oldbloke's mutterings

Without a citation from SP I guess I'm agnostic on the point. I can believe she found employment for unemployed jam-makers - in fact I may have a proper reference to that somewhere in The Literature I've been carrying about like a tortoise its shell - but not for the seed-makers, which is not credible at any level. The huge agricultural depression which took place after the Great War and was at its deepest by 1924 (and is largely unmentioned in histories more concerned with urban industrial decline) displaced a large number of lower-level agricultural labourers and the next level up of factory workers. This affected Scotland more than England but was also significant even in places like Kent and Essex, which had traditionally built its economy on the fruit industry (along with cattle and coastal trade).

Lecture endeth here.

I thought L was some sort of descendant of the Pankhursts? Or maybe I got it wrong. Does she know?

[indrawn breath]aye,[exhale]aye.

It's a fairly old Highalnd and Island legpull; that in the 1950s certain landlords were so mean they were selling midge bollocks to the scientific community for research purposes. Told to me as solemn truth in Uist in 1984.