Welcome and introductions

First topic message reminder :

Around the autumn of 2007 I came across the MSN message boards and found one entitled "UK Politics" which I joined and enjoyed for over three and a half years, then around April 2011 MSN decided in their wisdom to close down that particular message board.

Over time the MSN message board posters had become like friends, and though I had never met any of them, they became as familiar as the regulars I have a pint with in the local village pub, one or two were fairly nasty and quite vile, most were very pleasant people.

Fortunately, one of the redundant MSN bloggers (Ivan) decided to start his own political blogging site, and many of the old MSN posters followed him to his newly created site, and after a competition to find a name, it was agreed to call it "Cutting Edge".

I have to point out that Ivan ran things in a very fair and democratic way, the members decided the rules, they chose the name and logo, several of us were appointed as moderators and common sense prevailed.

Unfortunately the host of our board was "ProBoards" whom I would definately NOT recommend to anyone, they pulled the plug and closed Cutting Edge down saying that we had broken the rules.
To this day we still do not know what rule(s) were broken, and by whom, we wrote very polite emails to ProBoards asking for an explanation, but we got no answer other than "you broke the rules".

And so here we are WELCOME

Hi T,

Good to hear from you again.

Welcome, TMG - nice to meet you

Loving the new picture Claudine!!

T.G. are you around anywhere my friend? if you are I have left messages for you everywhere so you know where to find me, get in touch please.

Its fantastic to be greeted in such a fashion and its great to be here, lots of good topics for me to sink my teeth into.

Special hello to Sheldon and Stu, can't send personal messages yet Stu although I *can* receive them, but I will be able to after I have made a few posts. Just haven't had much time to get used to the site yet (new kid) or get into any topics and have to read through a bit first and figure it all out, but will be doing so soon no doubt.

Thank you to all.

A few words of introduction - I thought I'd join the exodus from Amazon and, after reading just a few pages, I'm already glad that I did :-) Relatively new to discussion boards and fora I was already getting exasperated with the constant barrage of inanities and innuendos so prevalent over there. There're only a couple on here likely to know me but I am looking forward to getting to know the others - and all the other others as well.

I love to listen but, once I start to talk, do have a problem using 2 words when I can find 20 perfectly good ones that'll fit absolutely fine.

Love the cat Ivan (catlover), she has the exact same expression as my old Casey had, though she (Casey) didn't have a bib.  Oh and, not that I'm a pedant or anything, you missed out they're, your and you're

Anyway Hi y'all

Good morning Foxcliffe and welcome to Cutting Edge.

Good morning and thank you Claudine

Welcome Foxcliffe - look forward to reading your posts

why thank you boatlady, I wish I could say I was looking forward to tasting some of your samphire (which I haven't seen you mention yet) but you're far too far away for an afternoon hike

Welcome to Cutting Edge, Foxcliffe. I'm glad to see you're enjoying the forum.

Ahh, moonbeam, would that there were enough hours in the day to enjoy it to the full  Thank you, though, for your welcome.

There is so much to read I had trouble in knowing where to start. I don't know how I will ever get through it all nor, for that matter, if I ever will.  I do have my eye on a couple of the 'more serious' discussions I intend to contribute to at some stage in the near future but the old grey matter does like to take its time in formulating a response

Hi everyone - I am a newbie here - but not new to forums.
I presently also post on an American site , Newsfix run by Ben Reilly, really good, but it has been having trouble from a few racist far right wingers, which is why I have been looking for a decent left leaning forum.
I have reccomended this place to an internet friend, Sassy, who may also like to join.
She would make a valuable addition.
I am 59 years old, live in Kent and am left of centre, but not massively so.
My pet hates are injustice, especially to the poor, corruption by politicians, and greedy tory MP's who treat the poor like lepers.
Hope to make a good contribution on here.

That is the BEST avatar!
Welcome, Handy Andy - really looking forward to hearing from you

Andy - welcome to the forum. I look forward to reading your contributions.

Handy Andy wrote:Hi everyone - I am a newbie here - but not new to forums.
I presently also post on an American site , Newsfix run by Ben Reilly, really good, but it has been having trouble from a few racist far right wingers, which is why I have been looking for a decent left leaning forum.
I have reccomended this place to an internet friend, Sassy, who may also like to join.
She would make a valuable addition.
I am 59 years old, live in Kent and am left of centre, but not massively so.
My pet hates are injustice, especially to the poor, corruption by politicians, and greedy tory MP's who treat the poor like lepers.
Hope to make a good contribution on here.

Well, [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]everyone; I've found HandyAndy's intro and pulled it forward.  Even though we didn't cross paths often over at Newsfix...I did read your few posts - since my member date of 2-18-16.  And after this {ever so brief but toxic month} I decided it was time to MOVE ON~~~and Sassy suggest this place.

I've read the rules - I've read the opening post from Ivan and found that we shared something in common already --- 'ProBoards'.  I too had a political group over there {we'd been bounced out of Insightbb, and YUKU, and then MSN before that and before that it was AT&T circa 2001---not by anything my group did but due to cost to keep our community AD FREE and other consistent issues with the server sight}.   


So it's not my first rodeo - it's not what or where I thought my close group would be - but time and the loss of some of the best golden oldies that I'd had the pleasure to know passed away within months of each other and they were from far corners of this globe.  And the remaining group of us just started hitting the FB pages and the old - homestead has just become a 'daily greet & meet' and everyone departs for FB.

As my avatar quantifies - I volunteer with a Animal Rescue here in my rural setting in Kansas.  And 'NO' I'm no longer an official card carrying member for any ASPCA chapter --- it was what I used for my avatar/nickname and just have always kept it! 
I'm pretty open book about my life - but I won't bore you with those finite details now --- leave them wanting to know more   
My political leaning is 'centrist' - I'm a registered Independent here in America and dang proud of it; I have firm convictions - I have strong passions - I do not lie - and I struggle with dealing daily with Self-Inflicted Stupid Humans and especially those that are vile and just spew angst and spread vitriol like it's skin lotion that needs to be shared!
I do bark - but I do not bite  

Sooooo, that's pretty much me in a nut shell; I look forward to getting to know everyone - I so enjoy exchanging ideology and love a challenge and if you can change my POV about an issue --- then it's been a really GREAT DAY

Hiya Aspa4ever.
Great to see you here. I haven't been around as I have been stupidly busy at work - 80 hour weeks are neither good for your health, sex life or forum posting!
All quietening don now, so shall use this site a lot more - it seems full of like minded, polite and left of centre folk. I wont post a lot back on Newsfix - it is going to the dogs, spoilt bt a couple of racist individuals.

Aspca4ever - loving your avatar - I'm a dog lover myself. Welcome to the forum and hoping for plenty of contributions from you - times in the USA are very interesting at present - and maybe not altogether in a good way

TY...and in a way of explaining my seemingly 'ODD' method of typing_--- I didn't know what or how I typed would be such an issue until this past month swiminng with the piranhas over at NewsFix; I've acquired a blood borne disease that finds interesting places in the body to set up residents and generate some chaos!!!
I didn't offer that up as an explanation---the piranha's were to busy attacking other rumors about my 'REAL PERSONA'...grandiose paranoia runs deep within that community and I didn't want to give the TROLLS any more ammunition to feed off of!
But I now know that the changes within my brain/ hand eye coordination might cause problems for the readers...as embarrassing / humiliating as this is to type about ...trying to speak about it verbly will try the patience of JOB. I'll not use this as a 'poor me' ---but an attempt to explain why my need to keep my mind as active as possible has slowed the sludge from taking over my brain and is slowly improving my short.term memory function

Welcome to Cutting Edge, Handy Andy and Aspca4ever. I hope you will enjoy this forum where, unlike in ‘The Daily Mail’ (and even on the BBC these days), left-of-centre views are guaranteed a fair hearing! (Right-wing opinions are also tolerated – as long as they are not racist, sexist or homophobic.)

We don’t allow new members to send personal messages until they have posted ten times. That’s to reduce the incentive for spammers to nip in here and flood the place with junk before they are spotted!

I expect that all discussion forums do things differently from each other, and one thing we try to avoid here is the proliferation of similar threads, which tend to ‘dilute’ discussions. Members are welcome to start new threads, but should take note of these guidelines:-

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Very few messages are deleted, but some get moved to more appropriate threads. If you can’t find a message that you’ve posted, click on your name in the member list, then statistics, then find all messages posted by yourself. Thank you for your understanding.

Hi, finally made it after a few problems, all sorted now thank you Ivan.

Let me first say I know Handy Andy and Aspca from another forum, she' had a rough ride but we made friends and decided to come over here. Don't know if I am the only one, but I'm a Pagan, an artist, sort of poet and socialist to the core.

Think that's enough about me for now, looking forward to 'meeting' eveyone.

Oh, how lovely...didn't want to apply any undo pressure --- but I'm so pleased to see you've dropped in! Perhaps KD could be convinced to come join us as well.

Would be nice, will try and get in touch with him. I joined last night but had a bit of trouble logging on which has now been resolved. Seems a really nice place and easy to get around

Sassy - I'm assuming you're the person who sent me a message about problems logging on - glad to see you've got sorted and looking forward to reading all your contributions

Thanks very much for all your help. Haven't been around much today, my dog has two little friends staying and they are running me ragged, but thank you so much for the welcome.

sassy wrote:Thanks very much for all your help.  Haven't been around much today, my dog has two little friends staying and they are running me ragged, but thank you so much for the welcome.

Hey...is that avatar image one of your own paintings?  It's really lovely

It is, the first detailed painting I did.

Thanks, sometimes I'm ok and sometimes I rubbish lol. Didn't take it up until I retired, and if you had seen my first ones you wouldn't be saying that lol I'm a bit obsessed with butterflies.

Can't stay as it's late here and we are going out early tomorrow, but so glad we found this forum.

sassy wrote:Thanks, sometimes I'm ok and sometimes I rubbish lol.  Didn't take it up until I retired, and if you had seen my first ones you wouldn't be saying that lol   I'm a bit obsessed with butterflies.

Can't stay as it's late here and we are going out early tomorrow, but so glad we found this forum.

DITTO..now we get your post counts to ten we can PM back and forth over here too...your almost there  I'll catch up with you tomorrow

I been here before, then left, then came back, then left again, and here I am back one more time.

There was an email received which invited me back.

 ......................    .............................  

Hallo, there - lovely to have you back