Penguin68

Do not attempt to capture injured foxes, even cubs, if you don't have the right equipment and training - which includes very stout gloves and arm protection, a proper carrier to house the fox safely once captured, and probably nets and sacking etc. Handling wild animals (or domestic animals which have been injured and frightened) is a dangerous job. Foxes in particular, if they bite you, can carry dangerous toxins in their mouths which will require immediate (and not very pleasant) medical treatment.

To be fair, it is quite normal to employ a tree-surgeon both to advise on your trees and to undertake any necessary remedial work - as a private individual I do so, but clearly I do discuss things with the tree surgeon, and as I am paying for work out of my own pocket (and the trees concerned are directly my own amenity) my own 'interests' will counter those of my advisor and contractor. The liability insurance I carry for any damage caused by falling trees (which are not in a public place anyway) is sufficient but not costly. Councils and council officials are in a very different place from me.

It is simple really - contractors (who are doing the job of tree-felling) tell the council that the trees, or limbs thereof are dangerous - council cannot afford to ignore their advice - as the law-suit costs were there to be an accident are far greater than the charges the contractors make for destroying the trees - so contractors get lots of work (double bubble, one fee for advice, one fee for felling) and the council can show that they are operating for public safety. [indeed, once the advice is given - the council must take it - imagine the damages if they were 'advised' a tree was dngerous and didn't then act and it fell and hurt someone.] The only way of doing this is to separate out the advice giving from the tree felling - so employ someone to advice them who has no interest (pecuniary) in the outcome of the advice. But that would demand thought. Better just to kill of trees, who needs them anyway? - they just cause litter and encourage nasty wild-life to mess things up. What we need is wind-farms to replace the trees, long lasting astro-turf to avoid mowing and maintenance, fill-in the ponds (what's the point of them?). Nature, amenity? - bah humbug.

There seems to be a confusion here between work carried out on the Underhill Road side of Camberwell Old Cemetery - the initial post from Flower (removing boughs from horse chestnuts) and work in the New Cemetery - an avenue of poplars being removed. These are neither the same trees, nor the same cemetery.

Under the Road Traffic Act 1988, section 170, it is a legal requirement to report any road accident which causes damage to any animal which is not on or in the vehicle involved. The definition of 'animal' however does not include cats. This means that it is not a legal offence to fail to stop, or to fail to report an accident with a cat. Equally, owners of cats cannot be held reponsible where the cat causes an accident (i.e. where a driver swerves to avoid a cat and subsequently hits another car or a pedestrian). This recognises that cats, whilst 'domestic' are very frequently not in the control of their putative owners. This means that it would not be possible to prosecute any driver who struck a cat, unless it could be demonstrated that this was a direct and intentional action with the sole intent of causing the cat harm or pain - that is, a direct form of animal cruelty (striking a cat as an intentional alternative to hitting a pedestrian or other vehicle would be entirely OK). It is always very sad when a loved pet is in an accident, of course, but to pillory the driver as being reckless jumps to a conclusion too far, and there is no legal requirement, as I have said, to stop at, or report an accident with a cat.

'One ale. Nothing else on draft'. 'that they only sell proper English beer' Interestingly beer (brewed with hops as a preservative) only started replacing ales (which didn't keep) in about the 1520s in England, using imported hops. Beer, as a drink, is thus not 'proper English' - only a (relatively) recently imported concept (and was treated by some of the public at the time much as lagered beer was much later). Beer was of benefit to commercial brewers because of its keeping capabilities - ales were traditionally home brewed. Very few real (non-hop) ales are now brewed (although beers are very often called 'ale' for marketing purposes). We have grown, inter alia to like the bitter taste that hops bring - and of course now hops are grown in the UK. In the past ales were flavoured with honey, rosemary and other herbs.

and our deeds to forbid building That is a useful thing to remember, you can sell land with restrictive covenants on it, which would preclude a purchaser (or his/ her purchaser downstream) doing things which you don't want - i.e. building on the land, using it for commercial purposes and so on. Some covenants can be challenged (I have a property (not in ED) formerly bounded by agricultural land where I am obliged to provide cattle-proof fencing - however the land is now entirely surrounded by other domestic properties and I could probably get the covenant altered on that basis). In general, the more restrictive covenants, the less you may be able to ask for the land (as you are reducing its potential value) just as getting e.g. planning permission for an extension or second building, even where you don't plan to build yourself, can increase the land value.

This is an old one, of course, but in e.g. Italy and France children are warmly welcomed into many cafes and restaurants, and tend to behave in them impecably - no running around, screaming etc. etc. They are treated as adult spaces where people are expected to behave in an adult manner - whatever their calendar age. There are dedicated (and often well run) play areas in municipalities, often in small parks, where children are encouraged to act as children. They may have ice-cream or other vendors (in bigger one) there, but I have never, as I have in England, come across a pub equivalent with a playground attached (see discussions passim about the Herne and what they were doing with their play area). In England we indulge children and are happy, as parents, that they should act childishly wherever they are. And many establishments which wish to cater to an adult trade (where they make their money) choose not to 'child-friendly-up' their offer. I am more than happy (my children are long grown up) to avoid British eateries that 'welcome' children - but have no qualms if I see children in Fance or Italy at table.

The old Civil Service Rules were that women had to resign on marriage - but could later re-join as a married woman. However if they did that they had a break in service and (effectively) started off again as new - so the additional service as a married person didn't add to the initial unmarried service. This had an impact on things like pensions and incremental awards. I suspect the same would be true of teachers - local government tended to mirror Civil Service rules. In many cases women did start to have children as soon as they were married (the options for not doing so were then limited) - so many women did marry, resign, bring up a family and then maybe re-join once the family had grown up. The concept of married 'career women' was only very slowly beginning to develop (this rules continued after the second world war) - women who stayed in a career tended to be ones who did not marry (and it must be remembered that post the first war the losses in the trenches and the following flu epidemic meant that there were too few men of marriageable age to go around). Hence there were numbers of spinsters who worked as career women, but not perhaps as their first choice.

Eggs (and cheese) can be unacceptable for some types of vegetarian - either because it is against their principles, or because they don't like them, it, they don't/ it doesn't agree with them. If you want to offer a veggie option - you have to consider whether that option, in itself, won't be acceptable. I know a number of vegetarians who not only won't eat meat or fish, but also won't (matter of taste) eat, say, pasta, or rice, or have anything with capiscums or chile or, say, green beans or tomatoes or tofu. Eating out, (or indeed in) with them can be a nightmare. Far from being omnivores (which is what, as apes, we are) they appear to be 'virtuallynothingvores'. Although other veggie friends can be less demanding, more amenable (actually eat most things that aren't meat or fish).

Perhaps because when they parked them it wasn't a no parking zone - the parking restrictions were only announced on the road in the last 24 hours or so, prior to the tree work taking place.

There are 'substantial tree works' (i.e. Southwark once again trying to eradicate nature and the signs of nature - best to cut down horse chestnuts once they have flowered so the nasty conkers can't develop and plague our children in autumn) - if you haven't moved your car then expect it to be damaged or towed. Of course, the notices only went up very recently, so anyone legally parked (initially) and away, e.g. on holiday, is stuffed.

It may be worthwhile looking at death registers for then as well - 1918-19 was a peak time for Spanish flu - which took-out a large number of young adults - my then 21 year old aunt amongst them - curiously more vulnerable than either infants or elderly people to this flu variant. Someone who dies could explain an abandoned letter (so could lots of other reasons as well, of course)

Reality and what insurance companies think is rarely aligned - insurance companies think that if you have repaired damage caused by subsidence and underpinned your building it is at greater risk, so charge higher premiums - insurance companies think that if you are near a river even when you are on a bluff more than 20 ft above the highest point of the bank - then you are a flooding risk (yes, really) - and won't insure or charge higher premiums - indeed insurance companies in general look either to avoid liability or to - you've got it, charge higher premiums. Any fast growing plant with slightly woody stems can cause superficial damage - knot-weed is not going to bring your house down. It will come up through paving (so will grass). It does take time to kill-off - most sources suggest you need 3 growing seasons of poisoning to do it. Choosing a herbicide which stays active in the soil is fine if you are to build over the site of infestation - but not if it's part of a garden in which you want to grow things.

It's not reasonable to compare to India as having it 'sorted' though I have not been assuming the sort of vegetarianism that equates to running a kosher kitchen - just that S.Asian and Asian food combinations and cooking methods offer a far wider range of (different) vegetarian dishes - which would support greater choice for vegetarians. Offering a single 'vegetarian option' which used eggs or cheese (or butter) in the cooking - for many French restauranters the veggie option is a cheese omlette (!) - would not meet all vegetarian needs - so you would have to go hard-core to be offering a genuinely vegetarian option to meet most needs. I am assuming strict Budhists or Jains would not be eating in a meat restaurant at all - as strict and orthodox Jews would not eat from a non-kosher kitchen.

Much of European cuisine is based around animal (including fish, shellfish etc.) protein - even where dishes are virtually 'meat' free they are often traditionally flavoured with meat stock - particularly pig. The peasant 'mess of potage' though primarily grain and vegetable based would have had pig bones etc. to add flavour. For many vegetarians even stock would not be acceptable. You have to look to Asian and South Asian dishes to find true vegetarian meals (sourced from vegetables and fungi) embedded in the eating culture. [The widest European tradition availability is around pasta/ sauce dishes - these can be flavoursome but samey - and for a place which is not specialising in Italian dishes may not fit into the offering.] This means that restaurants which do not go the Asian and S. Asian route are hard-pressed to come up with a large variety of vegetarian food in their cuisine vernacular, and even more constrained where eggs, cheese and butter are additionally excluded. For a European-tradition cook to manage a genuinely interesting and varied set of vegatarian options is a significant ask. Of course for non-vegans there are multiple stages of vegetarianism - some will take fish or shellfish, some even (why?) chicken - but if you are offering a veggie option it does need to be quite hard-core to meet a wide range of customer needs.

A close-up of the leaves would be more helpful.

There are a couple of links there, actually - I wonder whether we are seeing a message from a computer which has itself been hacked - the 'message' is rubbish - I suppose the con is to get someone to click on the link to see what its about. Obviously avoid clicking - and can Admin block the computer ID that is posting the messages - only registered today anyway?

If the Voda Forest Hill Road microwave tower saga (see threads passim) is anything to go by, it will take an age for the carrier to admit to a problem, let alone fix it. It may help to pray-in-aid this thread to show that the problem is real and general.

New Age Travellers then

Sydenham/Nunhead Forumites in EDF racial discrimination claim scandal Discrimination is discrimination - whether it is legislated against or not. If you chose not to employ, or serve, or rent a house to someone who originated from Nunhead (and for no other reason), you would be being discriminatory. In practice, at the genetic level, 'race' as a term is almost meaningless. If you, like me, are a white European, then you are genetically more close to someone from India or China than would be (some) indigeonous Africans living now in villages only 20 miles apart. That's a function of the comparatively small numbers of modern men who crossed over from Africa 100,000 years or so ago, compared to the numbers who stayed behind. A small genetic pool left, a large one remained. People classed as 'black' - nice big catch-all there - are less likely to be closely related to each other than you (if you are a white European) are to someone whose ancesters have been in Hanoi for 5,000 years. In the end we chose what we mean by being racist, we choose who we class as 'not being like us'. It's a social/ linguistic/ cultural thing, not anything to do with what we think 'race' means - i.e. something to do with inheritance and genetics.

Traveller - 'irish' or otherwise is not a race Louisa Actually, 'black' isn't really a 'race' either (nor, actually, is 'Jew'; Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews are relatively diverse genetic groups) - but if we had a thread with 'Possible Blacks (or Jews) on Melford Road' we'd all be slightly worried (by the post, not the fact). 'Traveller' isn't just a simple descriptive noun, but carries with it a lot of baggage. A 'possible' Traveller is clearly seen as a threat to be faced up to, or faced down. We might see any of these posts as being, in very broad terms 'racial' - in that we are identifying a group - which is outside our own. [As anti-semitism does not seem confined to addressing those who practice the Jewish religion - I am happy to see that grouped here].

As has already been noted, ?travellers? tend to come in three flavours, of which the Roma (Romanies, Gypsies) are the oldest group, probably originating from north-western India, and mistaken for Egyptians (Gypsies) in England when they arrived, partly at least because some entered Europe via Spain from North Africa. The second group were itinerant Irish metal workers (mainly tin smithing) hence their descriptive (and later pejorative) name of tinkers. (There is also a similar tradition for travelling smiths of Scottish origins). The final group emerged in the 1960s and 70s as New Age travellers, adopting a hippy and anarchist life-style, often associated with summer festivals. (The term didicoy, by the way, is used by Roma to describe people who have adopted a similar life-style but are not of full-blood Roma origin. It is considered offensive when not used by Roma, and is probably often intended offensively when used by them). It seems most unlikely that there is any attempt here to 'hi-jack' land for traveller use - it is more likely that the men, of whatever origin, were being paid to clear land for the reason they described, but may (by setting fires) have been trying to short-cut the work and ran-off, if they did, because they were going beyond their brief. It is possible, if the land was not clearly owned, that someone hoped to exploit that by making use of it, but that this person was, or was linked to, any of the travelling communities seems pure conjecture without proof. 'miranda' - who was the one who said that she knew one of the men, and as Irish, was not unreasonable in suggesting that the OP, who must also have heard the accents, had drawn an erronous conclusion from this - the OP didn't have to have mentioned the accent specifically in their post for this assumption to be made by miranda, who knew the man did have an Irish accent.

You wouldn't expect the same amount of Police resource to go on bringing teenage shoplifters to justice as it does on serial killers. As a lot of police metrics is on clear-up rates - getting one teenager to 'cough' to loads of shoplifting offences can count a lot more than just lifting a serial killer who's probably only committed 5-10 offences. Additionally most of the hard work in terms of observation, initial 'arrest' and evidence handling is done by store detectives - so I would quite expect the modern day police force to be very happy to put resource into charging teenage shoplifters, particularly where they can hope for a wedge of TICs to go with that. Equally road-traffic offences are a nice little 'metric' earner when it comes down to it.

Not only is this thread currently a libel, but its continuance 'on-line' - should there be a subsequent arrest and prosecution for any theft would be considered to breach sub judice rules. I have reported this thread for those reasons.