[snorgle] Religion? What's that? Irish Day (as they are changing the name to next year) celebrates the birth of the first Leprechaun, Christmas celebrates the birth of Santa Claus, and Easter celebrates the birth of a rabbit from a large chocolate-coloured egg. Everybody knows there's nothing religious about any of these holidays! Or so my friends at Clinton's tell me.

I think we should randomly celebrate any holiday so we get extra days off. After all, it's the 21st century, aren't we supposed to be living on the moon, working 3 hours a week and having our every need met by robots?

[snorgle] Well, I was disappointed in 1999 that we weren't all flying around in Eagle Transporters, and that the moon wasn't blown out of Earth's orbit by an explosion of nuclear waste on its surface...

[Rosie] You're probably right -- many Welsh, including some of my mother's ancestors, came to both Western & Eastern Pennsylvania for the coal mining jobs from 1850-1920; some, like the Quakers, settled in the Delaware Valley much earlier (1640s-1700s). You can find a ton of Welsh town names in suburban Philadelphia -- Bryn Mawr, Berwyn, Radnor, even North Wales (maybe one could instigate a name-change to Trellistown? :)
Unlike Britain, though, the mining is still going strong. East-Central Pennsylvania has the largest deposit of anthracite coal in the world, and I'll bet a-dollar-to-a-daffodil that no less than half of its miners are of at-least-part Welsh descent.

(Dr Q) Thanks. But I bet there isn't a suburb called Llanerchymedd. :-) (snorgle)Technological advances certainly make life easier in many ways but their effect in the long run is that they simply enable more work to be done, with no increase in leisure. We work longer hours now (at least in Britain) than say 40 yrs ago.

The more technology there is, the more companies want to lay people off! That's one way to increase leisure time..

I see Matt has just put his head round the door of one of the games. So, to celebrate - may I say "Hello Matt"?

The area in and around Ipswich (West of Brisbane) was settled by Welsh people (and Germans, and Scots, and people from north-east England) in the 1800s; there's a suburb called Ebbw Vale that springs to mind straight away. It was a fairly large coalmining area too. Should be able to remember some of the other places around there, but can't right now.

[DrQ] Hm. Isn't it a bit rude to go slapping peoples' email addresses on public web pages without asking first, or any attempt at obfuscation? [rab] Can you sort that our for me, please?

[DrQ] And let me make my sentiments on this clear - I consider it bloody rude, and you've made me really quite angry.

It took me longer than a few minutes to sort out, for various technical reasons, especially at a time when I'm really snowed under with work and can't really spare more than the odd minute or two to post to these sites. So add me to the annoyed list, and also bear in mind that I do occasionally charge for my time at lawyer's rates.