Good one, commentator!

KJT

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
Janis Joplin

It was a beautiful, if rather breezy, day in the Peak District and 50 hilly miles were just the job, although I'm slightly knackered right now - fitness will arrive in its own good time. I confess the significance of the date totally escaped me just as I expect the significance of the 23rd of next month will escape the BC Welsh Mafia :)

OK, I'll tell you. It's the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.

Enjoy your meals of daffodils and the decorative leeks in your hats.

Geoff

I was looking at the St David's day recipe on the BBC and lamb, parsnip, carrot and such I understand but a sweed? What do I do, cut up a member of ABBA?

John in Wauwatosa USA very confused and not the least bit a canibal.

Being English I am accustomed to considering the Welsh, Scots, Irish, Manx etc. as subject races fortunate indeed to benefit from the benevolent guidance in their daily affairs offered by us. Indeed as proof of the value of this relationship, all these nations are now considered to have absorbed the elementary principles of liberal civilisation and recently have had a degree of peripheral authority handed back to them to see how they can manage by themselves. This is proving moderately successful and today I note that the Welsh have introduced a new law relating to the free car parking in the hospitals located in that principality. Encouraging signs indeed! The Irish factions are rumoured to be actually starting to talk to each other and as soon as they also learn to listen then further progress can surely not be far behind.

Scottish politicians are still undergoing training at Westminster. You may have heard that to date this has proved to be less successful. The last scion of one of the leading Scottish Public Schools, a certain Blair, proved to be a liar who took us into an illegal war. The jury is still out on the current trainee who managed to sneak in by the stratagem of using an English sounding surname as an alias although he had not the wit to change his Christian (I use the adjective loosely) name. Such a combination of deviousness and carelessness does not promise well however.

I will make an exception for the Manx whose parliaments do in fact pre-date our own. As far as is known they have had a fairly successful millennium but nevertheless you can be assured that we continue to keep a fatherly eye on their activities.

I am not sure any of the above can be dignified with the term colonial though, as they, together with sundry other small land masses, form part of either Britain, the United Kingdom, and/or the British Isles, all of which would preclude the description.

I am not sure what you mean by a transplanted Pom. I know many were at one time transported to Australia when the prison hulks began to show their age. I am afraid though that although their status in due course passed from convict to colonial they can no longer be deemed to qualify as the latter. There is a limit to what we can undertake these days when our financial resources are so tightly stretched and we have no longer a ready supply of Scottish and Welsh missionaries to dispatch abroad to shoulder the white man's burden. So I am afraid you will just have to manage on your own for the foreseeable future. Although as we currently do again have a problem of overcrowding in our prisons, there may be some opportunities fot further co-operation again soon.

The best status I can offer therefore is that of an ex-colonial. You mustn't be too disheartened by this as it is something you can share with the citizens of lots of other perfectly respectable countries including a couple in North America as well as a couple of hundred others spread throughout all corners of the globe.

The use of the term colonial in my comment was partially a little tongue-in-cheek, partially carelessness, and partially to spare the feelings of those who might otherwise feel a little excluded from our privileged 'club'.

Hugs,

Fleurie