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People are breeding this

Staffs should look like this

What @Stonehedge said on crates. Mine has the largest size you can get and I leave a water bowl in there, which invariably gets spilled or he drops his bedding in it, so I'm looking into a water bottle that will attach to the outside. Not an issue at the moment as I'm home full time.

My old staffy had a dog flap to the back garden at my old house, but it was totally secure and he could come and go as he pleased, whether I was home or not. He had an outdoor kennel, which he loved. Where I am now, I would never leave Reggie in the garden without being at home. Dogs are stolen primarily for breeding or to be sold on, occasionally for ransom, Staffies unfortunately are often stolen to be used as bait dogs. Really sad.

I have a re-homed Staffie - a few pictures in this thread - so can try to answer some of your questions:

Reggie is crate trained and will happily spend the entire day in it if absolutely necessary, which is rare. I'm fortunate to have teenage kids and a niece who lives locally, who will feed and let him out, but he's fine to be left all day if I have to. Typically (i.e. not lock down) I will be at home a couple of days a week, so he has three when he is mainly on his own, but will have a visitor.

I spend about £60 a month on food, £25 on insurance (would be cheaper, but I had a claim) and nothing on training or care. Staffies are generally pretty easy to train because they are desperate to please you and mine is treat motivated. It is important to train them to at least have very good recall as they will otherwise be off introducing them to other people. I adopted mine at about 16 weeks, so still young enough for me to train - he did come house trained.

Only you know whether a Staffie is the right dog for you. I've had two (both males) and would characterise them as incredibly people friendly, craving attention insofar as they want to be around you whenever they can, will take as much exercise as you can throw at them (mine gets an hour's walk twice a day, plus lots of chasing, fetching, tugging, etc.), don't shed much fur, few health problems and rarely neurotic. The main difference between my two is that the first was sometimes dog-aggressive, whereas the current one - at two - seems not to be in the slightest, but that might change. Socialising with other dogs early is essential but, I don't care what anyone says, given their fighting/baiting/ratting heritage, they do have a strong prey drive and potential propensity for aggression to other dogs. And it's not a growl and a nip, they can bite, hold and shake with strength. They also have a very high pain threshold.

I'm not sure whether Battersea are re-homing at the moment and they're known to be stringent in their requirements of potential adopters - being at home and having a garden is a huge plus. Look at the Blue Cross too and these people - https://www.staffierescue.co.uk/

Happy to try to answer any other questions you might have, and you're welcome to meet mine and take him out for a test drive once lock down allows. I'm in Brixton.

One final thing I would say is that rescuing a Staffie these days is likely to get you a better and healthier dog than what you'd get from most breeders. The fashion over the last few years for chunky, blue, big headed, low slung, short legged dogs that bear no resemblance to what the breed originally looked like will bring a host of health issues at eye watering prices - £1-1.5K for a pup. Blue is a recessive gene in Staffies and reliably breeding them involves a lot of in-breeding.

Good luck, whatever you decide.

My point was more, "don't complain about schools not teaching x, y, z when maybe that should be your responsibility and they struggle to find the resources to teach a, b, c".

If home schooling is your (not you personally) solution to that then fill your boots, but I wouldn't be as confident as you about most people's ability to teach at primary school level. Early years numeracy and literacy isn't easy to teach well (there's a reason teachers qualify) and I don't know your experience, but I found supporting my kids' in maths in particular became more difficult as they approached year 6 - more related to the way it is now taught, so I guess I could have learned that with more time. A level chemistry, forget it.

On the extra curricular stuff, mine did loads of free or cheap as chips activities - swimming, ballet, boxing, football, horse riding, drama, art - outside of school, but I'm sure it is more easily available in London with free (for them) public transport.

100% this.

Schools are underfunded, teachers criminally underpaid, ministers have no proverbial skin in the game having overwhelmingly been privately educated and sending their kids to private schools, so the system that many choose to criticise continues to creak. In the circumstances, I would prefer schools to teach what they are eminently better at doing than I am, and I'll spend time on the other stuff.

All three of the issues you mention were covered at the state primary and secondary schools my three went to. And being at school didn’t stop me from spending time on this kind of stuff with them, isn’t that my responsibility as a parent?

My partner teaches early years and is frustrated and resigned at the number of parents who drop their kids off expecting staff to teach them how to wipe their arse and nose, hold a knife and fork and put their shoes on.

Boo!!

Tim Krul probably fancies them

We might just get them

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/153974568670

It’s lovely in the flesh, a real step up from the “s”. Didn’t have a sit on it, but will do over the weekend.

Don’t mind you asking at all. No bike at the moment - I might have posted before, was taken out head on when out on my 748 by an overtaking car a while ago, single dad of three, made me reassess.

Have been looking at the mv f3 675 as a possible track bike, but not sure I’d get much use. Plenty of time to think

Arrived this afternoon

It was, just pointing out that their justification on those grounds massively backfired

people on the beach are (largely!) going to be peaceful.

How do you know that a crowd of people full of sun, ice cream and beer wouldn’t kick off if the police asked them to leave and then turned up with batons when they didn’t comply?

I live at Angell Town very close to where it happened. I slept through the party and was only woken when the police turned up, and then for the rest of the night by helicopters.

It might be that breaking up a party with the police is a little bit easier

Except it turned out not to be the case and all they achieved was a) to humiliate themselves by getting run out of the estate, b) further drive a wedge between themselves and the black community locally, c) highlight how different rules apply when you’re black at a time when they should be doing the complete opposite and d) give the right wing media an opportunity to link anti-social behaviour to BLM, who had a quiet protest in Windrush Square earlier in the day

Can’t speak for Oliver, but the fact that the police chose to break up a party of mainly young black people contrasts with doing nothing when significantly larger groups of mainly white people break all social distancing rules in Bournemouth and Liverpool over the next 24 hours

They also chose not to intervene when 2,000 Liverpool gathered for a late night street party outside Anfield last night

It's been happening for a while - Wyck Gardens the last two weekends, Moorlands/Southwyck House regularly, Lilford Road on Saturday - not sure why it kicked off like it did last night, although there were rumours of a 15 year-old boy being stabbed (I hope they're just rumours).

I haven't seen the police moving in with batons on the seafront at Bournemouth today

Pisti has opinions on the choice of ref and VAR official for the derby

Isn't he more concerned about current restrictions on his freedom to blackface?

What would be the equivalent of mansplaining in this situation?

They've been withdrawn. It seems he's the founder of https://www.ridelow.co.uk/

I have two pairs of Birkenstock Arizona in different sizes - one for socks and one for bare feet.

From photos of a friend's young teenagers, to be on trend this summer you need old school flip-flops with long white socks.

I can confirm that this has been the case for the last 2-3 years - passively stoned dog optional...

Good call. Wasn’t it Brinsley Forde from Aswad? Shot in and around Brixton