BrandNewGuy

Ours is still in the cellar - 17 years after we moved in...

But with allotments, you kick people off who neglect their plot. And if Southwark PCT (as is/was) want a health benefit to the land use, allotments are excellent - good exercise, fresh food, and a sense of achievement and community etc.

I'm always tickled by the euphemistic phrase "affordable housing". Do you mean "cheap housing"? Because all housing is affordable to someone. If we assume you mean cheap housing, then Southwark PCT is unlilkely to see as good a return as it would get for... er... non-cheap housing. So wouldn't that be robbing health service Peter to pay social housing Paul?

That's as may be but, as I suggested, just telling someone that you're vegetarian is often enough to provoke questions about leather shoes, milk, inhaling insects etc. Bizarre and, to be old-fashioned for a moment, rude.

Why is being a vegetarian "high profile"?

I can honestly say that a vanishingly small percentage of vegetarians I know are like that. Yet in my experience most vegetarians have to tolerate the "Well why are you wearing leather shoes?" haranguings from time to time. As I said before, it's baffling.

Most people (who don't necessarily profess an '-ism') love their children and believe children should be nurtured and protected. However most people also buy products which directly or indirectly exploit child labour and misery. Many people give to Third World charities to help the poor have access to clean drinking water, however we are so profligate that we used treated and cleaned drinking water to flush our toilets. Many or most people have savings, insurance policies, shares or pensions that directly invest in activities and businesses with which they'd profoundly disagree... I could go on, but I wouldn't call any of the above people "rank hypocrites" and I see them as little different from the "ethical vegetarians" taking a pounding for not being Jains. The world is complex, values clash, black and white is always grey, information is messy and awkward, and intentions are elusive. We can only be grateful that people try to do good - or at least try to do no harm.

"Rank hypocrites"? Nice... Why do people get so het up about vegetarians? It mystifies me.

Thread of the Year - surely the (now deleted) shenanigans at The V***

That raises the depressing possibility that the purpose of many people's employment is not to be unemployed - a sure sign of a long-term economy with deeply serious problems. I remember the thread on here about Southwark street cleaners and someone suggested that we shouldn't clear up rubbish from the streets ourselves if it were bad, as that might put the street cleaners out of work.

Insisting that vegetarians must be "pure" is both weirdly aggressive and pointless. By the same token, Christians (of whom I'm not one) are against sin but don't claim to be sinless. That doesn't make them hypocrites, it makes them human.

We have enough parking in East Dulwich. There, I said it. It may be frustrating, it may be annoying, but we have enough. I don't see cars double-parked in Lordship Lane or dumped on Denmark Hill... Ergo, we have enough. And if you think people who live near The Plough, say, somehow deserve to have a car park so that they can drive to the station, I'd seriously question the public benefit.

But Canada Water's not proximate to areas with large residential commuting populations, whereas East Dulwich is.

No, it would quickly attract those from outside the area who see an opportunity to use a Zone 2 station with plenty of parking. Build it and they will come...

A car park will simply attract more people (local or otherwise) to drive to the station who currently don't. An increase in traffic and no change to local parking pressures.

Not a nightingale - they're a summer visitor and, alas, don't visit London. It'll be a robin, I suspect. Along with blackbirds, male robins begin to sing through the night now that the days are getting longer. The robin's song is higher pitched, but both are very tuneful this time of year. Here's a robin singing (hit the audio button): http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/r/robin/index.aspx And here's a blackbird: http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/b/blackbird/index.aspx

C'mon, who really imagined there'd be many tickets left after the librarians snaffled their own... ?

Soundtracks: Zabriskie Point Withnail And I Fear And Loathing... Goodfellas

alosinom67 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yes indeed Cora I totally agree. Iceland is the > only shop in East Dulwich that the middle classes > turn their noses up at but it supplies cheap > staples that you wouldn't find in supermarkets > such as Sainsburys and Co-op. These silly "Local" > stores with their 25% price increases only serve > to duplicate all other high streets in the > country. What happened to individuality? We're as middle class as they come and use Iceland more regularly than virtually any other Lordship Lane shop, so there's no need for chippiness. No-one's more or less virtuous in this argument.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse are touring the UK in June. Saw them in New York last week... phenomenal. http://www.livenation.co.uk/artist/neil-young-tickets

charles26 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > They look fab? Unlike those pointless lights in the pavement by the station. Permanently in need of repair and a waste of money. Pave them over.

The Cantillon Brewery - very near Bruxelles Midi station. Wonderful beers. http://www.cantillon.be/

"The National Coalition for Independent Action and 22 voluntary sector groups have attacked national infrastructure bodies who they say have signed up the voluntary sector to privatisation and the dismantling of the welfare state without its consent." Don't think I need to read any further, given this woeful start...

Meh - it's uninteresting and unoriginal but probably got the rabid response it wanted from a tiny sliver of opinion to reinforce, in turn, Guardianistas feeling better about their radical "stance". The rest of "the world" is, I suspect, more concerned about horrible and pointless loss of life.

The current Vodaphone ad with bloody Yoda makes me scream. The woman on the train is doing a crossword with the clue "Excuse". Yoda says, "Most cryptic". No it isn't, Yoda - it's a straightforward clue, not bloody cryptic. Then he suggests "Apologise" as the answer - which fits! That's not a synonym for "Excuse". If the agency is going to spend millions hiring out an annoying green dwarf alien from George Lucas, the least they could do would be to spend another hundred quid on a proper bloody crossword.