Tree pruning

[The Medway Handyman]

Does the neighbour have a brother called Conifer Ali though?

[OG]

Ah right, so you negotiated with them.

You mean you didn't get a restraining order against them and an ASBO for the parents? How disappointing.

[Andy Champ]

That's the trouble with women. Always generalising.

Andy

[Bruce]

Seems reasonable to me. But my view hardly matters.

What really matters is whether *they* thought it was reasonable. And it really isn't up to me to comment, because I don't know you, I don't know them, I don't know your house or theirs, I know very little about the situation and I don't know anything about what your relationship with your neighbours is like.

Unlike you, I don't think there is a predetermined solution for every problem. I talk to my neighbours. We get on very well and we talk any problems through. But we made an effort to get to know each other at the earliest opportunity, because the worst thing is to find that the first proper contact you ever have with your neighbour is to discuss a contentious issue.

Anyone who knows me would say that I am a gentle person who is never likely to take the law into is own hands, and no-one would have reason to fear me. So I have to rely on getting on with people to the best possible extent, and negotiating with them in a reasonable manner, accepting that they have a different view.

Perhaps if I was a member of the armed forces, a policeman, or just one of the neighbourhood thugs, people would be more afraid of me and I could ride roughshod over them in asserting what I believed to be my "rights". But that just isn't me, I'm afraid.

[Bruce]

No, but he's a close personal friend of General Ratko Mladic. ;-)

[George (dicegeorge)]

Tony Blair wasn't lieing because he believed that Saddam had nuclear/biological weapons..

But perhaps its worse that the Government were deluded and made such a mistake of judgement over interpretation of the secret service's intelligence assessments, and believed what George Bush and his cronies told them..

xxxxxxx

[Andy Cap]

I have never maintained there is a predetermined solution to most problems. Only that there were some boundaries I would not be prepare to cross.

A desirable and ideal situtation but not always the case I'm afraid, however reasonable you try and be. Fortunately I am presently in the same position but it wasn't always the case. One guy treated his elderly mother like dirt, hung birds from the clothes line and then shot them with an air rifle and revelled in owning a very nasty scary rottweiler.

It's really not a question of riding roughshod over anyone but ensuring a quality of life for MOST parties. You seem to assume asserting your rights equates to violence. You were the first to use the word "war". I perhaps then added to the idea of a violent response by using the word "fight", but I didn't mean you rush round there and set about them.

Say for example a new neighbour moves in and moves the boundary fence 50cms onto your property. Do you just accept it? Unless you "draw a line in the sand", you are asking to be taken advantage of and there are plenty of unpleasant characters willing to accept the chance in all walks of life.

All I was picking up on, was the idea that there is always room for negotiation, I simply don't accept that principle. I mean how many hour during the night are your neighbours allowed to play loud music. I maintain none. ( Allowing for the odd special party) Presumably you are open to negotiation on the subject.

I really didn't intend any unpleasantness but I actually believe it is your gentlemanly tolerance that inadvertently exacerbates the anti-social attitudes and behaviour you understandably despise.

It really isn't "my way" I'm advocating but what has become the accepted norm as prescribed in law.

Hope that sorts any misunderstanding. Andy

[Bruce]

What was it you said at the start of that sentence?

"I really didn't intend any unpleasantness BUT"

That's like saying, "I don't want you to take offence BUT" or I really didn't want to annoy you BUT" ...

I think everyone knows exactly what you really meant. So it's time to add your name to my kill file. Bye bye.

[The Medway Handyman]

You seem to be saying that members of the armed forces and policemen are on the same level as neighbourhood thugs? Many would find that offensive, me included.

[The Medway Handyman]

Which he did, he killed thousands of Kurds with biological weapons.

[jake]

I include myself in the ones that think you group thugs with the Police (which I do not). It may be your poor use of English.

Hussein did NOT have such weapons when the invasion began. Bliar was either stupid in believing some PhD thesis (many are crap - esp. Uk ones), or didn't bother to look in-depth before (albeit not directly) joining in the killing >100,000 people. The murderous Hussen's killings were not improved by killing 100,000+ more was it! That Hussein was a maniac is not in dispute yet it is used as a cover for the evil Bliar all the time. The "man" was, and is, a self-centred moron - an evil man of far too much influence.

Worthy of note just now is that McGabe is trying to murder his own people - yes it is not the problem of the West as we have so many of our own, But it does not speak well of the other African countries still living off British wonders, to let the strutting McBane go free to murder as you read this.

[Steve Firth]

Also it's odd how it's very naughty for Saddam to kill thousands of Kurds, but apparently perfectly OK if those nice guys the Turks do it.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Bruce saying something like:

I've heard Mugabe never cuts his conifers, the bastard.

[Bruce]

Did he kill more Kurds than the British did with poison gas (a biological weapon) in the 1920s, when *we* were in charge of Iraq?

In any case, Saddam's biological weapons were supplied to him by the US, the UK and Germany.

[Andy Cap]

Well in case you didn't - It's sad that you're so closed to other opinions, just the very thing you accused me of being. Also choose to completely ignore the content and pick up on the phraseology when the intention was quite clear !

ATB Andy

[Bruce]

It's apparently "doing wonders" to bomb insurgent villages. This was said of a Royal Air Force bombing campaign - in the 1920s:

[Bruce]

No wonder Thabo Mbeki is afraid of criticising him. ;-)

[Bruce]

No, merely that their positions in society mean that people tend to fear them, for different reasons.

I would not dare to suggest that some members of the police or armed forces are thugs. That couldn't possibly be true.

[Andy Hall]

Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, "Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out".

It really is grey-green, greasy - amazed me when I saw it.

[Bruce]

Ah, yes. The fever-tree is a fast growing African conifer, named after the effect leaving it untended can have on the neighbours. ;-)

God alone knows what must be in it.