Forum Topic

What does this forum say about Ealing?

Looking back over the week's posts, it strikes me that this forum is a lot less mature than others in London.Taking the East Dulwich one as a comparator (only because I was keeping an eye on it due to a family member's house being there), all through Monday night there was an information post about what was happening, rigorously moderated to keep it on topic and free of 'politics'; by the next day the majority of posts were community-spirited ones about cleaning up, reclaiming Lordship Lane by coming out in force to populate it in the evening, etc.What do we get here?  By and large, a bunch of obsessives leaping onto their pet hobbyhorses about carparks and later, benefits and all the rest.  There was one post about clearing up which seemed to have no replies, and the only real community spirit was shown by those who posted about the injured man and to expressed admiration for the clearup.My point is that this forum comes across as a lot more mean-spirited and much less representative of the community than those in other boroughs.Just something to think about.

Gerald Cabb ● 5352d12 Comments

Thanks for that Graham. It would be good to see more of the shopkeepers and people affected by this mindless violence - building by building.There are indirect as well as direct consequences of actions.  Why do people find it so difficult to appreciate this?When a building has been boarded up you can't tell when this was as a precaution or because it suffered from criminal damage.

Philippa Bond ● 5348d

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14533678

Graham Weeks ● 5348d

The London Borough of Ealing is a large diverse community with about 300,000 inhabitants, and is the third largest in London (please correct me if I am wrong). There are many people with different views and there are areas of deprivation (the South Acton Estate) as well as areas of great affluence (Corfton Road). There are many issues at all levels that are worthy of discussion and if you make a post that gets a response from someone else you have raised a point or issue that is worth making even if it does annoy someone else.We can either talk about issues (parliament) or we can kill each other (dictatorship) and a Forum in my opinion falls into the former category. The truth is rarely easy to cope with and Fora like this are one of the few ways that we can find out about and discuss the things that Ealing Council, Ealing Labour, Ealing Tories, Ealing Police, etc. do not want us to know about.

Phil Mamy ● 5348d

the Ealing forum has always been much quieter than Chiswick.

Susan Kelly ● 5348d

30 visitors to the site and two posts this morning on this site and 184 visitors and 20 messages on the Chiswick site at almost the same time.  That site seems a little stunned - is it the assault by a gang of renegade apostrophes - or maybe it is just because people have lots of other things to do and the weather has been good enough to spend time outside.Surely it just depends on how busy everybody is and what they are working on at the moment?Gerald, don't you have a hobbyhorse? (I haven't researched so maybe I'll regret this question!)

Philippa Bond ● 5349d

Bravo Mari !!!

Nigel Brooks ● 5350d

'There was one post about clearing up which seemed to have no replies, and the only real community spirit was shown by those who posted about the injured man and to expressed admiration for the clearup.My point is that this forum comes across as a lot more mean-spirited and much less representative of the community than those in other boroughs.Just something to think about.'  Mr Cabb, the post which seems to have had no replies, was actually just information on where the 'Black Horse' was, as this was the meeting point for the clean up!  The clean-up had already been arranged in another thread - yes the one with 83 postings! Maybe you ought to have read through them  before making 'mean-spirited' comments  about our community - just something to think about, as you would say!

Mari Austin ● 5350d

There was less emphasis in Ealing on clean up because part of the affected area was a crime scene. When I went down with a view to seeing if there was anything I could do to help the police were politely discouraging and the following day things were more or less back to normal but for the damage to shops. So perhaps you should consider it is not that people aren't as nice here than in East Dulwich just that circumstances were different. As for vetting posts on political grounds this does strike me as quite dangerous and I'm glad this forum doesn't do that. We do have a few fruitcakes obsessed with politics but even they make the occasional point worth considered and anything you say on the issue of riots could be deemed to be political.

Tricia Arbuthnot ● 5352d

^^ What Graham said :)

Kimberley Sklinar ● 5352d

Too sophisticated for a person so out of touch he can think that someone who left the Conservatives 12 years ago is 'true blue tory '. On reflextion, that could be a totally unintended compliment. No-one could accuse the present governmnet of being true blue tory .But back to the original post. This is a forum and is only representative of the people who post. Compared with the local population it shows a very differnet racial, and I suspect age and gender mix. But no-one here is stopping anyone from posting. Some of us welcome diversity. We are also happy when some people are not posting, and I am not here referring primarily to the previous poster.

Graham Weeks ● 5352d

The humour is very sophisticated too. Welcome to true blue tory Ealing.

Andy Williams ● 5352d

Some interesting points.One could argue that the reason that there were no posts about the clear up was that those who were there clearing up were there clearing up as was the case in my househol; on reflection though the OP deserved the courtesy of a response.I think that this site did a fine job via the Twitter feeds and constantly updated articles of keeping us informed and the main thread self-policed itself and stayed on-track. It is the sign of mature discussion perhaps that this board is not, to my knowledge, 'rigourously moderated' and all are free to contribute or ignore as they wish.Perhaps one of the measures of 'bouncng back' is that on this (and many other boards) it was business as usual with the normal bunch of hoobyhorse riders (me a culpa) posting about their pet subjects as well as contributing to the discussion about the disturbances.I agree though it is far easier to criticise than contribute.

Nigel Brooks ● 5352d