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Archive for the ‘memorandum’ Category

Miep Gies.. Rest in Peace… Your job is done here on earth.. and we thank you for doing it…

Miep Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, has died in the Netherlands aged 100.

She and other employees of Anne Frank’s father Otto supplied food to the family as they hid in a secret annex above the business premises in Amsterdam.

Anne’s diary of their life in hiding, which ended in betrayal, is one of the most famous records of the Holocaust.

It was rescued by Mrs Gies, who kept it safe until after the war.
……………….

I didn’t know what to say. The only thing I could manage was: ‘That ought to be interesting.’”

Mrs Gies also remembers the day the Franks were taken away and how she went up into the empty annex to find the pages of the diary lying on the floor.

Removing the pages, she did not read them immediately, telling herself at the time: “These may belong to a child, but even children have a right to privacy.”

Miep Gies died in a nursing home after suffering a fall just before Christmas.

source http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8453331.stm Date 12/ jan 2010

Popularity: 2% [?]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7836142.stm

Farewell the man who told me I could do Art.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, who had cancer, died on Christmas Eve aged 78.

He wrote more than 30 plays including The Caretaker and The Birthday Party. His film scripts include The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

His style was so distinctive, “Pinteresque” entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

I loved some of his works.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14% [?]

I have recently been reading this fantastic book by Thomas Firbank, originally written in 1940.

A fantastically comical, yet interesting insight into sheep farming in the snowdonia national park pre and during the wars.

It also covers there journey over the 14 13,00 mountains,  and is a great read.

Whilst trying to find the exact location of the farm on google, I came across this article.  dated 2005.

A Snowdonia hill farm made famous in a best-selling book has been acquired by a conservation body.

Dyffryn Mymbyr near Capel Curig was left to the National Trust in a bequest by hill farmer, Esmee Kirby.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/4215429.stm

Now why isnt it listed on the national trust web site as somewhere in gwynedd to visit?

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-property-searchresults_2.htm?type=region&target=10

Answers please. As I actually would love to go and see the place!

Popularity: 15% [?]

Dawn here Maldwyn Jones’ Daughter the fisherman who went missing back in April. i’m after a favour, i’m doing a walk up Snowdon 2 May 09 and wonder if you could post it on here for me to get the sponsorship money up, i’m doing it for the Porthdinllaen Lifeboat who were out looking for my day, it was also printed in the Caernarfon Herald today

For more information on the walk, or to donate money, email Dawn at mcfc_76@hotmail.com

Popularity: 21% [?]

following a search on local history I came across this site.

Hidden Lives Revealed provides an intriguing encounter with children who were in the care of The Children’s Society in late Victorian and early 20th Century Britain. Find out more

Its really very interesting!

Popularity: 14% [?]

Asha and mummy went to Piggery Pottery this morning, near Cwm Y Glo.

Umm. The play area is currently out of use, so that was a disapoitment, but we went to llanberis for that instead.

It cost £4.50 to buy a pig to paint. Then you pay £1 to paint.

So that was £5.50 to paint a pig which I can buy 6 for £7.58  bakerross

Umm.. Will i be going again? Probably, as Asha enjoyed it.. but value for money? I dont feel it is. If the Play area had been working, and she had been offered the chance to paint a stone or do the pottery wheel I may be more positive about it, but we wernt.

The staff however on the whole were very friendly and helpfull. The cafe was clean and the coffee was o.k.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Source BBC NEWS – 20th july 08

The DfT said from 2009, new biometric ID cards would be introduced for people who work airside in the country’s airports, “allowing an individual to be linked more securely to their own true identity, helping protect against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism”.

source BBC news- 20th july 08

Prison chiefs have dismissed renewed claims that a biometric identity system at a Scottish jail failed so badly it let inmates have a free run.

The issue was raised in a House of Lords exchange on biometric ID cards.

[Source: BBC News- 20th July 08 ]

The government has already spent £32m preparing for its ID card scheme even before it becomes law.

That means spending rose from £25,000 to £63,000 a day in the last six months of 2005, the Home Office said.

And now for the scarey stuff!

According to no2id,

To begin with you need to get them to come to you.

The government’s solution to that problem is to make

people report themselves when they get a passport.

As part of the creeping move to state identity control in Britain, ID interrogation centres are being set up all around the UK . To begin with there will be 69, on top of the existing Passport Offices. A company called Mapeley, which owns the offices of HM Revenue and Customs

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2263208.stm The Inland Revenue has confirmed that it sold its estate of more than 600 buildings to a company based in a tax haven, and admits it wrongly announced the properties were sold to a UK firm. ………..All are part of Bermuda-based Mapeley Holdings Limited, a company ultimately owned by George Soros and US group Fortress Investment)

(HMRC), was given the job of setting them up. Planning applications were mostly in by the end of 2006. Operations started tentatively in 2007, and by the beginning of 2008 over 50 centres were open.

from 2007 onwards when people as young as 16 apply for their first adult passport, they will* have to attend their nearest interrogation centre. There they will be subject to background checks, questioning to test their story against official records, photographs, and, before long, fingerprinting. Registration on the national ID database(s) – the ‘National Identity Register’ or NIR – will follow.

[Source: http://www.no2id.net/ Accessed July 2008]

Now consider this factor.

GP – medical records on database…

Social services records on data base

HMRC records on database.

Banking records on database.

Shopping records on database – tescos, clubcards

Some shops ask for postcodes when purchasing goods – pc world for vat recipts, Brantamo, for shoes. for example.

Leisure cards ownership = on database.

Library cards = on database.

Every book you purchase from a high street store, with credit cards, can be checked back.

If who you are becomes a problem, then so does your ID.

Popularity: 17% [?]

I’m a big white van,

And I can go anywhere.

I’m a big white van,

And I go ZOOM

I’m a big white van

And I can go anywhere

I’m a big white van

And I’ve been to the moon.

My van is finally gone from my hands, and into a new world. Its done me proud, over 150,000 in three years. Only let me down a couple of times, and kept us all safe and sound.

Goodbye white van.

Popularity: 18% [?]

A local fisherman has recently been assumed dead at sea.

A search has been called off for a fisherman missing from a boat off the coast of Gwynedd.

The missing man was named locally as Maldwyn Jones, 60, from Nefyn. Coastguards said it is thought he was not wearing a lifejacket.

His boat was found empty on Monday after a relative spotted it going around in circles, off Trefor.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7372528.stm

Popularity: 22% [?]