h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think the difficulty is that you have allowed your personal experience to blinker you to the wider implications of what is being discussed here.

I lived next door to a drug dealer for 18 months. Very nice guy. Asked all his customers to leave quietly and we had the minumum of bother (in fact considerably less than when a mate of mine moved into the property afterwards and played T-Rex at top volume 18 hours a day). Doesn't mean I'm blinded to the wider socila implications of drug-dealing.

One positive experience of living next door to a drug dealer doesn't mean I can'ty be rational about the overall problem, though. I think you need to try thinking in a wider context.

Well you can brush it off as nothing to me but I was at the point off having to move and sell my flat over it, I am going by what happend to me from what was nearly 2 years in total, you can dismiss it with snidey remarks but I saw the people, whether this prostitute gets this sort of customer or that sort of customer means nothing to me as I had to put up with what I got....it is fine to say flip remarks but supposing you was living next door with your wife and kids? At one point I got so desparing I nearly wrote a big sign saying there is a prostitute in flat X so someone would do something, snidey remarks are easy on here, but until you have had to put up with it so long then snidey remarks are just a cheap shot.

1) Where exactly was I being snide?

2) Where have I said that I don't have sympathy for your individual problem?

3) Going waaaay back to when you first objected to the idea ogf legalized brothels, tell me where i suggested they should be put in blocks of flats next to families or other home owners?

NIMBYism is all very well, but the problem has to be dealt with sensibly, and that can only happen if we are all prepared to join the discussion in a reasonably unbiased manner.

Blues , that post wasn't directed at you, it took so long to type it was out of the intended order, it was in reference to the "The neighbours of strangled protitutes are the real vintims here." post.

Well to be honest I don't think that anyone else here has actually lived with a prostitute three feet from their front do, to be honest I might have preffered a drug dealer as hopefully the customers didn't masturbate outside your front door. And people enjoying multiple partners and being tied up is nothing to do with what happend to me. That is between consenting adults and normally done discretely and not 30 times in one day affecting neighbours, even if someone here has used a prostitute it is totally differant as it is what THEY wanted to do, I am sure they weren't thinking about the effect on those living next door at time.

"Yeah the people who lived next door to the *murdered* girls are the real vitims in all this....."

Is what I actually said Strangely and you paraphrasing and rewording are exactly why I am being snide.

Oh no your not, so I couldn't remember the words you wrote exactly, you were being snide full stop, and making light of how prostitution affects the people affected. There was a man who lived in one of the streets where the prostitutes worked and he tried to explain what it was like to live there and the reporter didn't want to know. Some time ago on TV they showed a street where the people who lived were sick of the curb crawlers, etc and when a school girl was aproached by one they had had enough and went out in large groups noting number plates of curb crawling cars and even videoing what went on until the prostitutes left their street. That is how it affects people who live in areas where prostitutes work.

>>That is how it affects people who live in areas where prostitutes work.<<

SS are you not aware that it is the world's oldest profession?

The reason being that there are always willing punters. If there were no more punters there's be no more prostitutes. But that ain't gonna happen, as you well know. So basically there needs to be a working environment for prostitutes that secures their safety from punters turning violent. I'm surprised you are not demanding that prostitutes are relocated into a more realistic working environment, rather than complaining about prostitutes themselves. Because the market for sex is never going to go away.

The point I was (and am) making is that the things you describe are bad, but not in the same league as the things that happen to prositutes.

Nothing you described is in the same league as being beaten up, raped, addicted to smack crack, sold into slavery and above all murdered.

Pespective, you need some i think.

I never said that, however I think having 2 years of your life screwed up, and being put at risk by these activities too is nothing to be brushed off. Having to scrub everything in your hallway with bleach when they were finaly kicked out is no bundle of fun either, sure they might be smack addicts, but no one forced them to be...,just like no one forced them to move next door to me, they knew full well what the result would be on me when they moved in. I would be more than happy if they all went to a deserted area away from desrerted areas.
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In reply to an earlier post,
what people do in the bedroom or with how many partners is nothing of interest to me...however most people do such things discretely and it if it doesn't involve what those men were doing outside my front door then it is not important to me. I wonder just how many of the people having a go at me would be happy to have just one of those men doing what those men were doing to themselves at their front door?

Opps, ! meant away from residential areas, of course!

Ever had an addiction and tried to deal with it Strangely?

Actually no I haven't, and I would work on curing it, not become a prostitute, if I had, and no I don't smoke or gamble, so don't bother going there.

So frankly how the hell are you in any way qualified to talk about it then?

Addiction is an awful thing, and once you have become addicted it isn't something you can just "click" your fingers and snap out of. Christ.

I am as qualified as you to talk about it, and just where did I say you click your fingers and it is gone?
However, you only have to look at the blond haired smack addict prostitute dragged out and interviewed on a now nearly daily basis in the area where the murders took place to see that withdrawal horrors and going cold turkey are prefferable to being in the state she is everyday.

I am sorry Stangely I dont think anyone who has never gone through giving up an addiction really knows what it is all about.

I have, I have giving up smoking, and I was certainly psycologically dependant on Ecstacy for several years. Giving up is hard, and when you are addicted the chemical balance in your brain is altered. You actually do not think in the same way as someone not addicted to drugs, or smoking or whatever.

The fact that you are so flippant just shows you dont understand.

FB - forget it. It's just not worth it!

Sorry, but where exactly was I flipant?

Are we finally going to have the mystery of Suzy Lamplugh's disappearance solved?

>>The fact that you are so flippant just shows you dont understand<<

I've bitten my lip here long enough I think

Firstly, let me say I am an addict; I smoke heavilly. And yes, I know exactly how hard it is to stop (not really that hard) The trick is to stay stopped (for me, very difficult)

I've played with most recreational drugs at one point or another in my life; with the exception of cocaine I found them all to be extremely dull experiences. But I do understand the rationale behind the desire to utilise a recreational substance; it's the desire to escape one's current reality. At any cost.

With the best will in the world, no-one who's not addicted to, or has been addicted to anything that alters the chemical state of the brain *is going to understand what its like. And there's no obligation for them to have to, either. They don't *have to understand or acept an addict's rationale, valid as it may be; and if they don't, my advice to you is to just walk away.

They certainly don't have to approve, and they have the right to rant, condemn and sound off as much as any one else. The fact that they're sensative, or have lead a reasenably sheltered life shouldn't be held against them.


Oh; and FTR, I lived in a maisonette above a knocking shop/dealers up until a few years ago. I didn't have the same feelings of revulsion & fear that SS obviously did; but even so, it was no picnic.

I frequently had to ask my neighbours to dispose of their needles away from our communal front door step so as not to attract the attention of my 2 young sons, and on more than one occaision went down to my neighbours and asked them to keep their activities quieter so my kids could get to sleep. (which, fair play to them they did generally speaking)

I think the fact that I was non judgemental and obviously a tolerent straight helped tremendously in our relationship.

We all survived it with little or no bruising. Whether my neighbours survived their life style is a moot point. We didn't keep in touch. I moved on as soon as I could do with my lads, and their young "life education" has stood them in good stead for being both streetwise and realistic, without falling into the "You don't understand" trap

They understand what its like alright - and so do I.

But its a path we don't want to take voluntarilly.