to expect my neighbours not to park across my driveway?

[coldwater]

We have our car parked on our drive, it has a drop curb too. Our neighbours have FOUR cars and a commercial work van, they can only fit two cars on their drive so park the other three vehicles on the road, usually with one parked right across my drive. It annoys the hell out of me, its not like they can't see we have a car and its not like i haven't asked them before not to do it.

We don't have a very good past with these neighbours, them doing DIY until 11pm (drilling etc) and waking my kids up, dog being left out for hours in the snow yelping (which i reported), her teenage children trespassing into my back garden and breaking the trellis i put up to stop them doing it and many more things. I had a row with the mum over the DIY, i asked her to stop and she got stroppy saying she could do what she wanted. I have never mentioned the fact i have caught her kids in my garden though.

Anyway, this morning i woke to one of their cars being parked across my drive, i went mad and said i was going round there, dp said just leave it, i am over-reacting. Am i? I now can't use the car today because the man who owns it has gone to work and surprise surprise has the key with him. So annoyed, selfish idiots they are. So AIBU thinking they should use their brains and not park over someones drive and block them in?

Yes i know i could park on the road, never any space thanks to these that think they own the road and i don't want to because of the teens that hang around outside all night getting up to no good.

Yeah, can't stand the cowardly reporting behind the scenes. Wimps!!

Mintyy this is kinda my point.

For what it's worth (again) the word moron means, by definition, an idiot. Which means that if you were to ban the word then you must surely ban all associated words such as idiot, plonker, numpty, fool and so on because how can you refer to someone's lack of IQ and not be offensive?

Secondly, I would wager that the word "cunt" draws more complaints and offends more people than the word "moron" yet the latter is deleted and the former remains.

There is no consistency. I would far rather MNHQ give us the decency to behave like adults. If someone finds a word offensive then by all means pull the OP up on it. As coldwater1 says, she would have apologised and that would be that. Instead we have a situation where someone else makes the decision about what to and what not to delete and as a result, many more people are offended by what is deleted and by what is not.

So just leave the damn words on there and allow us to use our own discretion please!

Had the person in question told me they found it offensive i would have been empathic, to suggest i lack the ability to show empathy is actually offensive considering no one actually knows me IRL.

Thanks Rhubarb!

Good point, well made Rhubarb.

I often wonder which word to use as a descriptor when someone shows the same shockingly ignorant (or is it provocative) behaviour as op's neighbour. It is a minefield.

So who reported? Anyone care to admit?

Why the slight name change coldwater? If you don't mind my asking?

I refer MNHQ back to the original wiki definition of a moron, in particular to this: "The word moron, along with others including, "idiotic", "imbecilic", "stupid", and "feeble-minded", was formerly considered a valid descriptor in the psychological community, but it is now deprecated in use by psychologists."

and this for idiot: "An idiot, dolt, or dullard is a mentally deficient person, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way."

Therefore my question is simple. Why delete moron and not idiot since both mean the same thing?

No its ok. I was being spammed with emails from mumsnet and my phone kept bleeping at me. I deactivated and re-registered using an old email address, should have registered with the other one in the first place really as the original email address is the one i use for work and uni.

You need to switch off notifications. Go into your MN account and change your notification settings.

I hate bloody spam too. I still get the odd email however about Mumsnet Bloggers or the Book Club which I'm not even signed up to

Oh, thanks. lol I did click one email at the bottom where it said 'unsubscribe' but i still got emails. Maybe i did it wrong. They can spam my old email address all they like, i hardly ever log in to it.

Ah the old "unsubscribe here" trick which just validates your email address. Nah, as you are logged in just click on your registration and untick all the boxes which will be automatically ticked to sign you up for every newsletter under the sun.

You may only log into your old email every now and then but when you do need to use it, you'll have to delete a hundred or so Mumsnet emails first. Including the ones slapping your wrist

lol Yeah that's true. I think i'll go and untick all those boxes after all!

I mentioned the same about the word idiot upthread because cretin, imbecile, moron are all considered alternatives to it.

It would seem fool is the only safe option or bastard, cunt, wanker...

GlassofRose you have misunderstood my point. You may not find the term "jew" used synonymously with miserliness offensive. And in my experience it seemed to be acceptable in the uk (when I lived there 10 years ago, it was regularly used by my colleagues who were educated and worldly and not yet influenced by Borat). However, I find it offensive and here in the USA it would be considered so by most people. I was simply making a point that different terms can have different levels of offensiveness in different places.

I understand you find it offensive and it's considered offensive in the USA (which I find odd considering the popular films featuring like Jonah Hill, Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen where being Jewish is humorous).

I'm also aware that different terms are acceptable in some places when they might not be in others. Especially apparent with American cartoons/films using moron (Toy story & spongebob) and the UK's mumsnet saying it's offensive.

So what is your point that I missed?

Out of interest: Are you Jewish or taking offence to money jokes on our behalf?

"I do wish posters would act their bloody age and just tell the person concerned if they have a problem instead of running to teacher."

Well given MNHQ's preferred method is for people to 'run to teacher' every time they have an issue is it any wonder?

Point was only that there are differences in what is considered offensive from one side of the pond to the other. Not profound, just a comment. I am Jewish (by blood). I didn't hang out with too many fellow jews in the uk as I am not practicing, so I was wondering if Jews in the uk were like here where lots of fun is poked at oneself. ie It's ok for me to say it's the jew in me that makes me frugal, but not ok for someone else to say it. I have conversations on the subject often with my black friends who will make comments about blacks that are acceptable because they are making them, but wouldn't be acceptable if I was making them.

Having said all of that, I try to not call people names of any sort whether they are politically acceptable like idiot, or not pc like moron. Neither is kind and in most cases is probably not fair (I'm a big believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt for just about anything....maybe the op's neighbor gets beaten up by her husband and was running late and decided that parking in the op's driveway was less problematic than the consequences of being late and dealing with her husband...ok it's far fetched, but maybe there's a reason. Doesn't make her behavior ok, but it does mean that she probably is not an idiot or a m).

the point was the original thread about the parking, but its escalated into this!

Stereotypes exist for reasons. In my opinion it's not insulting to acknowledge them in jest.

The fact you group people together as "black" rather then differentiating and fear acknowledging differences in conversation just shows how stupidly PC the world is becoming. To be honest I find the use of "black" rather than Ghanian, Nigerian etc a whole lot more offensive than a stereotype of Jewish people being misers.

The OP outlined the personalities of the neighbours... the neighbouring family do not have any respect for the people who live next door to them the descriptive used was used because of that fact.

peace and love people

damm I want parking updates ! They are far more exciting than splitting hairs over the English language....

GlassofRose, yet another difference between the uk and the usa. Here in the USA, the vast majority of the "blacks" know very little about their African origins and don't have any bonds to their ancestors' countries. The country they affiliate with is the USA. They prefer to be referred to as black or African American. I understand that this is very different in the UK. Most of my "black" friends in the UK knew and affiliated with their country of origin. On the other hand, most of the hispanics I know here in the usa, have strong bonds to their countries of origin because they are more recent arrivals to the USA. My El Salvadorian housekeeper would be offended if you called her a "Mexican" (but not offended if you called her hispanic). Things are different in the USA and the UK. And for that matter they vary quite a bit within the US.

By the way, in the spirit of being respectful to those around you....It may not be insulting to you to acknowledge stereotypes in jest, but it clearly is to others, so presumably Mumsnet is trying to accomodate that as best they can (I think it's a little OTT to ban the word moron, but I respect that I'm not an experienced public forum website manager and perhaps one has to be OTT to prevent unforeseen consequences).

I think it is downright rude to speak on behalf of a huge raft of people, black or otherwise. You cannot take offence on behalf of someone else and state how they identify themselves, that is patronising beyond belief.

People are individual, how about you identify them as their first bloody names???? I have Irish heritage but so bloody what? If anyone dared to tell me what my identity was or to be outraged on my behalf I would laugh in their faces.

Actually not everyone like to be identified by their first name. Some prefer you use their last.....Anyway, not quite sure what your point is. I am speaking about my friends and what they tell me, not a "huge raft of people." And actually I do believe you can (and should) take offense on behalf of other people. That's called standing up to bigotry and bullying and it's what we do in a civilized society.

I think taking offence depends on what it is. If someone is using any word maliciously to describe another unwarranted/ with obvious prejudice then I fully understand taking offence and voicing it. However if you just don't like the word somebody uses to describe another then the old Stephen Fry saying goes for me:

?It?s now very common to hear people say, ?I?m rather offended by that?, as if that gives them certain rights. It?s no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ?I?m offended by that.? Well, so fucking what??

Bloody hell. If Op came back here to give an update I doubt she'd bother now. Why can't people start a new thread when they get this far into a thread hijack? FFS.