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What you want to say – 13th of April 2016 April 13, 2016

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. lcox - April 13, 2016

We’re now taking applications for this year’s MA in activism at Maynooth. More details at http://ceesa-ma.blogspot.ie/2016/04/ma-ceesa-masterclass-in-changing-world.html.

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2. Michael Carley - April 13, 2016

Huey Long in full flow:

and there’s also a documentary. I haven’t watched it yet but the opening sequence on the FF-FG division is great:

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Joe - April 13, 2016

Brando in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (or whatever film it was): “Huey Long said every man is a king. And I’m the king in this house.”

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3. Joe - April 13, 2016

Posted off my NUI Seanad ballot paper today. Price got my number one, because we have to save the seals. Hearne number two, because ex-SWP and all that. After that it was various nice people, women’s rights, human rights, lgbt rights, someone who managed to get ‘campaigner for social justice’ beside their name on the ballot paper.
Twenty candidates on the paper. I think I got as far as about number ten. No preference for the builder Beades, or the neoliberal McDowell or the official FG candidate or the ex gen sec of the PDs or the several ‘entrepreneurs’ who deemed putting ‘entrepreneur’ beside their names would get them votes.

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sonofstan - April 13, 2016

Weel done on getting to 10 – think I got to five.

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Joe - April 13, 2016

I think Begg got my number 10.

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RosencrantzisDead - April 13, 2016

Are their any decent people on the TCD ballot?

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RosencrantzisDead - April 13, 2016

There* ::sighs::

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Joe - April 13, 2016

The boy is in Toronto and he told me to feck the TCD litreacha um thoghcháin into the bin. Decent people? That mother of two, mature student from Tallaght who was recently President (?) of TCDSU sounds decent. Can’t remember who else (decent or indecent) bar Norris, Averil Power, Sean Barrett and a chap living in London who wants votes for emigrants.

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sonofstan - April 13, 2016

Daughter cannot speak too highly of Lynn Ruane

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sonofstan - April 13, 2016

^^^Mother of two from Tallaght referenced above

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4. botheredbarney - April 13, 2016

Robert Ballagh has written an interesting article, wonderfully illustrated, about the work of artist Jim Fitzpatrick, in the March-May issue of Irish Arts Review. Called ‘Children of the Revolution’, it mentions Fitzpatrick’s recent portraits of key players in the 1916 Rising, and then praises his neo-Celtic works and their accessibility to the general public. He reproduces and praises the worldwide impact of Fitzpatrick’s red & black painting of Che Guevara, and mentions that the artist donated the copyright in 2013 ‘to the people of Cuba’. Fine. A lot of this is well known, but at the end of the article Ballagh slates the professional visual arts establishment in Ireland for not buying any of Fitzpatrick’s paintings for permanent display. Here are some scathing sentences written by Ballagh:

“…the fact that, over many years, Jim Fitzpatrick has, quite independently, built a successful career without much help or assistance from the mandarins who police the art scene, challenges the sense of control they relish. If contemporary art is to survive and prosper then the democratic deficit that lies at the heart of the modern art world must be challenged… It must be accepted that there is more to art in the world today than simply that which conforms to modernist ideology. Our public museums and galleries must be opened up to a wider and more representative range of work in order to become places of pleasure and enlightenment rather than whitened sepulchres.”

The Irish Arts Review appears quarterly and sells for 10 euro in many newsagent shops.

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Jim Monaghan - April 13, 2016

I bought his new Connolly, and then saw an old one in the local auction house which I bought as well. Both incredible bargains. And with teh first one, the knowledge that the money went to a good cause..

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5. paulculloty82 - April 13, 2016

Halligan has pulled out of the talks, so the IA are down to five, and the Rural Indos are also divided:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/john-halligan-of-independent-alliance-walks-out-of-govt-talks-rural-tds-group-split-729445.html

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gendjinn - April 13, 2016

Jaysus, Healy-Rae as a minister?

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botheredbarney - April 13, 2016

A junior Minister for Humour?

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Michael Carley - April 13, 2016

Just as well you remembered the comma, or I’d have wondered if there was a brother I’d never heard of.

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gendjinn - April 13, 2016

‘up the kingdom!

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6. CL - April 13, 2016

Alpha Centauri here we come:
http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/News/4

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gendjinn - April 13, 2016

Will they be taking the cat and/or the lobsters?

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7. CL - April 13, 2016

“The Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing 42,000 workers in the New York region, backed Sanders as he struggled to dent Clinton’s lead in a state each has called home.

Deriding “fierce attacks” against unions over the last several decades, Sanders called organized labor the last line of defense against corporate greed in America….

Following his endorsement announcement, Sanders joined a picket line of Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) workers, who went on strike on Wednesday after contract talks hit an impasse.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-sanders-idUSKCN0XA18F

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8. gendjinn - April 13, 2016

Nuit Debout and Democracy Spring are both being ignored by the media over here. Most of the first wave left wing blogs are also ignoring both.

I believe they are silent because any coverage of mass protests is perceived as validation of Sanders message. They are all working very hard to paper over the chasm between the neoliberal and progressive wings of the party. It’s nowhere near ’68 but it’s shaping up to rival if not surpass ’80.

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Ed - April 13, 2016

Who do you have in mind by ‘first wave left wing blogs’, by the way?

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gendjinn - April 14, 2016

The Iraq war protest era blogs – DailyKos would be the most well known.

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9. Starkadder - April 13, 2016

I mentioned this piece before about how certain articles on Wikipedia had deliberately given a right-wing slant:

http://www.beggarscanbechoosers.com/2012/05/how-right-wingers-took-over-wikipedia.html

While looking at Wikipedia’s sister site, Wikiquote, I noticed that
certain pages on Wikiquote have a very strong right-wing bias, much
stronger than you would get in equivalent sources such as “The Encarta Book of Quotations” by Bill Swainson.

A good example would be the Leon Trotsky Wikiquote page.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Quotations_about_Trotsky

The majority of the quotes about the Old Man there are overwhelmingly negative. More worringly, several of the anti-Trotsky quotes there are taken from such dubious sources as

* “The International Jew” by Henry Ford,

* a Kevin MacDonald quote from the racist magazine “The Occidental Quarterly” *

*and the anti-semitic book “The Biological Jew” by Eustace Mullins.

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WorldbyStorm - April 13, 2016

That’s not good.

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Starkadder - April 13, 2016

The Wikiquote page on Mussolini is almost as bad: it follows the Jonah Goldberg school in deliberately cherry-picking quotations from dubious sources like “Front Page” magazine in order to misrepresent Mussolini as a “Marxist” and
a”Leftist:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Quotes_about_Mussolini

There’s nothing there mentioning Mussolini’s sexism, little
about his worship of violence, and little about his complete
rejection of any form of political equality.

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WorldbyStorm - April 13, 2016

I hate that Fascists = Socialists crap. Lazy, stupid and wrong. This is depressing stuff you’re finding.

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gendjinn - April 14, 2016

Isn’t a chunk of wikipedia a straight transcription of an out of copyright set of Encyclopedia Britannica?

I mean I could be making that up, but similar problems are to be found in old editions of EB.

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EWI - April 17, 2016

Well, Wikipedia has also claimed that Eoin MacNeill was President of the I.R.B., so there you go.

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oconnorlysaght - April 17, 2016

‘Lazy, Stupid and Wrong’, absolutely. But natural, once you remove the class issue from the analysis and just see the different bully boy groups of Hitler and Stalin beating up individuals in the name of their respective dictatorships.

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10. Tomboktu - April 14, 2016

Am I imagining it or did I read that a sex worker broke off a relationship with a man when she realised he was a Tory minister? (On which case, probably the culture secretary, but I can’t find that reference.)

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lcox - April 14, 2016

It was a joke. He claimed he broke off the relationship when he discovered she was a sex worker. Sex worker activists responded that she broke it off with him when she discovered he was a Tory minister and hadn’t disclosed this dirty little secret…

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11. Michael Carley - April 14, 2016

For reasons related to the so-called Prevent strategy, I have been looking up the list of proscribed organisations in the UK. Here you go:

LIST OF PROSCRIBED GROUPS LINKED TO NORTHERN
IRELAND RELATED TERRORISM
Continuity Army Council Orange Volunteers
Cumann na mBan Red Hand Commando
Fianna na hEireann Red Hand Defenders
Irish National Liberation Army Saor Eire
Irish People’s Liberation Organisation Ulster Defence Association
Irish Republican Army Ulster Freedom Fighters
Loyalist Volunteer Force Ulster Volunteer Force

Why is Saor Eire still proscribed?

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sonofstan - April 14, 2016

Does the strategy cover far-right ‘English’ organisations in anyway, Michael? I’ve been steadfastedly ignoring all communications to do with this, so it may well be buried somewhere in my inbox.

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Michael Carley - April 14, 2016

List is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2

As for what Prevent covers, it’s a bit vague to say the least. We’ve seen one of the slides used in the BIS (actually police CTIU) training for people who need it and it’s very dodgy: attitudes to women can be a sign of `radicalization’, likewise tattoos and beards.

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EWI - April 16, 2016

attitudes to women can be a sign of `radicalization’

Pro or anti? I can see this being used in all sorts of creative and unforeseen ways.

likewise tattoos and beards

Never trust a beardie. And I assume that, given past bombing campaigns, both Young Labour and Young Tories are being carefully watched as a terrorist recruitment ground for vulnerable youths.

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Michael Carley - April 14, 2016

According to the Bath Prevent policy, I am supposed to register my need to access material which `supports terrorism’. Given that list, I would need to be very careful about clicking on a link to AP/RN to see what Adams and McGuinness are up to, or even to see something from the left archive.

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Ed - April 14, 2016

I guess it’s pretty hard to get off the list once you make it? The INLA has stood down and I think it’s been a long while since we’ve heard a peep out of the IPLO.

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12. JC - April 14, 2016

Why did Maureen O’Sullivan sign on to that letter along with a bunch of right-wingers and opportunists? I don’t think Tony Gregory would have seen it as his job to demand a stable conservative government. He would have said that was their problem.

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13. Starkadder - April 15, 2016

The 11th Dublin Anarchist Bookfair is taking place today and tomorrow. More info here:

http://www.wsm.ie/c/dublin-anarchist-bookfair-latest

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14. roddy - April 15, 2016

Lest anyone think that gombeenism stops at the border,SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone has just been awarded a “deer stalking certificate” by the “British association for shooting and conservation”.Mcglone appears in the Belfast Telegraph brandishing an over and under shotgun which he is aiming at something whilst looking away at right angles from his “target”.He can’t wait to get into action at “the Barons Court estate( wherever that is) but I think the deer will be safe enough if Patsy adopts that shooting stance! “Pro life” Patsy is known to engage people on the streets of Magherafelt all year round,equipped with a pocketful of “business cards” which he distributes to anyone who gives him the time of day.He is involved in a constant battle to stay in the public eye in a constituency where SF outpolls him 3 to 1.

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RosencrantzisDead - April 16, 2016

Are the quotes around “business cards” meant to convey that this is a euphemism?

Because I am having flashbacks to when I was a student in Belfast and the SDLP decided to, somewhat ill advisedly, run their campaign for SU alongside the university wide Safe Sex initiative.

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15. EWI - April 16, 2016

Newton Emerson’s feelings are being hurt by anti-Tory ‘intolerance’. Cue an article with innumerable sly digs and cockroach-like claims.

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/newton-emerson-tory-hating-is-the-last-bastion-of-anglophobia-1.2609473

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Dr. X - April 16, 2016

Newton says:

“Commonly boiled down to Margaret Thatcher killing Bobby Sands, the longer view shows that Labour brought in all the hardline security policies, then the Tories relaxed them.”

Which makes me go “hmmm”. I’ve heard people say that Labour were no friends to Ireland, on the basis of their security policies in the north, but I’ve also read stuff that the road to Bloody Sunday began when Heath came to No. 10 in 1970.

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WorldbyStorm - April 16, 2016

Always thought this guy got em right.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan

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Starkadder - April 16, 2016

How long before all the Wikiquote quotes about Beven
end up dominated by stuff from “Mankind Quarterly” and “Spearhead” ? 😦

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WorldbyStorm - April 16, 2016

That would be grim

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EWI - April 16, 2016

I’ve also never heard of Labour issuing a ‘shoot to kill’ policy against supposed British subjects.

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16. CL - April 16, 2016

Party leader Gerry Adams welcomed the Dáil’s approval of a Sinn Féin-initiated proposal to establish and all-party housing committee to “produce a report on solutions to the unprecedented housing crisis the State and citizen’s in need of housing face at this time”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/fg-and-ff-maintain-contact-in-bid-to-avert-talks-crisis-1.2613616

Power is already being dispersed from the executive to the legislature and the assimilation of Sinn Fein to the extreme centre is well underway.

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botheredbarney - April 16, 2016

“…and the assimilation of Sinn Fein to the extreme centre is well underway.” What an amazing political development. The Extreme Centre – that’s a concept for Eoghan Harris to analyse forensically.

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CL - April 16, 2016

Possibly. The shaping of Irish history and politics by Eoghan Harris is now widely acknowledged. But it may well be a little early for his role in the development of market economics to be fully recognized.

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17. roddy - April 16, 2016

No Patsy is much too boring to be associated with any double entendre.His “business” cards simply advertise his constituency office.He mistook Mrs Roddy’s sister for someone else along the street one day and after acknowledging his mistake ,he still produced a card.

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18. Starkadder - April 16, 2016

Since Risings against British rule are in the news at the moment, It’s worth pointing out today is the 270th anniversary of the Battle of Culloden:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-35959138

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19. Tomboktu - April 18, 2016

Why does this not surprise me, even if it does shock me?

Angus Deaton (the Nobel prize winner in economics):

Anne Case and I published a paper in early November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showing a reversal of the long-established decline in mortality among middle-aged whites in the US, especially those with only a high school education or less, and that the fastest rising causes of death were suicides, accidental poisonings (mostly from drug overdoses, both legal and illegal), and alcoholic liver disease.
…

The Post, very recently, correlated the ‘deaths of despair’ across counties with the voting patterns in the primaries showing, as many had surmised, that the deaths are correlated over space with votes for Donald Trump.

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CL - April 18, 2016

The immiseration of the working class is as old as industrial capitalism.
Countervailing forces are being set in motion.

“Sanders speaks to, and speaks for, a large group of people who have arrived with unexpected rapidity at a consciousness of their own exploitation, and even their “immiseration,” to use a Marxist-Leninist term. They see the global economic and financial system produced by neoliberal fiscal policies and “free trade” as a massive con game designed to steal from the poor and give to the rich. They see the bipartisan political system of the United States as paralyzed, poisoned and all but powerless.
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/14/bernie_and_the_bolsheviks_why_the_implications_of_sanders_political_revolution_go_further_than_you_think/

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20. gendjinn - April 19, 2016

Does anyone have a link to video of Gerry Collins imploring Albert not to “burst the party!”

I think it’ll soon be very apropos of Clinton/Sanders.

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21. Joe - April 19, 2016

I planted a bunch of brassicas about a month back – brussel sprouts and broccoli. They were going very well, I had them well surrounded with the blue slug pellets. Then last week I had a look and they had been savaged. I think the slugs tactics were similar to the British, French and German armies in WW1. Waves of suicidal assaults until a break was made in the enemy line and then pour in and overwhelm the opposing forces. The brassicas are no more. Bought some more at the weekend and will plant them with more serious blue line of pellets this time.
How does everyone else’s garden grow?

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LeftAtTheCross - April 19, 2016

Haven’t really started yet. It’s colder here in continental Meath than it is there in maritime Dublin. This weekend is ear marked for digging and planting, so unfortunately I’ll be missing the party’s Easter event at Arbour Hill for the sixth time in a row. We have some flowers and courgette seedlings growing indoors, but I’d be fearful of putting them out yet as there’s still the occasional night frost. Meanwhile the well established and hardy rhubarb gave us our first crumble the weekend before last and lots more where that came from. The trees are in bud, just waiting for some heat I suppose to unfurl their leaves, but it was remarked (not by myself as I didn’t notice) that our plum tree looks like it’ll be having a bad year. The apple tree is looking strong though, so more sunday fruit crumbles ahead later in the year hopefully.

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Michael Carley - April 19, 2016

Started some peas indoors and planted them out a couple of weeks ago: they seem to be doing fine. The ones I planted direct haven’t shown their faces yet.

Radish, rocket, lettuce are coming up after a fortnight. Beetroot and chard not yet after a week.

Leeks started indoors are lifting their little heads after a week. Ate the last of last year’s leeks at the weekend.

Indoor chillis doing alright; courgettes started indoors yet to make an appearance.

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Gewerkschaftler - April 19, 2016

One of the few advantages of only having a small balcony to plant thing in containers on, is that slugs (the despair of my life in the Wesht) succumb to vertigo and fall of the wall before they can reach my tender plantlets.

In Ireland I gave up on every brassica apart from curly kale and that was prone to mass attacks by cabbage whites.

I’m experimenting with raspberries and blackcurrants in containers this year – they used to be great in Ireland where I had the space – especially if you planted a range of early to late fruiters.

Leafing is slow here as well, due to the temperature not going over 13 degrees most days.

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gendjinn - April 19, 2016

The ability to grow tomato plants outside still amazes me, last year I got 140lbs into sauce. So this year I’m only doing a single bed of tomatoes & various bell/hot peppers. Strawberry bed is showing green berries and the pumpkins are thriving. The other beds are filled with peas, beans, aubergine, lettuce, beets, radishes, carrots, onions, shallots, kale (for the desalination) courgettes and squash. With the El Nino this year the Loquat tree is bursting with fruit.

On the flip side I fight a never ending battle with several ant colonies nearby that dwarf WWI for their ability to feed bodies into the firing line. And the deer that wander down from the park and thru the neighbourhood – they got into my garden a few years back and savaged it – especially the parsley!

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Michael Carley - April 19, 2016

So which part of Ireland are you in?

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gendjinn - April 19, 2016

Just west of Dublin, California.

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Michael Carley - April 19, 2016

Your garden had that air about it: it’s far from the garden-fresh aubergine you were reared.

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gendjinn - April 19, 2016

Far indeed! I’d gladly trade you some sun for some rain 🙂

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Michael Carley - April 19, 2016

I’ll huff and puff and see what I can blow your way.

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22. botheredbarney - April 19, 2016

I transplanted lettuce to a patch in the back garden ten days ago, and today I’ll transplant swiss chard spinach. I bought these at a nursery. It’s still too cold in my area to sow seeds of carrots, beetroot or scallions. I’ll bung in some potted parsely that I bought at Tesco, currently on the kitchen window sill – it can withstand frost and produces leaves for picking throughout the summer.

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23. Michael Carley - April 19, 2016

Just in case anyone doubted how low Labour had sunk before Corbyn gave it a chance to redeem itself, the party has just barred McDonald’s from its conference, because it refuses to recognize unions. The response from a couple of MPs:

A Labour critic of Jeremy Corbyn accused the NEC of adopting a “snobby attitude” after it vetoed the McDonald’s stand, losing the party £30,000.

Wes Streeting, the Labour MP for Ilford North, told the Sun on Sunday: “I’m exasperated that we should throw away £30,000 worth of sponsorship like this. It smacks of a snobby attitude towards fast-food restaurants and people who work or eat at them.

“McDonald’s may not be the trendy falafel bar that some people in politics like to hang out at but it’s enjoyed by families across the country.”

Ian Austin, the former minister, tweeted: “Why has UKLabour turned down 30k from McDonald’s? My first job was in their branch of Dudley High Street.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/17/labours-nec-bans-mcdonalds-stand-from-party-annual-conference

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