Huguenot

Yep Mike - that's the area worth exploring. This law originally targets people like car dealers and otherwise unworthy types who might park up a container and start trading. I think you could argue that since the cars are intended both as a service for customers (getting them to and from potential properties) and as an advertising hoarding, that when not used (and hence parked), they are 'stored commercial equipment'. I'd form a collective action group and pursue the enquiry initially through the CAB and local government. While you're at it, you could target that 'man with a van' who dumps his burgundy thirty year old transits in opportune places buggering up the view.

There is an avenue to explore as it happens - public roads may not be used for 'commercial storage'. If I was chez ED with time on my hands this would definitely be worth exploring.

I think Paul moved to the Lake District, but if you search earlier posts he did leave a forwarding address. I believe the council were largely of the opinion that there's no way that EDers would tolerate the changes!

Surely you contradict yourself Dom, 'those who fail and those who get out in time' implies an inevitablity of downturns in the economic cycle that would remove personal or party liability... you can't have it both ways. Besides we're hardly at 15% interest rates yet, and Britain even proved itself reasonably resilient to that kind of c*ck up. As for the hysterical behaviour of Northern Rock investors, well this is what Alan Dale struggled to anticipate when he was egging on this entire forum to get us into the buy-to-let housing at the top of the cycle. When the market wavers, landlords will get anxious, with a downward pressure on rents and shortfalls on mortgage payments. If the buy-to-let market gets the jitters then we have a real concern...

Yes, Nova Hogan posted your pics mockers, and had the gall to accept a compliment on its quality!!

I'll steer clear of my usual rant on private vehicle 'rights'... But I can tell you that it would be plausible to legally argue that since these vehicles are used for commercial purposes, that parking them near the agent constitues illegal industrial storage. I'd say a class action by local residents would have a reasonably high likelihood of success, save the rage of residents everywhere, and make the EDF famous to boot. Go on nutty, run with it just for fun!

I'd find myself wondering if the old lady should have the legal right to keep the property vacant - there should be regulations in place that prevent indivudals from owning prime commercial property and deliberately preventing it being used for the purpose for which it has been categorised? I guess not. I certainly wouldn't bother keeping her sweet - if she's continued to turn down reasonable financial offers on the property she's got a bad attitude. She can't turn a busy commercial street into a quiet residential one just because she fancies it that way. It's a bit like that shop next door to Blue Mountain: that one apparently is being deliberately kept off the market because the owner had an unhappy commercial experience running the place, so now he's keeping it shut out of spite. Surely qualifications for ridicule? These vacant lots are a blight on the local environment.

Very funny :))

On a technicality, SE22 postcode and the East Dulwich electoral ward don't actually match.... When defining these areas how are you chaps rationalising the districts?

Have you two got history? You both got very personal very quickly? xx

I note that the proposed West Dulwich forum is liberally sprinkled with cost-per-click ads - so you'll forgive me for being once more cynical? Isn't this like coming on an open invite to someone else's party and then inviting them around yours so you can make money off the back of them? Whilst I can see you're charming, it's both insulting to your host and exploiting your proposed guests. It's also slightly nonsensical to come onto an ED forum and asking them to talk about WD issues? You can see from the threads that the EDF is predominantly about local issues and local people. Your best bet to source local customers is to find creative ways of building up local word of mouth and reaching people making enquiries about WD. Try investing some money in search engines. It's also important to deliver something of value that doesn't already exist? As a word of advice, this ain't no get-rich-quick scheme. Those ads are unlikely to cover your serving costs, and they're off-putting for users. That's why they're not on this forum. It's a long term investment, the EDF really had very few users for the first nine months. It may well be that your motives are purely altruistic, and if that's the case please ignore the next paragraph. True local forums such as this one are generated by generous local people putting their hearts and wallets into sustaining a popular local resource. That's why it's so disappointing when incomers try and parasitise their efforts and generosity in order to line their own pockets. I believe it's called carpet-bagging, and it's just not nice - one's mum would be ashamed.

I've recently had explained to me the Singaporean Ah Beng culture, it's a chav! Check out this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ah_Beng - I can't seem to get the linkage thing to work. Is nothing sacred? Is all that's mysterious and glamorous in the world to be torn from us? To where have I run, from whence I have come?

Waddabout Kick Start and - that'll do your head in. In the great school of one finger piano playing what about Z-Cars?

Not at all Tom, I do find the debate interesting, but only because it's moved off top from your original question: objecting to a lack of 'new and interesting threads'. As a matter of interest, what qualifies one to be an 'old loon'? Am I one? The majority of the people who post offensively tend to be newcomers, not old-timers. Reading between the lines, the question is about editorial control: can it or should it be imposed? Whatever the good intentions behind it, at the point at which posts get edited to remove subjective opinion then it becomes a newspaper, where those posting become de-facto affiliated with the forum's POV. It become a political organisation. Tom (and others) are quite right that this will rid itself of the old guard - as it becomes more political it will seem less attractive to the friendly knock-about ne'er do wells, and more attractive to the self-righteous wannabe community leaders. As the se5 forum shows, there are significantly fewer of the latter than the former. The EDF would be like the braying Portillo type loudly lecturing his enraptured acolyte in the corner of the pub, whilst privately wondering why everyone else is ignoring them and having fun... There's always an opporunity for businesses to comment without right-to-reply: it's called advertising. I can't quite get an idea of what the Drawing Room would look like, Tom can you give us an idea of some of the kind of high-brow threads you may be willing to put in here if it was properly policed? I might add that this question has failed to be resolved by companies with far bigger budgest than us: the Grauniad and the beeb both reading quite like the EDF in some ways, with their own balance of intellectuals and nutters. I believe that this is referred to as the vox-pop? Can someone show us a site that has done this in the way that you would like?

Humbug. Welcome to the forum lovely ;-)

Lol, I don't know what the crimes are for dropping litter - I suspect that they're no more onerous than elsewhere, but the likelihood of getting caught and penalised is higher. Things like vandalism get mandatory three strokes of the cane, and those guys whip good... It's not boring because your life's not at risk, no. Socially it's far more energetic than the UK - as it's warm everyone's outside more, and in residential areas doors and windows stand open so you can see into other people's lives. It tends to be more conformist: middle class kids into soft rock tend to be seen as 'edgy and risk-taking' and wear black t-shirts with unicorns on. Then there's still big questions over organised crime...

I notice the other forum hasn't been shy in populating its home page with two tags for Google affiliate revenue. By prioritising that above delivering a popular and engaging editorial proposition I think we can be fair in assuming that money was absoultely top of mind in the creation of se22? The logic of a 'further' opportunity to engage local residents is only demonstrated if the se22 team find different ways of engaging with new local users and bringing them online. Aggressive and repeated link posting to this thread is not the way to do that, that's simply click farming, and well they know it. As for the fridge issue, that's just not sensible - if you want to sell a fridge put it on a popular (and free) local thread like the ones on this forum, there is no need to post it in an out-of-the-way spot and then moan that nobody else is promoting this new heavily commercial site for nothing!!! Finally, to level an accusation of 'unfairness' at such a reasonable bloke as the administrator is totally unfounded, and both cynical and manipulative. How bloody hypocritical! Admin there's absolutely nothing unreasonable in preventing these low-rent carpetbaggers from gaining free publicity for a cynically commercial site whose evident long term interest is to put this forum out of business. What an insult to the efforts and expense you've put in over the last year!!!

Well, the Singaporeans have an interesting approach to crime prevention. Apparently it had the highest per-capita execution rate in the world between 1994 and 1999, estimated by the United Nations to be 13.57 executions per one million population during that period. The next highest was Saudi Arabia with 4.65. As a result (or not) there were only 17 murders last year, down from 21 the year before. All were solved apparently. Believe it or not, there were only 1,123 burglaries last year. In London there were 132 murders, and 15,596 burglaries although the periods are slightly different (they're both 12 months). I might add that the area of London covered by the figures is only 50% higher - so you can't account for it simply by population weight. You do feel incredibly safe in Singapore.

I just sold through a very capable local agent, and was reasonably happy with the rate - did make the VAT mistake mind you. I would say that I hope the lady they employed to follow the sale through from offer to completion gets a larger share of the commission than the sales person. She worked far harder and demonstrated considerable skill and diplomacy. Without her input the property wouldn't have shifted at the speed that it did, and I'd have probably moved agent. As an aside the agents don't form a cartel and 'lock out' private buyers from internet aggregators - the aggregators claim a revenue share that the private buying sites are not willing to pay. The aggregators deserve payment, as they have to invest spend in on and off-line marketing to promote use of their site, as well as bidding for top results in searches on the internet search engines. With online marketing you get exactly the degree of marketing you're willing to pay for - there's no such thing as a free lunch, so it's no use being spiteful if you don't get one.

Just picked this up... "Overall firearms offences fell 13% in 2006-07 to 9,608 incidents - the lowest number in seven years. Firearms robberies, handgun offences and serious injuries from firearms are also down. YOUTH SHOOTINGS IN 2007 London: Six deaths James Andre Smarrt-Ford, 16 Michael Dosunmu, 15 Billy Cox, 15, Annaka Keniesha Pinto, 17 Abukar Mahamed, 16 Nathan Foster, 18 Manchester: One death Kamilah Peniston, 12 Liverpool: One death Rhys Jones, 11 Just over half of all firearms offences occurred in just three major forces - the Metropolitan Police in London, Greater Manchester and West Midlands. Drilling down into the national figures up to the end of April 2006 shows that West Midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester Police have all experienced drops in firearms offences whereas London has seen an increase. The Metropolitan Police says that in the 12 months to July 2007 it saw a 3.5% rise in firearms offences - up from 3,485 to 3,607 incidents. Nottingham is another city that has struggled with a guns label after a number of killings in 2004, including schoolgirl Danielle Beccan - but its police chiefs say public perception is at odds with reality because the city witnesses far fewer incidents per resident than other so-called gun hotspots. Figures show Nottinghamshire Police recorded one firearms-related death in 2006 and none as of August 2007. While there has been substantial concern in recent years over the use of imitation weapons in gang incidents - not least because some can be converted into real guns - the figures show there has also been a decrease here. Further detailed research on firearms crimes on a regional basis will be published in 2008. What all of this means is that we cannot draw any simple nationwide conclusions about gun crime. What we can say with certainty is that gun crime is a problem that remains closely focused in some cities that have witnessed some terrible deaths. The figures do not show that gun crime is prolific or widespread in England and Wales." Thought it might stir up a hornets nest.... ;-)

George Clooney has been know to become highly dispirited by the amount of time people mistake him for me...

Oh tcha Monica. This isn't personal, and nor is it 'old school'. It takes a progressive open minded modern thinkers to observe that peddling medieval witch doctor cures to tragic ailments is irresponsible. The fact remains that in double blind tests these therapies do not work. We'll be offering garlic, lemons and beetroots as cures for AIDS next: that's not cutsie, it's downright murderous. For something like aspirin to be 'herbal and good' when it's in willow bark and 'pharmaceutical and bad' when it's in a chemist is frankly silly. The response of the 'alternative therapy' community on this thread has been to lash out like a cornered cat. "A fat bloke in Hawaii said so" is a playground-quality argument for supporting the cause. I like herbal treatments and I visit alternative practitioners, but I shall discontinue this if I feel that all I'm doing is feeding the maw of a screechy self-righteous community of smug bullsh*tters. There is no moral high ground in nettle magic. Now I shall retreat to my misty mountain ashram, because all that hugging makes me happy ;-)

Solid observations BB. Tax should be associated with tasks that draw down on hidden costs involved in sustaining social structure - hence I have no problem with income tax, VAT, road tax etc. etc. Inheritance tax has no place in a modern society, it is a penalty imposed on a successful life and is a poor motivator for investment in our own futures. However,one can stick one's John Redwood right up one's harris.

Ah dear - where are we getting this peculiar differentiation between 'herbal' and 'pharmaceutical' products? They're all external preparations that are either ingested or applied topically to alter the body's performance. There's some awful guff about natural and non-natural that simply doesn't hold water. Is this just some misinformed scary cr@p about 'big faceless companies'? It reminds me of the whole e-number thing.... "it's not natural!!!". Pathetic, E290 is carbon dioxide and E948 is oxygen, as natural as breathing, vinegar is an e-number. For the bloody herbalists, Beeswax is an e-number (E901). Just because we don't recognise the name doesn't mean it's evil. Everything natural (and that herbalists prepare) is made of e numbers, it's just how we describe the chemicals. I often wonder how new-agers feel about television remote controls: because they can't see how it works do they assume that this is 'raw energy channelling' or magic? Do mirrors steal their soul? I rather assume not, but I'm surprised that they can't see how ridiculous it is that they live 99% of their lives perfectly normally, and then leap in to finger-zappy medievalism when they see something that they can't explain. Loopy. What's epilepsy, the hand of God? If you want to experience a physically incapacitating 'spiritualist' moment, get in a room with heavy rhythmic music and flashing lights at the right frequency. Your brain will short curcuit and 'bong' you're gone. Not magic, not God, not zappy fingers, just sensory overload and a brain reboot. I'm afraid that herbalists are merely victims of a consumer craze supported by clever marketeers in herbal companies. Nothing more worthy than that.

Lol! erm.. you're going to tell people to 'be more interesting' and tell them to 'start talking more formally' Is this because we're intending to close the forum down? If people aren't having fun here they'll do it somewhere else ;-) Tom if you want to talk about something interesting, say something interesting. Going up to people and telling them they're boring is only going to lose you friends, not make them want to work harder to satisfy you.