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Piazza

Italian: piazza Area libera, limitata in tutto o in parte da costruzioni, con varia funzione urbanistica, all'incrocio di più strade o lungo il tracciato di un'arteria importante: può avere rilievo monumentale ed essere indicata con una particolare denominazione. English: square Free area, limited in whole or in part by buildings, with various urban functions, at the crossroads of several roads or along the route of an important artery: it can have monumental significance and be indicated with a particular denomination.

Brexit Drama

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We made an anti-Brexit greeting card in the style of a film poster. The text in light blue, dark blue, and black is set against a plain white background. And the text reads; ‘We Need To Talk About Brexit’, and described as ‘A masterful blend of drama and horror’. The drama gets four stars, so it must be good! Why We Need To Talk About It The card is of course inspired by the psychological drama, ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’. And in the same way that We Need to Talk About Kevin is about a horrific act, so Brexit is a horrific prospect. Not just horrific, but pointless in its absurdity. What country would give up the benefits of being a major player in one of the world’s biggest tariff-free clubs? And what country would give it up for the uncertain uncharted waters as a minor player in the big league? Well, we are finding out. The Way Ahead The way seem strewn with rocks. Johnson, the former prime minister is already on record insulting the president of Britain’s biggest prospective tra

I Started a Petition for Government To Require All Shops To Close Their Doors

 Some problems are overwhelming, the problem of energy escaping from shops with open doors is easily solved. Shops (with few exceptions) put fear of missing out on potential customers above the desire to conserve energy – whether heating or air conditioning, No shop would feel disadvantaged if all shops were required by law to close their doors so as not to leak their energy to the outside world. I have started a petition to UK Government. It needs five supporters to click the link the Government provided in order for the petition to be registered. The petition: To save energy, require shops to keep their doors closed during opening hours. What I want Government to do: Introduce legislation requiring all shops to close their doors (that is, not open wide) during opening hours. This proposal is not solely about the current high cost of energy, but about wasting precious energy and the costs of producing it on a planet that is warming uncontrollably. Why I want Government to do it:  We a

France Postage

 The Week, 1 October 2022, News section, Page 7 Paris  Book delivery: The French government is planning to force booksellers to charge at least €3 per delivery, in an attempt to loosen the grip on the market of e-commerce giants such as Amazon. In 2014, France reacted to pressure from independent retailers by making it illegal to offer free delivery for books, but Amazon got around this by charging its customers a nominal one cent. By contrast, independent booksellers, who are reliant on smaller logistical networks, have to charge as much as €7 per delivery. Amazon condemned the proposed minimum fee, which applies to sales of up to €35, on the grounds that it would "negatively impact the purchasing power" of French book lovers who do not have close access to bricks and mortar bookshops. The proposal will now be passed to the European Commission for approval.  I remember reading that Amazon had a free postage tier above a certain spend in every country except France. And that

Local Fonts

  Local fonts means the the web-font is on the server that hosts the website. A web font is recognisable from the .wof and .wof2 file type. JenT posted a helpful post on the consequences of a court case where the claimant was successful in arguing that the owner of the web site had breached GDPR regulations by loading Google fonts because Google fonts trace the IP address of the person visiting the web site. As Hacker News points out, Google Fonts is a font embedding service library from Google, allowing developers to add fonts to their Android apps and websites simply by referencing a stylesheet. As of January 2022, Google Fonts is a repository for 1,358 font families and is used by over 50.1 million websites. For self-hosted sites, which our e-commerce site at FLYING TWIGS is, then the process of swapping over to local fonts is doable. We use GeneratePress and this an  Adding Local Fonts  page in the documentation on how to pull down Google fonts and host them locally using this tool

Poaching News

  Poaching News The iNews newspaper of 19 July 2022 reports on page 34 that elephant tusks and pangolin scales had been seized in Malaysia Malaysian authorities said yesterday they seized a container of African elephant tusks, pangolin scales and other animal skulls and bones estimated to be worth 80 million ringgit (£15m). The Customs Department said in a statement it discovered the contraband hidden behind sawn timber following checks on 10 July on a ship coming from Africa. This included 6,000kg of elephant tusks, 100kg of pangolin scales, 25kg of rhino horns and 300kg of animal skulls, bones and horns, it said. Investigations are ongoing on the importer and shipping agent. Ivory tusks, rhino horns and pangolin scales are believed by some to have medicinal properties and are in high demand in Asia. The World Wildlife Fund said the illegal wildlife trade threatens the survival of many species and has led to a 60 per cent decline in population sizes of vertebrate spec ies. I looked up

Commons Select Committee On Standards and Owen Paterson

Kathryn Stone is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards of the House of Commons. The Commissioner is an independent officer of the House of Commons, and the Commissioner’s remit is to investigate allegations that MPs have breached the rules found in paragraphs 11-18 of the House of Commons’ Code of Conduct for Members. Once the investigation is concluded, the Commissioner reports to The Commons Select Committee On Standards. In October 2021 the Commissioner found that Owen Paterson had breached the paid advocacy rules for making three approaches to the Food Standards Agency and four approaches to the Department for International Development in relation to Randox and seven approaches to the Food Standards Agency relating to Lynn’s Country Foods. The Commissioner said Paterson had “repeatedly used his privileged position to benefit two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, and that this has brought the house into disrepute” and that “no previous case of paid advocacy has see