david_carnell

@DulwichMum - bringing Madeleine McCann into this debate is a new low. Congratulations. You have managed to invoke some sort of child abuse version of Godwin's Law where every aspect of encouraging freedom and independence amongst children is met with the crass, ignorant and illogical response of, "well, I bet the McCann's thought they were doing the right thing too". Quite frankly you should be ashamed to use the grief of that family to back up your spurious point-of-view. I've been reluctant to even comment on this thread until now simply because I feel it has almost nothing to do with me, or anyone else for that matter. It is a matter for the family involved and no one else. As Cllr Barber insightfully informs us this set-up has been in existence since at least Christmas with little or no controversy. As long as these children have been arriving at school on time and in a fit condition it is nothing to do with the school either. I don't know what agenda is at play here to suddenly bring this issue to the fore but I'm in no doubt there is one. If, and it is quite frankly a massive if, anything ever happened to these children do you really think the parents then require the denizens of East Dulwich to sit sneering "I told you so"? Their anguish will be sufficient. But as BB100 has shown, road accidents and child abductions are at all time lows. But then anecdotes always cloud the truth. If you feel it is inappropriate, fine. Do not do the same with your children. Wrap them in cotton wool until you decide they are scared enough of the world to continue the cycle. But to wag a finger of disapproval at this family behind the anonymity of a local forum smacks of cowardice and paranoia. Leave them be. And their children.

Rosie, please, no. Don't focus group anything. It's surveys like this that lead to ready-mashed potato or top-and-tailed string beans. It would appear the chronically lazy are good at filling in surveys. Abandon hope all ye who shop here. But...er...yeah....mangos....pain in the proverbial....buy a peach instead. Mmmm

Southwark council will pick up some items - check the website. Otherwise the "tip" is just off the Walworth Rd before you get to Elephant & Castle - address is on Southwark website too.

frierntastic Wrote: > You know who else wen to Public school and/or Oxford? > Harman, Miliband, Balls...all of them. Both Miliband brothers attended state comprehensives and gained access to Oxford Uni on their own aptitude. I can't imagine their father paying for their education!

I would imagine you dark, swarthy sorts would be familiar with the Greek Aetolian League and their capital city. Is the family from there Michael? Or is it ??????? Hmmm? Sounds foreign to me! Now, where is Cribbens and that G&T I ordered?

I have found myself drawing parallels with dogs and guns. The gun-lobby will make the argument that guns don't kill people, "people kill people" and therefore responsible owners should be allowed weaponary such as AK47s or M16s. Utter piffle. Owners of "dangerous dogs" such as those listed on the website above claim that the dogs are not the problem, only irresponsible owners. Exactly the same argument. Exactly the same piffle. But guns aren't cuddly and cute so we ban them except the ones we need for work (like shotguns) or used by the police. Perhaps dangerous dogs should be limited in use in the same way? Ergo, the only dogs people are allowed are ones that cannot cause any harm due to their passive nature or small size. All large, dangerous breeds should be licensed and neutered and prevented from breeding until they die out. There is no need to have one, they can cause untold harm and we should make their ownership a criminal offence.

Did you know that 3.14% of all sailors are Pi-rates?

If only they could extend it so I didn't have to sit next to anyone when I fly.

When did we become Readers' Digest? Or Take a Break?

It's not just me and my (stolen) grpah that think this budget hits the poorest hardest. The IFS, an independent financial think-tank thinks so too.

In the words of one BBC commentator: "humans were not meant for this"

28 all. 30 all. Getting silly now. 32 all. This is now the longest match in history both in terms of games and time. Crazy stuff.

Absolute epic on at the moment. Isner vs Mahut 2 sets all 26 games all in the 5th!!!

Jaysus - heaven forbid the poor should be allowed anything to make their lives a little less dreary. Booze - your poor, you're not allowed it. Cigs - ditto TV - likewise New clothes - go the charity shop! Heck, why don't we put them all to work on farms in the open air and then they'll be too tired to be feckless drunks watching Jeremy Kyle. But it's not just the very poorest either Jeremy. Tbh, it's me I'm thinking about too. I earn a decent salary (around the national average) but VAT will hit me a sight load more than a lot of people around here who earn closer to six figures. And that's regressive. If you're ok with that, just say so. Admit you don't care that the poorer you are the more you proportionatly pay in tax of your income and we'll move on. But don't try and rally around the idea that if only poor people didn't buy "luxury items they'd have more money and could stop moaning. It's offensive and wrong.

Jeremy - a rise in VAT is not fair. It is not discriminatory against those who have the ability to pay. It is regressive. It hits everyone equally regardless of income. Some necessities or essentials are exempt (food) but some are not (adults clothes for eg.). Consumer electronics (tv, radio etc) are not exempt either and these are now far from luxuries. They are included in the RPI so therefore are seen as everyday goods. ?50 on a new tv might be peanuts for the rich but that could be a huge amount to someone on a low income. Skidmarks - is there a threshold of income at which people are free to watch Sky without fear of your disparaging remarks? It also hurts small businesses as people tend to spend less due to the higher cost of goods. It is likely to cost them more than the reduction in corporation tax or the NI reduction for those employing 10 or fewer employees.

The Plough?

Sean, you work with Excel - is this your fault? "It's not as bad as it could have been" is about my best assessment so far. As a public sector worker I'm unhappy my pay is frozen, but at the moment anything other than cuts or job losses is a bonus with this govt. I'm not frontline anymore either and therefore have a worthless job that can be cut with no discernable impact on the country. Just like all the other non frontline personnel. Oh, how we wish we did something useful! VAT will hit the poorest hardest with their little disposable income bringing in less. It is regressive. The government is lowering the point at which people start to pay higher rate income tax so that taxpayers currently on the higher rate will not benefit from the policy. But, even so, as green line in the graph below shows, the distributional impact favours middle-income households rather than poorer ones (that is, middle-income households gain a lot more as a proportion of their overall income than poorer ones). http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2010/06/Budget-distributional-impact.jpg The blue line shows the combined impact of the income tax cut and the VAT rise using one standard method of calculating the distributional impact of VAT. (Basically, the distributional impacts of VAT are harder to estimate because this depends on the relationship between income and expenditure for each household. This technique uses spending figures and income figures from the UK Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS) and work out the distributional effects of the VAT increase as if it were a reduction in disposable income using EFS income deciles.) The graph shows that the poorest deciles lose far more from the VAT rise than they will gain from the income tax cut. The graph also shows the impact is extremely regressive across the income distribution, with low-income groups losing out far more proportionately than middle- and higher-income groups. And some groups will be especially badly hit by the VAT increase ? especially those that don?t earn enough to pay income tax: pensioners, the unemployed and parents in low-paid part-time work.

Hi Barry On Monday, I got to Peckham Rye station in the evening (about 6:30pm I should think) along with a large rush-hour crowd. The barriers, of which there are four inc the gate, were 3-1 against the flow of traffic. So there was only the gate allowing people to exit the station. This caused a large back-log of people up the stairs. Aside from the inconvenience I would imagine there are some serious safety implications too. I questioned a member of staff in the ticket office (since there was no one manning the gates) and was told they did not control which gates were operating in which direction. Is this true? If so I find it unbelievable that staff at a station have no control over their own station facilities. I was also told that there was no-one in the "control room" (presumably where the gates are controlled from?) to alter the flow. Again I find this unbelievable. It would be a good idea in the mornings to have 3 of the 4 gates allowing in-bound access to the station and the ratio reversed in the afternoons for rush-hour traffic. Is this possible? Thanks David.

Dolcetto Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm about to move to East Dulwich from Shepherd's > Bush - and the only place I've tried in ED so far > is Green & Blue, for a quick lunch. I'm looking > forward to trying the Sea Cow's fish & chips, and > Le Chardon. But in an ideal world it would lovely > to be able to get any of the following more > locally . . . > > Lebanese - south of the river? You're having a bubble. You'll need to go back to SheBu or Edgware Rd for that > Iranian - ditto > Szechuan (an outpost of Soho's Baozi Inn would be > wonderful.) - can't offer Szechuan but Silk Road in Camberwell is an amazing Xinjiang restaurant > Moroccan / other N. African - pass > Japanese - and I agree, not just sushi. And please > not Wagamama! - pass > Ethiopian / Eritrean - I'm going to miss my injera > fix! - Asmara in Brixton is the place to go - have the feast menu complete with coffee ceremony

Ed Miliband is probably Steve Bell's most favoured candidate.... http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2010/6/10/1276125851907/Steve-Bell-10.06.10-001.jpg Second from the right btw folks....

LadyM ? you may be interested in some of the arguments and commitments put forward by the different Labour Party leadership candidates on Monday night regarding reducing inequality.

True indeed Citizen. And I suppose with the use of intonation we have the great British sense of irony too. See?

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > HAL9000 Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > English is a lot more fault tolerant than, say, > > Arabic where the slightest mispronunciation can > > change the meaning beyond recognition, I find. > > Same with Chinese, I reckon. Indeed. The Chinese word for mother also means horse with different intonation. Moos - you might find that a useful reference point when dealing with the in-laws!

Thank you Quids. I've been laid low by a bout of Ebola so haven't been able to update till now, but that's essentially correct. Cruddas wasn't drafting the manifesto for 2015 or whenever it will be - he was merely calling for renewal and discussion. And credit to him for doing so in a passionate and elegant manner. So, the hustings (Fabian Soc not Newsnight)?.I can report the following: For my money, Ed Miliband won the debate. His opening speech was comfortably the best, he spoke with passion, anger and humility. He seems to have a clear vision of where he wants the Labour Party to go, coupled with a desire to democratise the party and allowing members to have more of an input. His beliefs seem to come from true values rather than a mere desire to regain power. The other front-runner, his brother David, was impressive and statesmanlike. A few years as Foreign Secretary have imparted gravitas. Alas he also is slightly cold and has a tendency to come across as an automaton or technocrat. His idea of funding local Labour ?organisers? much like the TUC did to some success is excellent. Dianne Abbott came across as more confident than I had seen her previously without the faltering speech. She was warm and sincere and the audience, for the most part, loved her. She still won?t win though. She spoke with passion and her best line was when attacking Tory cuts, ?when David Cameron says these cuts will change our way of life, he doesn?t mean his life, he means your life?. She also has a nice repartee with the other contenders and a nice line in self-deprecation. Not as much as Ed Balls though. Personally, I?ve never liked him, and I still don?t especially, but he did well. He?s a big guy and is imposing in the flesh. This would certainly play well across the dispatch box. He?s lightening-quick with the joke too. I don?t want him as leader but in the right role he could be devastating ? perhaps up against Osborne as Shadow Chancellor. Andy Burnham is the outsider. Little known by the public or many within the party I thought he might have a decent shot. The ?Cameron candidate? if you like. Alas, whilst he was likeable with his ?I?m a working class scouser? shtick his reaffirmation of the righteousness of the Iraq war lost him a lot of sympathy in the hall and he just doesn?t seem to possess the stature to lead the party. Beyond care for the elderly he also seems to lack clear drive and vision of what he wants the party to be for. The debate itself was notable for two moments. The first, when candidates were asked to name three issues they had disagreed with the government over, initially stumped them but rapidly became slightly absurd with almost all removing themselves from the 10p tax debacle to the extent you wondered how it got approved in the first place. The second was the final question of the night, which asked if the candidates thought of themselves as socialists and what that meant to them. All replied in the positive except D Miliband who fudged a little about what it said on the membership card and that he would agree with that. Ed Miliband said he was a socialist but that it meant something different in the 21st century to the ?control of the commanding heights of the economy? that his father (the noted Marxist scholar, Ralph Miliband) would have recognised and subscribed to. A good evening.

Don't forget the back-ups to Howler in goal - Droppit and Flapper.