Re Ealing resident since 1946Tony Price wrote as follows just stumbled across this thread and found the quality of the posts very high. Anyone who has been living in Ealing since the end of the end of WW2 is someone who could be of great benefit to the forums, therefore I hope the comment re leaving will not be carried out.Just the 6 Points 1)The complaints of political nit-picking dominating this forum made by Messrs Colliver & Veasey were in fact largely accurate. It's just unfortunate they were directed at myself who is totally blameless in this regard, but such is life on-line.The problem with allowing elected politicians to post on forums IMO is that argument is already their stock in trade. And so a forum merely allows them to rehearse and test out arguments to be possibly used in a wider context. Without naming names so as not to start an argument, a thread was started on here recently concerning the lopaction of road building programmes in the Borough along with charts. All that I know on this topic is that all the roads leading West off of Northfield Avenue were all resurfaced within the last few years. I only remember this because the equipment being used was akin to a road-mending combine harvester insamuch as it appeared to combine at least two or three road-making operations all in one. Which was interesting to pause and watch in operation. Whether these Northfields Avenue resurfacing operations would confound the thesis being proposed, as might say ten year statistics, isn't something that I'm particularlyminded to pursue. 2) While I've lived in Ealing since 1946, I've not been short of opportunities to move. But have chosen not to. What I take exception to, are posts especially emanating from certain individuals claiming that certain parts of the Borough are run-down, have been reduced to shanty towns and the like. Which isn't to say that people shouldn't take pride in their area, but times change. While many of usmight like to move back to the 1950's, and the way things were back then, how many of us could make do without the computers or the flat screen TV's to say nothing of the convenience of being able to shop at all hours ? I'm sure I can't be the only one to remember the "special" shops, the ones who would bring out the "forbidden goods" from under the counter for you on a Sunday afternoon. You know the stuff - like a quarter pound of tea or a bag of sugar. Again no point arguing with people who are determined to run the place down whatever you say.3) In my original post in this thread I made a point about Irish labourers, among others, building the docks and their descendants forming the basis of many of the dockworkers families. I was challenged on this by Chis Veasey and asked for evidence. There's plenty of on-line evidence in support of both propositions but I see no reason why I should be required to spoonfeed Mr Veasey with information he's clearly unwilling to provide for himself. 4) On at least two occasions, and quite possibly more threads have been started on this forum featuring unsubstantiated allegations which if taken seriously might well threaten the viability of those businesses. Those being the dog walker and the Oxfam Bookshop. In my opinion such posts shouldn't be allowed, free forum or not. As their inclusion undermines either the credibility of the businesses cited or of the forum itself. The assumption being presumably that nobody take anything posted on the forum seriously in the first place.To say nothing of the legal implications of publishing unsubstantiated defamatory statements. 5) When I said I'm picky about where I choose to be insulted, what I meant was that I'm a regular participant on UseNet Newsgroups. Which while they may appear to be an online madhouse to outsiders, do at least provide the facility of automatic quoting should the poster so choose. So that even in protracted exchanges, its immediately apparent to the reader, whose remarks exactly, each poster is reponding to. In addition there are fewer formatting problems in my experience, at least..6) To reiterate my original point, when Colm Costello visits the W.H.Smith in the Greenford Retail Park or whatever it's called, there's no particular reason why he should know that he's standing on the site of the former Rockware factory which at one time employed over 12,000 people quite possibly many of them Irish. And why should he ? Or that the children of many of those people will have inherited their houses and will still be living in the Borough. Just as he's unlikely to be aware that the car park of the retail park was formerly a golf driving range which featured in an episode of "Minder" - the one in which Terry McCann recognised the other guy's minder as one of his old boxing mates. Not that this latter observation is of any real relevance other than as a reminder that another benefit of living in Ealing is being able to recognisefilm locations from films and latterly TV programmes from the 1940's right up to the present day. Or even going back to 1902 on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmEcxE0MPgM michael adams...
Michael Adams ● 4874d