A Brit Abroad

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My name is Terry and I'm a 50 something year old dis-enchanted ex-pat Brit living in Cyprus. Why am I dis-enchanted? You'll find reasons enough throughout my tumble log, along with quirky items that amused me and things I think need highlighting, and occasional quotes from some of my favourite novels. Oh, and maybe some original work of my own.

For my personal family blog please visit me at
A Mediterranean Sunset

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Sun Jul 5
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. Benjamin Franklin (via n1ghtcrwler)
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The government says the UK has moved from the ‘containment’ to the ‘treatment’ phase of Swine flu as the number of people catching swine flu continues to rise.  The Fawkes family are in London for another fortnight, before we head for France.  4 year-old Miss Fawkes is in day two of displaying possible Swine flu symptoms: high temperatures, tummy ache, headaches and a dry cough. Last night a worried mother took Miss Fawkes (who had a temperature of 39.1 C / 102.3 F) to the paediatric A & E unit of a London hospital where she was given a mask and told to go instead to a walk-in unit.  The walk-in unit told her there was a four hour wait and that she might as well go home and see her GP.  This morning the GP’s receptionist said that they could not have a suspected case of Swine flu in the waiting room and she was to go home. So in the last 48 hours we have been unable either to get our daughter tested, which is causing anxiety, or obtain a prescription for anti-viral drugs.  Bear in mind we have a two year-old daughter as well.  We are now trying to get a private prescription… Swine Flu Update - Guy Fawkes’ blog
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They’ve all gone now, hopefully to the nearest hospital. They came from the pool area and were all in bathing costumes so I’m assuming it’s a drowning or something. I’ll try to find out if the kiddy is OK later.
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I’m sat in the hotel lobby and a guy just ran in carrying an unconscious child, followed by a large crowd of panicking people. It doesn’t look too good. I feel a bit helpless
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SIR – Now that Gordon Brown’s administration is to take over the East Coast main line should the 10am King’s Cross to Edinburgh be renamed The Lying Scotsman?
Keith Porter in the Telegraph
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So now that all of you rebellious mob have finished celebrating the illegal secession of the American colonies from the benevolent embrace of the British empire can we get back to reality?

There are coups to condemn, rebellions to ridicule and election results to deride for Gods sake, or was that too much irony?

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It's Patriotic!

retropolitics:

When the fledgling republic cast around for a flag to embody its new spirit of independence, Betsy Ross was there with her needle and her hemp. Were it not for hemp, she might have had to paint the Stars and stripes onto a deer hide. Somehow, a ragtag army of farmers waving deerskins over their heads would have been less inspiring, and the country might never have been the same.
Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America were drafted on hemp paper. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and America’s other patriotic greats proudly put their names to hemp paper as no modern politician would dare to do. Washington and Jefferson grew acres of hemp, an activity that today would land them in jail for life.
Though hemp was banned in 1937, the United States suddenly reversed it’s position in 1942, subsidized the cultivation of the crop, and even made a short film urging farmers to grow it! What had changed? World War II.

Since 1937 the United States had been importing its hemp from the Far East. But with that supply cut off by the Japanese, the U.S. found itself in a bind. Every Navy battleship required 34, 000 feet of hemp rope to keep running. Without hemp millions of GIs couldn’t tie their shoes, and parachutes had no webbing. So hemp metamorphosed overnight from evil weed to the patriotic crop. Hundreds of thousands of acres were grown under government contract to save the country. After the war the government flip-flopped once more, and hemp became the evil weed again. But who knows when it will be called upon next to save a person, country, or planet?
(via The Hemp Manifesto)

I can buy hemp seed in my local supermarket.

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(via topherchris)
Good Morning Tehran! Greetings from the GOP

(via topherchris)

Good Morning Tehran! Greetings from the GOP

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I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make.

Sarah Palin’s facebook statement.

Does anyone know what the fuck she’s talking about? Who has left their positions for higher callings?

(via afghanibanani)

‘Stronger national security’??? The USA spends more on national security than the rest of the world combined. The only way to make it stronger is the Israeli model of building a big wall all the way around the country and not letting anyone in or out.

If I was an American I’d be asking just how much the true cost of ‘national security’ is.

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stevemakesnoise:
Fireworks, Marina del Rey, CA. Steve Craig.July 4th, 2009.
Amazing

stevemakesnoise:

Fireworks, Marina del Rey, CA. Steve Craig.
July 4th, 2009.

Amazing

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