging the strength of your argument. In democratic debates you need to consider the silent majority, who are very happy with the status quo - so they don't need to comment. It's the nature of bulletin boards that they attract complainers, if people are happy they just relax and put their feet up ;-)

That's right pearson, YOU ARE the Enforcer... ridding the streets of vermin, operating outside the law, protecting the rights of the innocent. I'll bet the women swoon when they see you strutting the streets in your big cloak and eye mask ;-) pearson, you need to think for a moment why putting poisons in publically accessible areas is illegal. Why would the goverment stop us putting poisons where houshold pets and small children could access them? Why would you think it's reasonable that poisoning cats is okay in your ridiculously poorly informed vendetta on foxes? You know this is borderline psychotic don't you? You need to keep taking the meds mate.

Yeah, just had a look at this. The assumption in the graph seems to be that inequality leads to crime, and crime can be measured by prison population. In fact Singapore definitely does have very low crime rates, often the best in the developed world, it's the punishments that are harsh. I was wrong on foreign workers. Only 20% of SG prisoners are foreign. A figure dwarfed by most European countries.

Something about feeding the troll. Just as an FYI, the administrators are required to give up log details to the police if they fear a criminal act has, or is about to take place. There is easily sufficient data in the logs to cross check with ISPs to identify the originating PC for online postings. I'm sure it wouldn't then take too much effort to identify the user with the personality of an attention seeking 14 year old boy.

I love Tuffie's insinuation that the bad parking is down to staff, and that parents are driving irresponsibly because the staff aren't doing their job! At some point grown adults have to take responsibility for their own actions,not blame teacher. I also detect a thinly veiled ambition in this thread to ignore the many posters who want the traffic lights to stay. Lots of nimbyism on show here!

Eh? That thread hasn't been added to since 2007? Why would you take a thread that people lost interest in 3 years ago and lock it to the top of a section? Even the Homestall humps thread gets only two posts a week, hardly elevated to regional crisis is it?

Amen to that Mick Mac

It's also possible that 'income inequality' is too rigid a measurement. One consequence of SGs education and housing policies is that income inequality doesn't necessarily translate to a poor standard of living or limited opportunity. The large number of jailbirds may also be related to the very high number of migrant workers or the harshness of penalties. A recent UK visitor had to pay around ?60,000 in fines for damage to public property on a drunken night out that would have warranted a ?500 fine in the UK. He had to remortgage his UK property to pay it off, or face very lengthy spell in a local cell. That wasn't a crime of economic inequality, it was simply brutal.

Apples to Apples has proven a hilarious game, whatever your age or inebriation. Somebody comes out with a decription from a card in their own hand, and the other players need to select an item in their hand and prove that it more closely matches the original desciption than the other competitors. For example, one may and try to match 'Britney Spears' with 'Diseased'. Anyway, it's more fun to play :)

That writes off Kabaddi then.

Sorry MickMac, I wasn't trying to imply it wasn't a lot of money, it was the comparative attraction of the roles. A 26 year old exec in the the advertising industry can probably achieve 50k a year including bonuses. This is for for less skill and effort than it takes professional, highly competent, battle hardened execs in the NHS to achieve by the time they're 55. If you offer both roles the same salaries you're not going to get much talent running hospitals. Who'd bother to go through the pain and the abuse of the general public? I don't know whether I'm surprised or not, KCH has over 4,000 staff for 200m - that's 0.2% of NHS funding. 0.2% of 6,000 is 12 people. Do I think it's possible that there would be 12 people from a staff of 4,200 at KCH whose salary is over 140k a year? No absolutely not. Not surprised at all.

It's a British conviction hung over from class war that that rank and file are better than the officers. We all believe it, so criticising the salaries is a rather repetitive form of abuse that is unlikely to provied any real solution. It's a bit tired when many of these leading execs come from very average backgrounds. I mean, what should the leader of a healthcare trust managing hundreds of millions of pounds earn? The same as a GP who may only be looking after his day surgery for 100k a year? The same as a 26 year old advertising executive? If you lop 50k off all of those 6,000 salaries, you save 300m quid a year. In total in 2009 the NHS received over 100bn in funding, this means that the cash you could save on these salaries is 0.3% of funding. You would waste many times more money than that by putting well meaning amateurs in charge. Bob Crow's total salarly package in 2009 was ?145,548 - more than the PM. So much for workers being pure as the driven snow. The PM, incidentally, is a poor comparison. 100 years ago the PM's salary was around 600,000 per year in today's money. They aceept this current 140k (comparatively paltry sum) in modern years because after a few years in office they'll be paid 250k a year from 50 different companies to sit on their board as non-exec directors. That and the book advances for words they never wrote etc. You could probably estimate the PM's real income from the role at over 3m a year for the eight years they may spend in office. Not many NHS execs on that kind of earning!

I don't think you've really made any sense there itatm, but I do think you've given your own game away... Let's just get it out there? You don't think your mum had great service from the NHS, so now you're out to get them. You don't really mind how you get them, and you don't mind how many other people you hurt to achieve this. You don't care if you reduce the quality of service, because you want to make them pay for their perceived crimes? Most of the problems you've described can only be achieved by spending more money, not less: The only way to solve a 'capacity' problem is by ordering more equipment, pay for more skilled staff, and having them sit unused most of the time. You'd probably throw a bonkers fit over that too. The only way you can accommodate unique requirements is by reducing checks and balances. You'd not be happy about that either. As for treating patients with the tablets they've brought in with them, that's a recipe for a disaster unless you can absolutely guarantee what's in the bottle, which you can't unless it came from your own dispensary. As for the rest of the aggro, I suspect you'll find that the people who work at the NHS are just as human as you. I'm sorry you're unhappy, but trying to take down the NHS for revenge is not the answer.

Prison population here is comparatively high - and terrible places they are too. I think the Singaporeans are probably keener on punishment rather than rehabilitation. To pick up on expat's question I was talking specifically about economic welfare, as opposed to healthcare and education. Ecuation and healthcare are both exceptional in Singapore. The WHO rates Singapore as 6th in the world, where the UK sits at eighteenth. The government subsidises healthcare much like the NHS in the UK, although the primary point of difference is that subsidies may be income linked, and patients have the freedom to uprate the quality of their care (think 5 star hotels and butlers). The government also regulates the supply and prices of services. For unemployed people in government housing, healthcare is free. I think DJKQ may be thinking along far too rigid lines about the definition of 'family and friends' for economic welfare. The family unit extends itself far out from blood relations, often to encompass entire local communities (known in an earlier age as kampongs, but now not entirely dissimilar to the arrayed council tower blocks that in the UK created fractured societies). This means that local communities are often politically very influential for their members. There's both upsides and downsides to that. Economic welfare is considered a community concern, not a state one. The social pressure that this creates is sufficient to provide the checks and balances that an anonymous system like the UK fails to provide. In times of crisis, the government may well subsidise job creation - meaning that effectively a degree of economic welfare is controlled by the state. However, the system ensures that those receiving the benefit have to be working, and hence by definition deliver economic value back to society.

Well there is a system for the destitute or the sick, but I think the locals would question the idea of 'no family'. They'd argue that there must be a mum and dad, and that the parents must have friends or acquaintances. You're posing arguments that simply don't make sense to an Asian society. For these guys charity starts and ends at home, and has nothing to do with the state. When you get a guy who doesn't have someone looking after him, it's front page news! I can't remember who it was, but someone earlier in the thread was talking about their sister who was a single mum in Liverpool with three kids struggling to make ends meet. That simply doesn't happen here. She'd be forced to move back home, or with her sister, and the family members would be obliged to look after her. Having said that, you don't get a lot of single mums here unless dad has suffered a catastrophe. The family unit is considered unbreakable as an economic construction. The education system here is comprehensive, and consistently tops world league tables. The locals feel that after that, the job of the state is done.