rendelharris

Angelina Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Foxes very rarely attack cats - they don't see > them as something to eat or a threat. Foxes and > cats keep to themselves. > > So, as long as it's rubber stamped it's gospel? I > am surprised how gullible people are. Foxes virtually never attack cats - I've seen my cats in the past facing them up and owning them. What foxes do is scavenge on cats that have sadly been hit by cars - and they tend to go for heads and tails, these being the easiest parts to eat.

alex_b Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Surely being in a list of "cool" places in a Daily > Mail article is the definition of uncool? Yeah but it's Time Out's list...absolute nonsense of course, but I have forwarded it to friends in Berlin, Milan, Barcelona, Paris and New York!

lilolil Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Don't you DARE tell me to zip it! > Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. > Comments like yours are unhelpful and have been > reported. Whereas making unsubstantiated allegations and then refusing to provide evidence for them really helps the debate along, doesn't it?

So no evidence then.

lilolil Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So,these clever foxes can unlock a rabbit hutch, > decapitate and disembowel a rabbit, reassemble it > so it looks entire, then lock the hutch back up? > Are they also able to do this to cats and leave > their bodies on the doorsteps of where they live? > Just asking. Can you give a link with evidence of this (about the rabbit) please, as I can't find it mentioned anywhere, not even by SNARL. In any case, individual cases prove nothing; as previously noted, there are undoubtedly instances of people doing horrible things to animals, usually ex-partners, disgruntled neighbours etc. This does not mean there is a maniac going round who's killed 500 animals, all in urban residential areas, waited half an hour in each case for their blood to coagulate, then mutilated them, carefully revisited the owner's property to lay them out ritually and never been seen or caught on CCTV (apart from one instance where someone was seen "near" an alleged incident). Incidentally, lilolli, you castigated me some time back, saying: "So, you are saying that experts in their fields, forensic scientists,vets,a police team and SNARL are mistaken?" I presume you are now saying that the "experts in their fields" police team and their forensic scientists are mistaken, yes?

Never realised until this current brouhaha one of the weirdest parts of SNARL's theory, which is that the killer is killing the animals with blunt force trauma, then only mutilating them after their blood has coagulated (which takes a minimum of half an hour), hence leaving no bloodstains. So this guy's killed over 500 animals, always in domestic urban situations, and hung around for a minimum of half an hour before mutilating them? And never been caught or seen on CCTV? Or are foxes are coming across cats that have been killed by vehicles once their blood has coagulated? As for why heads and tails go missing (sorry this is a bit distasteful), foxes tend to go, when scavenging, for the easiest bits to get off, which are heads, tails and limbs. I mentioned this story a couple of pages back, but I think it bears repeating: in our last flat we had an empty rabbit hutch at the end of the garden (the rabbit was supposed to live in it but within a day of arrival he was living indoors and ruling the roost!). One day I found a largish and very neatly decapitated rabbit on top of it, clearly had been someone's pet. Extremely upsetting; the same day a neighbour came round and said she'd seen a fox come through several gardens carrying this body, and it had been spooked as it went over our fence and dropped it, coincidentally on top of the hutch. Now if she hadn't seen it, I might well have thought someone was doing something foul, and had it been this day and age I might well have attributed it to the cat killer. It's easy to construct a narrative, it's not so easy to deconstruct one once it's in the public imagination. Incidentally, the bloke we got to come and remove the remains said he'd seen several pet rabbits decapitated in this way, "amazing how clean it is, you'd think the buggers had carving knives." There's an awful lot of confirmation bias involved in these stories, I believe.

Angelina Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think it's more likely the foxes got hold of the > cats after they had been mutilated by a person. > > There are too many similarities to the killings - > none of which are in a natural predator style of > killing. > > Total BS. Do you have evidence for this other than what SNARL have said they know but won't say? And do you have any suggestions why police officers and trained forensics officers and veterinary pathologists don't agree?

intexasatthe moment Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > RH I was thinking that it would just be a way of > excusing their lack of progress and interest . Yes, it could be - but given the evidence (the actual evidence, not SNARL's "we know other things but we're not telling") and the consensus of expert opinion their conclusions seem eminently reasonable to me. I'm not sure why some people (not you) are so invested in the idea that there is a "cat killer" that they insist, in the face of the evidence, that s/he's out there. One would have thought an announcement by the police that the evidence shows there isn't someone out there mutilating cats would be met with relief, rather than outrage.

intexasatthe moment Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ime reports from the Met aren't always reliable > ,I've not forgotten the Ian Tomlinson case. That was indeed disgusting - but that was them trying to cover up for one of their own, unless the mythical cat killer is a Chief Super as well what would be their motivation for denying their existence?

Mscrawthew Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think any one of the many owners that have come > to discover the remains of their family pets not > only with missing body parts but some returned to > their locality with said body parts neatly placed > either on the body or blatantly in the view of the > owners and proven to be detached from the body > with a sharp instruments may disagree with the > underfunded police forces in the U.K. "In three instances where CCTV was obtained, footage showed foxes carrying bodies or body-parts of cats. A woman in north London described how in April 2017, after finding the mutilated body of a cat in her garden, she checked CCTV and saw a fox carrying the cat?s head into her garden. In June 2017, a cat?s head was found in a school playground in Catford. CCTV showed a fox carrying the head into the playground. In July 2017, a witness found the body of a cat with no head or tail next to her property. Suspecting that the cat had been placed there, she checked CCTV and saw a fox drop the cat in the position in which it was found." I'm sure this is going to run and run - SNARL and their supporters made great play of the fact that the police backed them, that there were secret details about modus operandi only they and the police knew, etc etc - now they're going to turn round and say the police are rubbish and don't know what they're talking about? Less so, clearly, than a pair of amateurs who hold absolutely no qualifications for their self-appointed and self-publicised role as quasi-vigilantes.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/croydon-cat-killer-unmasked-police-reveal-culprits-after-three-year-investigation-and-500-deaths-a3940956.html

As many have suspected and said on here recently. Cue response from SNARL saying they are the experts and the police know nothing, I don't doubt.

That sounds a lot more workable. Hopefully they'll have proper tracking too; I found out recently that, certainly for the Mobikes (the silver and orange ones), once the lock's smashed and they're ridden away without being opened with the app, they become "frozen" or "ghost bikes" - their location shows on the app as being the place they were last legitimately locked! What genius dreamed that up? If the police had access to real-time tracking of the stolen ones, what criminal would think of using them in their activities?

uncleglen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ' Brexit means big decisions that will impact on > our wildlife for generations to come. New laws > will be passed. It could be make or break for our > bees, birds, and badgers. ' > I was interested in this until I read this > scaremongering bit from the Remoaners camp....you > have NO IDEA about what the impact of Brexit will > be on our wildlife- the biggest threat is > overpopulation and the inevitable demand for > housing- we are the most densely populated country > in the EU...I wonder why? F56k's sake, is there nothing you can't make about immigration? Such an utter monomaniacal bore. On the actual topic, the Government has had to pass protection for wildlife in order to conform with EU directives - occasionally even having to be taken to court to make it fulfil its obligations, for example in the case of the harbour porpoise. We have a government that refuses to raise taxes in order to put adequate police on the streets to protect the human population, and you believe that without regulatory oversight it's going to do anything to protect hen harriers or stag beetles? Good luck with that. ETA The UK isn't the most densely populated country in the EU. If you want to use the weasel methodology of the ignorant far right (and I'm sure you do) and say you're just referring to England, we're still second to the Netherlands. In any case, population densities are extremely relative: Spain, for example, has an extremely low population density, but that's because large areas of it are desert or sub-desert and to all intents and purposes uninhabitable. China is only 80th in the world. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good old "it's all dem immigants' fault" whine - you never do.

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > dickens Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Yes, you're right we need to find the cause as > > well. Godden came this morning and it's not > > subsidence thank god. We are going to go ahead > and > > get them to fix it. I'll let you know how it > goes. > > > What else could cause a building to move? Weathering, chemical reactions, moisture changes, "creep" (slight imbalances in original construction get worse over many years), plant roots - they can all cause cracks without subsidence!

robbin Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Out of interest, where did you get that stop and > search quote from? If you are referring to his > interview in The Evening Standard in 2015 (which I > accept you might not be), you appear to have > misquoted what appears there (the words you put in > bold type don't appear in that sentence). I was quoting, slightly inaccurately, from memory. The full passage reads: ?The last few years have shown what can be achieved when there?s a concerted effort to reduce the overuse of stop and search. ?But there?s still much more to be done, and if I?m Mayor I?ll do all in my power to further cut its use. Overuse of stop and search can have a dramatic effect on communities. It undermines public confidence in our police if Londoners are being stopped and searched for no good reason.? I think that makes it quite clear that he is/was not against stop and search per se, but against its overuse.

robbin Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I imagine Mr Khan probably takes the view that > it's just part and parcel of living in a big city. A) Can we stop using that quote as a stick to beat him with, what he actually said was "being prepared for terrorist attacks is part and parcel of living in a big city" - what do you want him to do, not prepare for the worst? B) Khan has introduced many initiatives and campaigns to reduce crime, but any action he can initiate will most likely have minimal effect as long as the government continues to slash police budgets. The Met budget has been cut by ?700M since 2010 and they have been told to find another ?400M in cuts by 2020. If anyone has any substantive proof that Mr.Khan has taken any actions that have increased crime, let's see it, please. (Before anyone quotes "I would do anything in my power to cut stop and search" that's another mangled quote, what he actually said was "I would do anything in my power to cut the overuse of stop and search.")

Although much of Twitter's pretty vacuous, more thoughtful users do employ it for the propagation of interesting and informative texts, either by linking elsewhere or providing text in the form of an accompanying picture, for example a screenshot of a Word document.

I remember seeing a documentary about Concorde where a test pilot said he and his French counterpart had barrelrolled it both ways, so it can be done - but not a hundred feet off the ground!

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > but Denzel Washington did it ! > > Aerobatic planes have special designs I think :0 Yes, I believe they frequently have asymmetrical aerofoils (get me!) so they fly the same level or inverted. Invert an airliner and once it's upside down, all the aerodynamics that were forcing it upwards start forcing it downwards instead.

And a complete spoof - I'm no expert but pretty sure that the first thing you would get on turning a jet airliner upside down is an instant rapid plunge downward of several thousand feet, or in this case about a hundred feet before the ground intervened!

Lowlander Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Agree about private couriers, but a Royal Mail > parcel to a work place address will be as part of > the regular delivery. i.e. no impact. Yes very fair point - I was thinking of the many people I know who have their Amazon packages sent to their work by other couriers.

mrwb Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Best bet is just not to use any company that > deliver via royal mail where you could have to > collect a package, or if you have to get it > delivered to a work address. Usually there is an > alternative. That is what I plan to do. While I thoroughly sympathise with the shoddy position the closure has left people in, please don't get parcels delivered to a work address if you work in central London! It's estimated that up to 20% of central London congestion (and therefore pollution) is caused by light vans, primarily delivering internet purchases to offices. As sensibly suggested, choose an alternative delivery company at checkout if possible, or order to an Amazon collection point etc.

njc97 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Why are these bikes "littering" when they're > parked but all cars stopped on my road are > "parked"? Maybe just because we're used to the > latter and need to get used to the former? Perhaps because people don't tend to park their cars at random across the pavement? Seriously, I'm a mad-keen cyclist, non-car owner, but I can only see these things as an ill-conceived, already failing scheme that's cluttering an already overstretched urban environment and, given the ease with which they can be pinched, aiding and abetting criminality (see the "Robbers on bikes" thread).