Carry On Molly Bloom

A busy and messy day with little time for higher thoughts. Down at the farm the man told us he was getting fed up with phone calls from accountants looking for work. Either there is a shortage of work for them these days or there is a surplus of accountants, or both.

He is busy enough though and the broad beans under the covers are looking good. He told us what the arrangements for fresh asparagus from the field will be in the season. So we are praying for rain, not too much but certainly not too little.

Checking out the Irish Times today apparently the Republic is being told that Americans want them to stay in the EU at all costs because this is the only real way they will get inward investment.

As I suspect it is the kind of “investment” that helped get them into all that trouble in the first place this may not be good advice. And they thought the American’s were supposed to be their friends?

More interesting was Ireland’s connection with an earlier form of the EU, the Roman Empire. There is a slightly long but very interesting article about the Roman presence and influence in Ireland which is now beginning to emerge.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2012/0216/1224311839702.html

I have long thought that if the Romans were up and down the Irish Sea in all forms of vessels, mining in North Wales, had a heavy presence in Wales and moreover one of their major bases was at Chester they must have had continuing contact and trade with people in Ireland.

The article explains that they did not have a military or administrative presence because for what they wanted they did not need to. They could get it without all that trouble. The cost benefit of sticking to trade was clear.

The corollary of this is it might explain why the Roman activity in Scotland was so much less that to the South. There has been already been the suggestion that Hadrian’s Wall was as much as a series of trading posts as it was a deterrent to marauding tribes.

To a great extent this is mirrored across the general boundaries of the Empire in a number of places. Inevitably, sometimes ambitious Emperors or generals might want to try more but usually found out the hard way that it did not pay.

As for Ireland the obvious reason may be is that it is a large area of land and if the population was relatively small and arable agriculture limited then major grain supplies were not to be had.

Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.