HeadNun

Barry's is the best.

Dear Brendan, forgive me if I say anything that hits a raw nerve. It's significant that you appeal to people to confirm to you that this is a genuine, big problem that needs to be overcome. You are looking for validation that the thing you have become fixated on is at the root of all your anxiety. It's not. The fact that you read up about it, and are tracking the flights, suggests that you are the only one giving this problem oxygen. I suspect (and I say this is as an anxious person, so please don't take offence), that if it wasn't planes being attributed to your anxiety, it might be something else. Moving house and putting every last penny you have into bricks and mortar is stressful and anxiety-inducing. Might it be that your anxiety over plane noise is somehow caught up with the fear of having made a purchase that you might be regretting? Are you looking for flaws in your purchasing decision (I know I freaked when I bought my last place and spent ages looking for holes, even though it was a sound buy. It was just the fear of having parted with so much money)? If so, let the planes go and focus on what you love about your new home. Also, I have a few, counter-intuitive suggestions. First, get yourself a nice, mulberry silk eye mask. With one of these one, I can sleep until late on a summer morning, with my windows flung open all night. It's psychological - when you're wearing the mask, your brain knows it's time to sleep, no matter what's going on outside. Finally, it sounds as if you have some outside space. Take yourself out there with a something that gives you pleasure - a nice cup of tea, a book, a G&T, some chocolate cake, whatever you love - and listen to the planes. Instead of trying to block them out, let them in, listen carefully to each one that passes and don't fight it. Ask yourself where each one is going, lean in to them. And maybe try some nice deep breathing at the same time. I think, if you try this for a while, you might find it starts to bother you less.

Is it possible that No Dishi got the G7 to agree on using 50 billion revenue from seized russian assets, to give to Ukraine, to provoke Putin's retaliation so he'll nuke Starmer, once he's in? 😁

It doesn't really matter anymore how we got here, everyone's far too fixated on blaming one thing / one party / one person. (I notice Mal you haven't mentioned Truss in there). What matters is how the next government is going to get us out. And, as Spartacus says, it's likely that no government can, not in the next term anyway. Labour will win this election and, as they won't be able to make any meaningful dent in the country's problems (which are also about poor infrastructure, outsized by population and slow growth), the Tories will be back in in five years.

Yeah you're right. I realised later that he does flap and is clearly v sensitive to criticism.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-1-disturbing-reason-you-should-befriend-a-crow_uk_66278d68e4b00ea555a4ef21

Surely you'd have to have been living under a rock for the last four years not to know that Starmer's father was a toolmaker. It's so tired and reeks of desperation. If he had any dynamism or big ideas, he wouldn't have to fall back on it time and time again. Having said that, I do completely understand that big ideas are nigh impossible when he's going to be inheriting problems that are, frankly, beyond any government's ability to fix. Or fix any time soon. Also, I don't believe for a second that, if one of Starmer's nearest and dearest was critically ill, they wouldn't go private. Anyone who has the means would, if it were a choice between life and death. The public isn't stupid, I just don't think it buys this kind of nonsense. It wants honesty, surely now more than ever.

It was an absolute shit show. And so much anger coming from both sides, not becoming at all (was surprised how riled cool Rishi was getting). Agree about the format, it was lazy, whatsherchops wasn't asking pertinent questions, she was just going for binary yesses or nos. The producers didn't force either side to drill down on anything, just make commitments so they got good soundbites. If I hear 'my father was a tool maker' / my wife's a nurse / my father was a GP one more time... as if any of those things qualify anyone to fix / understand anything.

I've been in two minds about Gala. While I don't like it much, the noise didn't reach me this year. I'm all for the council generating revenue through events. Or at least I was... I took a look at the field yesterday (I'm in the park three times per day but have been avoiding that area) and the damage is terrible. I'm really not sure that it will recover this year. Destroying `parks for this aim is wrong. Gala was better at lessening the noise this year and moving the entry point. It's a peaceful festival, with what appear to be peaceful people, but Southwark should not have the right to permanently destroy swathes of the park for money. As Angelina said, that particular park - the layout and geography of it - just isn't suited to this type of annual event.

Neither side has clean hands and the same applies historically. That is why I cannot fathom people taking sides, especially people with no connection to, or knowledge of, the region. It's incredibly complicated and, I fear, impossible to resolve.

Thanks for posting the hotline number. It meant I could report the three security guards I clocked sitting on a bench smoking a big fat one. Wouldn't want them in charge of my safety, if I was at a festival.

I'm basing it on 20+ years cycling in London and seeing the absolute biggest rule-breakers being my fellow cyclists. I once stopped at a zebra crossing to let a man cross and a cyclist behind me called me a putain for stopping. I've even witnessed a grown man aggressively ringing his bell and swearing at a four year old child for not getting out of his way.... on a footpath.... in Burgess Park. I genuinely cannot remember the last time a cyclist stopped for me at a pedestrian crossing. They give the rest of us cyclists and bad name and turn the traffic against us.

I am sick to death of cyclists not stopping at pedestrian crossings, thinking they're just too important and in too much of a rush for the rules to apply to them (and I'm a cyclist, have been for 20 years). I see it every day.

I thought all brachycephalic dogs had C-sections as standard? Perhaps your cousin was ill-advised in the first place?

Now, now Mal, there's no need to be pejorative about men of a certain age, with a certain skin colour, who live outwith a certain part of the country. Anyway, how do you know that these angry old white male protesters didn't live in London / areas affected by ULEZ - did someone go around and make a note of all their addresses? 🙂

Yep, sadly you're right Spartacus. I would have liked to have seen Rory Stewart stay in the race four years ago, I think he would have been pretty progressive. This article made me chuckle / stroke wretch. I wonder if the doctor friend who told him he has PTSD is the same one who told him he developed asthma from running in London. The chap has so much hardship going on, it's a wonder he can hold down the day job. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/20/sadiq-khan-says-he-has-ptsd-caused-by-death-threats

Your friends probably haven't been papped driving their dogs because they aren't in the public eye. It tickles me, not a little, that a climate warrior is defending a man taking three cars to walk a dog. If the Guardian had run the article I'm sure you'd have been up in arms. The story was everywhere and the facts speak for themselves. How is he setting a good example? It just looks like one rule for him and everyone else can do as they're told. There are plenty of PMs and MPs (who I'm sure have also received death threats) often papped running / walking their dogs without a gas-guzzling convoy in tow. And Khan isultimately answerable to the public, with the media holding him to account. What he did to Cressida Dick over the Charing Cross officers was fairly well hushed up and pretty appalling. I have no time for the man - he's far too concerned with how he and his work is perceived, over actually being effective.

Well this was a few years ago, before the threats ramped up. But I'm sure he'd be able to walk a dog without three sets of wheels - he could still have CPOs to keep an eye out. More important people / bigger targets have been able to walk pets before without a three-car, diesel convoy.

Alice, it was all over the press and, whether it's a Tory rag or not, you have to question how willing he is to practive what he preaches.

I simply can't resist posting this from the dear old DM... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9915019/Sadiq-Khan-spotted-using-cavalcade-cars-drive-4-5-miles-walk-dog.html

Hmmmmmmm.... I got stung twice here (the position of the sign is terrible). The first time, it was an error, I got a PCN. The second time, I drove back to see what I'd done wrong and got another one (stupid, I know) Called Southwark and fessed up to having made the same mistake again, in the hope that they would be sympathetic. They were - the man I spoke to on the phone to confess my error in advance of them writing to me, sounded in agreement that the position of the sign is poor. My PCN was overturned - not because of a typo (as far as I'm aware).

Used to chat to him quite a bit. Lovely man. Kind of feel sorry to hear he was moved on by a developer purchasing the house.

I'm not a patient at this practice, but this all makes for distressing reading. It's really frightening the way things are going. A friend of mine was a GP in Devon and left her practice. She now does out of hours shifts for crazy money (yes, she has moral qualms about it, but when the incentive's there...) and she says at weekends there might be only two GPs on call OOH across the entire north county. If things are bad in London, they are even worse elsewhere. How this crisis is going to be fixed, I do not know.

Surely the review has been commissioned for the opposite reason - that a lack of competition is keeping prices up?

Leon's great - it's the second time I've called him out and I have only good things to say about him. Totally reliable, trustworthy, knows his onions and charges reasonable prices.