We have places in the U,S,A, with quite similar names, but a little bit different, such as Middleborough, Massachusetts, and Middlesborough, Kentucky.
So, perhaps England has Farnborough and Farnsborough.

As for Adele Stephens, I pled for her to visit me and spend some time with me, but perhaps she was having too much fun with astronauts! - LOL !

Hi, there, Les,

Please do look up "Middlesbrough" in www.Wikipedia.org .
Then, given the right kind of software, there is a place near the top of the page where you can click and it will give you the pronunciation of " Middlesborough".
The software format is something called .ogg , so you have to have the right software with your sound system.

I have been assuming that from the sound of it, they had found a native speaker from those parts to say the word. He surely did not sound like an American, a Canadian, an Aussie, or an Irishman.
That word in the recording has three syllables.

As for "Fanshaw", perhaps:
1. The author heard that one several times while he was visiting the pubs of Farnborough! Hence, he wrote it down, and I read it.
2. There is a different place in England named "Farnsborough", and the people there say that name "Fanshaw". Check it out.

I recently found out that the world-famous Farnborough Air Show is only held in even-numbered years. Then in the odd-numbered years, it is interleaved with the world-famous Paris Air Show. Maybe some years ago, they held both of these every year?

I would like to see a Lancaster Air Show. Well, that one would be in Lancaster, California, which is one of the two gateways to the world-famous Edwards Air Force Base. That is one that is all about flight testing, and the Space Shuttle landed there on many occasions - before they started making most of the landings in Florida at the KSFC. Also, ONE time, the weather was bad both at Edwards and in Florida, so they landed the Space Shuttle at it's #3 air base in New Mexico.

The other town that is next door to Lancaster is Palmdale, and all of this is in Los Angeles County. Also, the famous British model Adele Stephens has a house in Palmdale or Lancaster. She has a house in England, too, and her hometown is in West Yorkshire, not too far from Sheffield.
(There is also a Sheffield in northern Alabama, not terribly far from the space center of Huntsville, Alabama.)

So, are you telling me that the people who live on Sark and some of the other Channel Islands are NOT British? Even if their soverign is Queen Elizabeth II ?

("Sark" is one of my favorite place names because of an S.F. novel by Isaac Asimov that is set mostly on a planet named "Sark".)

"As for where British people live - well, just about everywhere in the world."

My view of it is that for all practical purposes, the British people reside in just one (shrunken) hemisphere. This is largely because all of the former British possessions on the Pacific Ocean have either been granted their indepenence or turned loose (in a few cases). These include Hong Kong, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Gilbert Islands, Christmas Atoll, Malaysia (see Borneo), etc.

In addition, there is nothing left in South America or Central America anymore, except for the Falkland Islands. In addition, everything that I can think of in the Caribbean Sea is independent now, e.g. Jamaica, Granada, Trinidad & Tobago, Is there some tiny island left there under the rule of Parliament?

It is hard to think of any British possessions in or on the Indian Ocean, anymore, but I do remember Diego Garcia right in the middle of the ocean.
In the Mediterannean Sea, there is some soverign British territory on Cyprus, and all of Gibraltar. However, Malta has been independent for a long time.

Hence, there are inhabited British Isles scattered in the Atlantic Ocean, but as far as I know, none north of Scapa Flow, Scotland, or south of the Falklands Recall that South Georgia Island is unhabited except for temporary visitors. (Meteorologists, etc.)

Notice that the Government of the United States does NOT recognize any claims by any country to land in Antarctica. Nor does the United States make any claims of its own to Antarctica, but it reserves the right to do so if this ever becomes necessary in the future. (Note that large parts of Antarctica were first seen either by the crews of U.S. Navy ships or by American aviators. A large part of the antarctic coast is named Wilkes Land because it was discovered by Capt. Wilkes of the U.S. Navy.)

Therefore outside of the Britsh Isles and the Channel Islands, there are inhabited British places in the Atlantic such as Ascension Island, Bermuda, the Falkland Islands, and St. Helena.

Also note that if there is some island somewhere that has 40 or fewer people living on it, I am just going to call that island "negligible".
D.A.W.

There is a highway tunnel underneath the Detroit River that connects Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit Michigan. That tunnel has an unusual distinction. It is the:
only highway tunnel in the world,
that goes underneath a river,
and connects two different countries.
Rather amazing:

There are several railroad tunnels that connect Canada with the USA, underneath rivers, especially between Ontario and Michigan.
There is a highway tunnel that connects France with Italy, but it runs under dry land.
There are highway tunnels under the Hudson River that connect New York with New Jersey, but these are in the same country.

American and proud of it !
American spellings and proud of them: aluminum, analyze, be gone, favor, gotten, harbor, math, neighbor, parlor, vapor....

By the way, the AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY is spelled exactly thusly.

U,K, with commas? How dreadful.

I was irritated by an Australian publication that wrote "Pearl Harbour".

It is simple courtesy to spell things the way they are where they really are, such as I never would write these in a published article:
Sidney, Australia, Queen's Land, Melburne, Aukland, Middleborough, East Yorkshire, Newsouthwales.

We do have some places in the U,S, with unusual spellings, such as Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. I do go for simple spellings, such as Climax, Colorado.

By the way, New London, Connectict, is located along the Thames River in the eastern part of that state, and London, Ontario, is located along the Thames River in the southwestern part of that province.
But the way, this Thames River probably drains into a lake that you have never heard of. It drains into Lake St, Clair, and that is a much smaller lake that lies between Lake Huron and Lake Erie.
The St. Clair River flows out of Lake Huron and then into Lake St. Clair.
Then after just a few days in that lake, the water drains into the Detroit River, and thence between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and then into Lake Erie.
D.A.W.

Oh, flogging: ENRON Corp, executives, sub-prime perpetrators, Jimmy Swaggart, former president GWB, and Senators from Kentucky get to stand at the front of the LONG darned line for floggings.

I have read that the last public flogging in the U.S. was carried out in Delaware in about 1947. The last public hanging was in Kentucky, probably in the 40s or 50s. The county sheriff was a woman, and she pulled the trap, too.

In both of these cases, I was surpised by the locations, my best guesses beforehand would have been as follows: Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah,or Wyoming. Western states like that just have the reputation of being "rough-and-ready" and a little lawless.

D.A.W.

More about Australia. I once read an article that said that back in the 1960s and in earlier decades the Defense Establishment in Australia was dominated by the Army.

To me, that was a very curious thing because Australia:
1. Does not have any land boundaries with any other country, hence it does not face the prospect of invasions by its neighbors (such as France, Germany, Greece, Hungary - incl. Austria-Hungary, Poland, and Russia have for many centuries).
2. Australia has oceans all around it, so it seems that a strong navy would be essential.
3. The Australain Aborigines have seldom given the white people much trouble

Then I read recently about the fact that Western Australia wanted to leave the Commonwealth during the 1930s. Is it likely that the Australian Parliament built up it Army just in case a state like Western Australia, South Australia, or Queensland decided to declare a rebellion and try to leave the Commonwealth? Then Australia might need a good army to put down the rebellion? Could Australia have developed "George Washington II" or "Robert E. Lee II" in one of those states to lead the rebellion? Maybe West Australia and South Australia might decided to declare a rebellion together? These are strange ideas, and I don't know anything about them in reality. What did the Australian Army have in its contingency plans? .

I had heard that the Australian dominions had sent troops to South Africa to fight the Boers. Just watch the movie about Breaker Morant and read books about it.
Also, Australia sent troops to Turkey, Palestine, and France to fight during WW I,
Then came WW II, when Australia built up a large army to fight against the Japanese, espanded it navy, BUT in a critical move, it expanded the Royal Australian Air Force to more than 60 squadrons of warplanes -- but that was melted down to about 12 squadrons by the end of 1946. Australia also did not have much of an air force during the Korean War.

Anyway, sometime during the 1950s, the Royal Australian Navy acquired two aircraft carriers from the British. Then came other warships, including three guided-missile destroyers that were built in the United States. (In Michigan, believe it or not.)

However, the RAAF got a lot of F - 86 Sabre fighter planes, including some manufactured in Australia. Next came several squadrons of Mirage fighters from France, plus "Canberra" bombers from England. (Some of these flew and fought in Vietnam.) Then came 24 F - 111C fighter bombers from the United States and a good number of P - 3 Orion patrol planes from the United States.

Australia needed several squadrons of air-defense fighters, so it bought F - 18C Hornets from the United States, just as Canada, Spain, and Finland did. By about 2008, the F - 111s were getting really worn out, so the RAAF replaced those by F - 18E Super Hornets, a significantly larger and more powerful fighter-bomber.

The Aussie's big transport planes are all American-made C - 130 Hercules and C - 17 Globemaster III planes, too.

All of the larger surface warships of the RAN carry antisubmarine helicopters, and those are all American SH - 63 Seahawks. There are also Seahawks that are land-based. (They are also fantastic for air-sea-rescue.) In any case, when they fly warplanes in the Australian services, they are American onces.

Australia is also buying American M1A1 tanks, but an Australian shipyard is building sophisticated multipurpose warships there now.One is under construction, and the other two are planned to be finished by sometime in 2017.

An interesting combination is that one C - 17 transport can carry one M1A1 tank - a tank that weighs about 65 tons.
They only ways to airlift an M1A1: in a C - 17 or in a C - 5 Galaxy, and only the U.s. Air Force has any C - 5s.
D.A.W.

I read an interesting piece of Australian history from the 1930s. A lot of people petitioned the legislature of Western Australia to hold a referendum about leaving the Commonwealth of Australia and thence becoming a Dominion of the British Empire again. That referendum has held, and nearly 70% of the Western Australians voted in favor of it. Then the legislature sent a delegtion to London to discuss the matter with the British Parliament.

After listening to what the Western Australians had to say, and thinking about it, the British decided that this was a matter for the Commonwealth of Australia and that they wouldn't even listen to it anymore in London. Hence, the Western Australians were sent home empty handed.

Furthermore, the Australian Paliament in Canberra would not consider it at all because the Representatives and Senators from New South Wales,Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria were all against letting Western Australia go. It was unthinkable. It was just like California's trying to leave the United States. Very few or none of the other states would even consider it.

So, Western Australia was stuck in the Commonwealth, and nothing happened.
Furthermore, back in the 1930s and earlier, Western Australia was the poorest of the six states, so why did the people want to leave? I haven't figured this one out, yet.

Also, starting back in about the 1970s or so, Western Australia had an economic boom, especially in mining. That state has rich deposits of iron ore, aluminum ore, and other minerals - and furthermore, agriculture in the southwestern part has grown a lot. (Note that most of northern and eastern Western Australia is covered by deserts. There are even wild camels that grow there. These are the descendents of camels that were taken there back in the 1800s as beasts of burden.

Perth, Western Australia, has become a very large, prosperous city, too. Among other things, it has a good seaport on the Indian Ocean, it has a railroad that connects it to eastern Australia, and it has an intenational airport with good routes to southern Asia, Africa, and Europe. Perth is probably fourth in population in Australia, following Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
D.A.W.

Oh, suppose that Parliament passed a law that re-established slavery in the U.K.?
So, you are saying that there is no way that the Supreme Court could declare that to be an illegal law?

Suppose that Parliament passed a law that banned all alcholic beverages in the U.K. Then, there is no way that the courts or the Supreme court could declare that to be an illegal law?

I am also claiming that the U.K. can tell the rest of Europe to "Go to Hell" at any time and then abrogate the treaties between the U.K. and Europe. That is what a soverign country can do. For an example, New Zealand abrogated a treaty between itself, Australia, and the U.S. that was called ANZUS. Hence, ANZUS is dead except as a bilateral, mutual-defense

"Murder and manslaughter are not defined by statute in English law though it is true that various statutes exist that affect prosecutions and punishment for those offences."

Furthermore, you need to know that if Parliament did not appropriate any money for prisons, the feeding of prisoners, etc., then the courts could not send anyone to prison, Hence, murder and manslaughter would become offenses without any punishment - except perhaps by fines. Then could Parliament make it illegal to fine anyone for homocide?

In effect then, Parliament would have removed homicide as a crime from common law, and likewise for robbery, theft, assault, etc.

Then from what you have told me, there isn't a way that the Supreme Court could declare that to be an illegal law. Could the monarch do so?

Barring these, it looks to me like Parliament could cancel out the effect of any criminal laws by refusing to pay for any punishments.
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In the United States, Congress could hypothetically do exactly the same thing on the Federal level -- because nothing gets done unless Congress pays for it.

Here, we have states that have a lot of authority, including the power to collect taxes and spend money. The same applies to the provinces of Canada, and the states of Mexico. In contrast, the U.K. doesn't have any states or provinces.

Furthermore, Scoland has a parliament, but that was established with the consent of the British Parliament and the monarch, and I am assuming that they can cancel out the powers of the Scottish Parliament at any time. That seems to be obvious to me. What it the Scottish Parliament declared independence, but the British parliament did not want to grant that. I think that the British Parliament ought to immediately cancel all of the powers of the Scottish Parliament and disband it.
D.A.W.

As for the metallic chemical elements, watch out for aluminum, molybdenum, lanthanum, tantalum, and platinum, none of which have an "i" in the third-from-the-last position.

American metallurgists also have a way of calling an element "columbium", and after all, it WAS discovered in Connecticut.
(In other places, they want to call it "niobium" for no particular reason.)

By the way, the way to produce large amounts of aluminum was discovered independently by an American and a Frenchman in 1886.

The world's largest deposit of molybdenum ore is located in the Rocky Mountains at a place called CLIMAX, Colorado. It is a ghost town now. Molybdenum is valuable in making the turbine blades for jet engines (of all kinds) and gas turbines.

Platinum was discovered by Spanish explorers in the area of the Rio de la Plata in Argentina and Uruguay.

The chemical compound called tantalum carbide has the second-highest melting point of any substance, and it retains lots of its strength at extreme temperatures. This compound is also used in turbojet engines. The only substance that does a little bit better is hafnium carbide, but hafnium is a less-common element, and it is also very useful in nuclear reactors - so that it where it goes.

Lanthanum is the first element in the long series of "rare earth elements", called the "lanthanides", even though lanthanum is not exactly very rare. On of the elements in the lanthanides is europium, and the artificial element right below it in the Periodic Table is named americium.
Then then next element heavier than europium is gadolinium, named for a chemist & mineralist, and the element right below it in the Periodic Table is named CURIUM, for two of the most famous chemists & physicists of all time.
D.A.W.