Huguenot

Good heavens FrustratedLawyer, to accuse Harman of being unclear or of being against "classical socialist thinking" is completely disingenuous of you. The series of quotes in this article is absolutely explicit. I'd even go to the extent of suggesting that it is you that's deliberately creating confusion and 'jealousies for cheap political points'!!! What part of the following is unclear...? "When it comes to the Government spending money, it should go where the need is greatest." "Camberwell is an area of much greater need: it is deprived, so it should be first choice for funding, in front of somewhere like Bromley." "Funding should be based on need not just spread around automatically." ?North Cross Road market is in an area of East Dulwich where people are pretty well-off and it?s thriving. Whereas East Street in Walworth is an area that needs to be regenerated and is struggling." Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying whether or not I agree with her, just pointing out that she is absolutely clear, and is absolutely socialist: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" Karl Marx, 1818 - 1883 I mean, how socialist do you have to get? To consider that the readers of this fair forum are so stupid that you could obviously misinterpret these quotes and expect to get away with it says more about you than about them or Harriet Harman.

I can see the point. George Monbiot put it eloquently

Well in the UK total mortgage debt is GBP 1.4112 trn, which is a bit larger than the bailout. More importantly, although people would be debt free, they'd have no jobs to go to, and no way of trading (unless they borrowed against their property of course...). Wasn't the hundred dollar gambit pursued by Bush with zero impact?

;-)

Christian Bale demonstrating why he's so much fun to be around.

That is incredibly cute. they're not killers are they?

Sorry Macroban, I recognise your amendment on the NHS, but a private health model would be misappropriated. Companies like Bupa predicate their business model on only providing for customers who don't get ill (healthy wealthy business types) and on a competitor NHS. Without an NHS private premiums would soar, and the old and infirm would be unable to find cover for their ailments. A monopoly coupled with compulsory enrolment would see charges to the government soar well beyond current NHS fees. This Peter chap seems like the voice of reason! ;-)

Increased vehicle traffic can apply to points 2 and 4. Late night opening hours can apply to 3. It sounds like it's way past the consultation period though.

I'm thinking that iPods are registered for use only with specific PCs, and the PCs are only allowed to work with specific iTunes accounts, which in turn require credit cards that require addresses... It's probably a bit too much like hard work, but then again it might be fun playing detective and seeing if you can join the dots to find the owner?

I always get confused by Louisa's 'nostalgic' posts, as I can't work out what she actually wants. In this latest round it seems that she feels the height of grandeur is those identikit (and now failed) stores that cloned themselves across all the suburban UK towns in the mid-eighties - Dixon's, WHSmith, M&S etc. I may have misunderstood, because in other threads she glamourises sleepy Devon villages and a unique local flavour. Go on Louisa, give us what you do think is right. Paint us a picture of the perfect Lordship Lane. Try and do it without describing what you don't want. If you catch yourself criticising something, delete it and start again with "I really would like to see..." ;-) ED was without doubt my favourite London suburb, precisely because there were so few casual visitors. I recognised my fellow citizens and traders, and they recognised me. It gave me a feeling of inclusivity. I didn't differentiate between blue collar and white collar neighbours, and was never under the impression that they discriminated against me. ED in the pre-boom years seemed much more tribal and rife with petty prejudice, and tribal behaviour is all about defining your identity by those who are excluded from your community. It's easy to see how social drift, economic growth and personal wealth have loosened the 'blitz' mentality that kept tight-knit communities together. It would be pointless to blame this on 'blow-in' yuppies, because yuppies are about 'new money': working class people made good. These guys actually were your neighbours, but they bought an Audi TT and a middle class accent when their house-price soared. Yuppies are resented by the working class because they rejected their colleagues in pursuit of an ego-centric social agenda and a better lifestyle. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and all that. I think that the world is a better place when pursuing a liberal agenda, so ED seems a much better place as it becomes more liberal. Liberalism is about the freedom for individuals to choose, so it's no surprise that LL offers exactly that. Iceland sits comfortably next to Cookwank shops, extending variety and options for local residents. Often the argument becomes polarised because customers of one type of shop want to see more of the same style. In fact it's just this balanced state of conflict, this happy medium, which makes LL such an attractive and successful experience.

Totalitarian? Not much residents parking to be found here ;-) but of course an awful lot of sunshine. Just back from a river cruise down the Mekong in Laos. Very hot but lots of mozzies. There's not so many private cars here, because they're taxed very heavily. Hence you get far fewer parking issues. In recompense the public transport system is exceptional, and one in every five cars is a taxi. I can call an automated taxi number here that recognises my mobile number and can get a taxi to my door within 5 minutes of placing the call. The fares are about a quarter of London's. As a result of fewer private cars there are very few hyper-markets and most people shop within walking distance of their house. No car required. Singapore's run more like a business than a democracy, but they seem to find a very effective balance to accommidate the diverse population. For example homosexuality is illegal (to satisfy muslim and christian groups), but the government is on record that they have no remit to interfere with the actions of consenting adults within their own bedrooms (to satisfy the liberal progressives). If there was evidence that parking issues were causing economic problems or causing social unrest I could imagine them resolving it in a professional way, whatever the solution was.

"The nation state has 3 core responsibilities..." Good heavens, I hope I never live in a state of your devising; a state where the poor, the unemployed and the unintelligent are stuck in a hideous spiral without education and basic healthcare. It wouldn't need protection from foreign enemies, there would be enough within the borders - disenfranchised and starving, divorced from recognised social structures and with a limited life-expectancy the poor would be burning and looting our cities whilst the rich cowered inside gated bunkers. Aside from that it's a silly doctrine - who's going to build the road outside your front door? Does each home-owner do it and then charge a toll? Social altruism is essentially enlightened self-interest. We support our society because we know it creates a better environment for us to pursue our own interests. Petty reductionism to uninspired cliches like these '3 core responsibilities' is merely a revelation that we haven't thought through the possible consequences of our actions. Dulwichdoll's complaint conspires to conflate two diametrically opposed issues as if they were the same. The loss of customers in the credit-crunch is a reflection of too little regulation for what Will Hutton beautifully describes as private companies that "have delinquent propensities for speculation and short-termism that profoundly damage the real economy". The fire extinguisher issue is possibly over-regulation, but one you may be grateful for it if a foreign language speaker puts out your chip-pan fire because they recognise the tools to do it. So what are you accusing this government of, too little or too much regulation? Likewise it's ridiculous to blame the government for the petty thefts of your staff. Arguably this is attributed to Thatcherite strategies: if there is 'no such thing as society' and greed is good, then why the funk would anyone want to ignore the opportunity for filling their pockets? That's not this government's fault, but the Tories. Those looking to privatise healthcare and education will increase the likelihood of this crime taking place, as the proletariat realise that no-one gives a sh*t about then, so why should they give a sh*t about anyone else? MM's views on letting weak banks fail is patently daft. These banks were going down like flies (good and bad together), and it wasn't even the consumers forcing their hands, it was corporate crooks betting on a collapse and feeding a disaster frenzy. What MM just doesn't get is that this isn't some intellectual game, it's real-life, and for some people the banks going down meant not being able to feed their kids. People get desperate and all of a sudden you've got complete social breakdown. Does MM think he's living in some sort of ivory tower? We'd have all gone down with them.

The thing I find so frustrating about this debate is that on-one gives any evidence for their claims. I understand Karter's concerns as a trader, but there are no figures provided by him/her and colleagues supporting the case that business would be damaged. Restricting parking to a couple of hours for non-residents may free up long period parking by commuters that currently block casual shoppers to the Lane. It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that Karter's business may improve with parking restrictions. Where's the retail data from areas in Zone 2 borders that have implemented these zones? I stress 'data' here - 'I reckon...' is not data. People may resent it as a stealth tax, but once again there's no evidence that it is. The link posted about Sheffield says that councils are currently losing money on the projects, the 'profit' gossip is merely an unsubstantiated forecast. Change may well be scary, and I'm not recommending gambling with this superb commercial area. I do wish that someone would get off their bums and find some blinking evidence instead of peddling mob-think and prejudice. We know that busy mum's don't have a 'right' to park outside their house, but we do have a social responsibility to try and help them resolve these problems - it's called being a good neighbour.

Quite true, but it remains that the rejection of rationalism and individual responsibility is a pre-requisite of religion, but only a by-product of the others.

Good me? Nah never. My point is that organised religion has a history of crimes against humanity based on the abdication of rational judgment. You don't need religion to be moral, nor to believe in some of the philosophies that christianity espouses. It's not a zero sum game - organised religion has set an inescapably destructive precedent. It has history and it's bad. The persistence and evangelicism of organised religion represents a significant threat to both our current society and the future of humanity.

Bizzy, you have no knowledge of religion turning against religion? Go look up the Huguenots, or the crusades, or Northern Ireland or the Inquisition etc. etc. Organised religion is a political weapon. You have a strangely rose-tinted view of religion that suggests either a limited historical knowledge or that you're cherry picking the pretty bits. If you're in denial you'll reject the role that religion played in the examples above. That wouldn't be reasonable. Just because you find Bible fables inspiring, doesn't mean you have to abdicate rational judgment. You call me ignorant either to call me uninformed, or as a pointless insult. However I consider myself reasonably versed up on 'Jesus's world view' and share some of the ideals. I also seem to be considerably better informed than you about the outside world. So in effect you're calling me ignorant because you think I don't believe in God, alongside Santa and the Tooth Fairy. If that is the case then I hope you see the irony?

LE, I'm struggling to see where you're going with your psuedo-historical arguments about oral traditions and skilled translators. If you accept that the Bible as we have it today is the subject of selective editing in which vast tracts of contemporary accounts were discarded or amended by man, then this is by definition NOT the word of God or Jesus. Any chance of identifying provenance went out the window in the editing process. You simply have no idea who wrote what you're reading and why. It hence provides no evidence of the likelihood of the existence of God or his son. Instead the only reasonable interpretation of the Bible is that it's an organisational manifesto. You may well agree with some of the philosophical points raised. I do too. However, the recommendation of most critics is that you should judge the church as an organisation by precedent. To claim that somehow you are unique, or this time it's different is the last refuge of the habitual victim. You must have met battered wives in your line of business and wondered why they kept going back for more?

Chuckle. The only universal truth on this thread is that the silliness of people's supernatural convictions is in direct proportion to the fervour with which they pursue them. It's patently ridiculous to be lectured on spiritual insight by someone who scarcely knows what happens in their own society. It's not even as if the arguments have logical consistency. The Bible either is or is not the word of God. If you suggest the you can pick or choose elements based on modern relevance or metaphorical interpretation, then you're casting it as an interesting work of fiction that throws up some nice ideas. That's not a church, that's a sixth form study group. Sixth form study groups can 'save' you in the same way as Alcoholics Anonymous can. That doesn't make them sacred, and doesn't qualify the attendees to stroll around in the ethereal smugness of the righteous. You're just mixed up kids that have had some good advice. Good for you. A religion is something different, and by necessity dogmatic and expansionist. It requires suspension of critical faculties and obeisance to the organisational hierarchy. This isn't being saved, it's being mugged.

Candj, I'm off to Laos RIGHT NOW, and we'll be stopping off in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, I shall look out for you.

Indiepanda, you're clearly middle-class. Skilled working class is middle class. Being a sucker for deals, counting your pennies and loving your family is a character trait, not a class. AFAIK a working class person is a middle class person who likes complaining, fighting and blaming everyone else for their own poor decisions, ending up skint in the process. It doesn't matter who their parents were. Since this is a soul destroying activity, intelligent offspring of 'working class' people wise up and spend their time doing more productive things, thus becoming 'middle class'. Their parents bitch about this, because they bitch about everything. Their parents also feel humiliated because their kids have shown them how anything can be achieved if you put a bit of effort in. Their parents bitch about this too, but don't make any effort because then they'd have nothing to bitch about. This has a statistical knock-on effect that 'working class' people are disproportionately stupid, and blame other people for stealing their brains. 'Working class' is an ironic 'middle' class joke, because the one thing the working class don't do is work. If they worked, they'd be middle class. It is a nonsense to draw class distinctions between manual labourers, adminstrators and landed gentry in the socially mobile 21st century. Intelligent people recognise this, and become by definition middle class. Stupid people don't see it and are consequently working class, and complain and bitch about it (as above). Oh, and.... ;-)

Never saw Asset losing her temper before, but I guess that was it!

But intellectually true I feel.... ;-)

TQ, no point in being aggravated, 'tis the nature of online debate. No offense was intended by TM, he (as with all of us online) doesn't have the visual or contextual cues to ameliorate the cynicism. Online, one just asks the question. I should point out that the 'poll' approach to this debate is going to turn out 9:1 in terms of posts against:for parking permits. That will seem overwhelming, but will skew the reality. If you don't have trouble parking outside your own house, you don't want restrictions parking outside someone else's house. 90% of people in ED don't have trouble outside their own house. QED no permits next to LL. This is called having your cake and eating it. However 10% of people have problems parking outside their own house, and 90% of them want permits. You do the math. Permit loses. It doesn't remove the fact that those living next to LL are the bullied victims of the majority self-indulgence.

Nobody denies the search for truth LE, least of all me. At Alpha you will be shown a succession of truths that start from the commonsense (Jesus probably lived) to the reasonable (his philosophy was altruistic). At varying stages over this experience you will be asked to accept ideas that are somewhat less reasonable (he has global leadership qualities in a modern world), but you will make the calculated gamble that a minor transgression (an obvious white lie) is not worth pursuing amongst a welter of overbearingingly admissable 'truths'. You may even be asked to accept that it's a 'metaphor' (water into wine) as a convenient key to your 'unreasonable' door. Once this door is open, you'll be asked to make progressively more unreasonable admissions. The demand won't be related to your original perceptions, but will be related to your last concession..... 'C'mon, if you've taken off your jeans, you might as well take off your pants'. The truth you seek is not in pursuing unreasonable justifications through intellectual denial.