East Dulwich in the New Statesman

[tulip]

*

[Loz]

I didn't find this article especially humorous - in fact, I never got the feeling that the author was attempting humour. However, inside the faux rage, there was more than a degree of truth and a truth that some on here seem to find a little uncomfortable. So, a successful article.

[dogcat]

I've always assumed that they just push these stupid great things around because they can't drive their equally stupid 4x4s on the pavement. It's the same mentality, it's bigger than it needs to be and it's got great big tyres but I can afford it and you can't!!

There's nothing as vulgar as 'new money'!!

[ontheedge]

Do Irish people have a particular look?stillthinking108 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I agree with what too few people have said on

> here, that the article is entirely true. I moved

> to the area only 4 or 5 months ago, just up from

> Nunhead Green, by the cememtery. Nunhead seems to

> be full of Irish and African people. Peckham Rye

> is a great mix of cultures, my personal favorite

> is the 'Irish-Jamaican Butchers'. But the first

> time I walked into Dulwich, I saw less and less

> Irish people, less and less African or Jamaican

> people, and more and more middle class white mums

> who seemed to be engaged in some kind of maternal

> arms race, its as though the fetish of oversized

> 4x4s has now spilled over into the world of

> pushchairs.

[PeckhamRose]

I thought it was funny. Seriously, I did.

[LuLu Too]

stillthinking108 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I agree with what too few people have said on

> here, that the article is entirely true. I moved

> to the area only 4 or 5 months ago, just up from

> Nunhead Green, by the cememtery. Nunhead seems to

> be full of Irish and African people. Peckham Rye

> is a great mix of cultures, my personal favorite

> is the 'Irish-Jamaican Butchers'. But the first

> time I walked into Dulwich, I saw less and less

> Irish people, less and less African or Jamaican

> people, and more and more middle class white mums

> who seemed to be engaged in some kind of maternal

> arms race, its as though the fetish of oversized

> 4x4s has now spilled over into the world of

> pushchairs.

Right. Sorry.

Each time I stoll down LL I'll try hard to remember to wear my Irish Rugby shirt.

And perhaps a funny Guinness hat?

And greet everyone with a jolly "top of the mornin'".

Er... stillthinking108, how can you tell one's nationality?

Back on topic:

The bugaboo brigade are welcome to Nero's and every other cafe & pub in the area.

It's what keeps these places in business during the daytime/working week.

[puzzled]

god, worra miserable, tight-assed shower of guardian reading angst a lot of you are. these horrendous selfish hags and their ludicrous child vehicles are a menace on the pavements and in the cafes. rude, arrogant and utterly self absorbed. it is even worse outside the peckham rye cafe when they take it a step further with mass militant breast feeding. one them followed this up by changing her sprog's disgusting nappy on the grass by the cafe, while continuing her conversation with a friend. yucchhh!

[woofmarkthedog]

puzzled

God you are a soulless ar*e aren't you.

Anyway you were probably picking your nose & eating it when no one was looking.

W**F

[????]

HIYA LENK

*Does wa*nker sign*

[Ted Max]

SOME OF THESE WOMEN ARE QUITE FIT BUT THEY WON'T EVEN LOOK AT ME, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE A GIG WRITING ON A NATIONAL MAGAZINE AND THEY SHOULD BE GLAD OF MY PRESENCE. IT MUST BE BECAUSE THEY ARE SELFISH, INFERTILE OLD BOOTS, AND NOT BECAUSE I AM A SMALL RED FACED MAN WITH EGG ON MY JACKET AND NON-MATCHING LACES.

[Ted Max]

Are selfish people rude? Yes

Are rude people annoying? Yes.

Can you tell if someone is rude or selfish by the buggy they buy, if they use a papoose, or at what age they have children? No.

[Ted Max]

.

[legalbeagle]

I really do find it hard to understand this debate. Some people with children and rude. It's not because they have children, it's because they are rude. The same is true of people without children, journalists, people who are illiterate, people who like cofeee, people who don't like coffee, people who like cafe nero, people who like Luca's.......... Any time someone writes, or thinks: "this bunch of people are horrible because they do [this thing I hate]" htey are allowing a prejudice to develop through sheer laziness. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience tulip - and I mean that sincerely - but you had a bad experience with one small group of women. You are not universally hated by every middle class parent. Whatever middle class means.

If three white working class men burgle my house and several others on my street, what assumptions shall I make about white working class men? Come on folks, we can do better than this.......

[Sue]

Well said LegalBeagle

[SteveT]

Ted Max wrote:- BECAUSE I AM A SMALL RED FACED MAN WITH EGG ON MY JACKET AND NON-MATCHING LACES.

Yeah Ted, it is obvious to every right thinking person that you are a class act all the way, right down to your manicured nails.

It seems to me Tulip, you had a hard time mainly because of your youth, and for that I would put up with all kinds of

hardship,.... if only.

[RosieH]

I'm kind of meh about the article. Mostly I'm posting to say that I like Michael Hodges - I've had the pleasure of sharing a few beers with him and he was good company and indeed, as Sean said, witty. I usually enjoy his columns and find them right-thinking, and often funny.

But then, I think rage is funny: the kind of impotent, middle class rage that causes right minded folks to splutter and devote entire threads to it on forums like this one, rather than the kind of Michael Douglas Falling Down killing people kind of rage.

This particular column not funny, but there is a lot of truth in it - mostly I think it's just that it's more noticeable when Bugaboo mums are selfish because the prams are so fricking enormous. When other people are selfish, the selfishness doesn't take up quite so much space. Coffee in Nero during the day is a nightmare, but it affects me so little that I don't care. But Patagonian papoose = funny.

[dulwichmum]

stillthinking108 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I agree with what too few people have said on

> here, that the article is entirely true. I moved

> to the area only 4 or 5 months ago, just up from

> Nunhead Green, by the cememtery. Nunhead seems to

> be full of Irish and African people. Peckham Rye

> is a great mix of cultures, my personal favorite

> is the 'Irish-Jamaican Butchers'. But the first

> time I walked into Dulwich, I saw less and less

> Irish people, less and less African or Jamaican

> people, and more and more middle class white mums

> who seemed to be engaged in some kind of maternal

> arms race, its as though the fetish of oversized

> 4x4s has now spilled over into the world of

> pushchairs.

Stillthinking108, tell me dear heart, how does one spot an Irish person? Do they come in several different classes or are they all the same? I hear they are a very homely lot...

[????]

I'm sure Stillthinking will be moving back to Nunhead and doing all her shopping in Peckham before you can say..."I'm stacked full of middleclass guilt"

[iaineasy]

Can you tell if someone is rude or selfish by the buggy they buy, if they use a papoose, or at what age they have children? No.

--------------------------------------------------------

Unless they take out your ankles with there buggy, fart next to you in the queue at somerfield whilst looking at their papoosed baby in the time honoured fashion of an embarrassed dad and say slightly to loudly " do you need changing you little monkey?" or they club you round the head with their walking stick whilst their child steals your watch and wallet.

The only one of these things that hasn't happened to me is getting hit by an old woman whilst her teenage asbo steals my watch and wallet but then I don't have either.But it's not impossible I suppose.

[Moos]

Well, it was about time, we haven't had a yummy-mummy bashing for ages.

I've got no issue with it, there's no denying large buggies are hard to make your way around, and no-one likes their ankles being hit. Rude, arrogant people are unbearable, and should be both confronted in person and lambasted in cartoon, in the hopes that they may recognise themselves... well, OK, let's face it, they won't. But at least it makes everyone else feel better.

It's only when the bashing starts to extend to wider parameters about the hideousness in general of women who leave it too late, or are single mothers, or who want to go back to work or who don't want to go back to work, or have the wrong accent, or breastfeed in public, or are too well-dressed or whatever that feels as though it's straying into misogyny and snobbishness. But since those voices tend to be those with very obvious issues, well ... hey ho. This is a public forum, after all.

[reggie]

what moos said..yes

[LegalEagle-ish]

The New Statesman pieice was funny though!

[ontheedge]

and the writer lives in sydenham ! issues?

[Polly D]

Jeeez I'm trying to think of any other subsection of society who are so vilified; maybe hoodies?

How dare my baby have a pram?! And need his nappy changed, and be fed. I can do all these things without getting in your way puzzled et al.

[paulino]

i don't get it: EDF is normally full of threads vilifying buggy mums and bugaboos and yet when an article appears in the press you are now all getting your knickers in a twist and castigating the author for lazy generalisations, vilification of poor mothers, etc.