but also 'South Asian'? presumably to differentiate him from the 'African-Americans' who work at Heathrow

there you go, been in Rough Trade at the end of that street but...

next summer if we're back will make Peggy buy some ;-)

never managed to find a single Polski Sklep in Berlin which was a right pain when I wanted forest fruits vodka to drink over icecream or sorbet in the summer like wut we do in Edinburgh where there are Polish shops on every Street corner

Going to Wroław everytime was irritating

Its a legacy of Empire, ad-hoc construction of lawful authority

In theory the UK parliament retained the right to legislate in both the Canadian and Australiam constitutions until the 1980s

I have a book at home which I will dig out after work

[msgs Cinema Club: "got a great premise for a fillum, call a scriptwriters meeting pronto"]

yeah now after 3 years of not being paid I can't afford it :-(

Essentially the governing structures can be described as a baroque exercise in Napoleon-dodging

There is precious little chat about the political imperative of constitutional reform and zero, zilch, nada about the administrative imperative

The Cabinet (and the PMship) are purely conventional - lawful authority flows to the Minister personally (in 'old' Ministries) and Secretaries of State collectively (for 'new' Ministries) - the PM and 'old' Ministers not being SoSs

As well as legislative organisations like the Privy Council which have an imperial/royal remit

So it is possible to 'simply forget' Northern Ireland for 3 generations!

One of the problems is the extremely odd UK political system.

The Westminster Cabinet contains ministers like:
PM, Chancellor - UK Ministers
Health - English Minister
Transport - England and Wales Minister (I think!)
DWP - GB Ministers

The reality is that nobody in the UK really cared

The armed general strike of May 1974 that ended powersharing is memory-holed because it offended a sense of national self

I asked The Times (among others) what their plans for 50th Anniversay were & would they commission a piece from me

None & No

The repective heads of state of the UK and RoI visited each other at the end of the 1990s - the last 2 countries to do that

whereas the death of 1 in 12 Germans and 1 in 6 Poles and the wholesale movement of Poland 200 miles West wasnt?

also there ought to be a Scottish version that says ER like the postboxes as, in the words of the auld sang, 🎵 There cannae be Lizzie Twa if there's no been Lizzie Wan 🎵

The Irish Constitution still claimed the north. If you dialled Belfast from Dublin it had a local dialling code not an international number, RTE gave a 32 county weather report.

my bad 1970, the GDR recognised the border in 1950, the BRD in 1970 (whilst not recognising the existence of the GDR) and the post-Soviet united Germany tidyied up what was not a disputed border

By contrast the UK border was comprehensively disputed

West Germany-Poland Treaty was 1973

I did briefly know Joan Lingard's son (or daughter - one of a couple anyway) - friends of friends but then the friends fell out with them, or them with the friends, but I went to their house in South Queensferry (once)

So that's me. Luvved them books.