Friday, April 8, 2016

Betty MacDonald, Maurice Sendak and a great winner

daffodils-wordsworth
Betty MacDonald in the living room at Vashon on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

Betty MacDonald fan club newsletter April includes the updated Betty MacDonald fan club essay ' Betty MacDonald and Dorita Hess '. 

There is also an article about Betty MacDonald fan club letter collection.

We are looking for signed or dedicated first editions in great condition with dust jackets by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen for our fans.

Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel  and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography and new Betty MacDonald documentary.

Dearest new Betty MacDonald fan club fans you'll receive a very important message by Betty MacDonald fan club event team.

This message includes a very nice Betty MacDonald fan club surprise and many info on our current Betty MacDonald fan club projects.

Join one of our Betty MacDonald fan club research teams, please. 

Thanks a million in advance for your outstanding support.

Let's talk about Betty MacDonald fan club book cover contest.

We introduce a very beautiful book cover by famous author, artist and illustrator Maurice Sendak.

You can vote for your favourite Betty MacDonald book cover.

Deadline: June 30, 2016

Betty MacDonald fan club book cover contest winner will be  owner of a signed first edition of one of Betty MacDonald's books.  

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli  and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.

Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.

Letizia Mancino's  magical Betty MacDonald Gallery  is a special gift for our Betty MacDonald fan club fans.

Enjoy a new breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.

Great Betty MacDonald fan club ESC news will be published on Betty MacDonald fan club blog.

It's a fact that Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany have been robbed winning Eurovision Song Contest several times.

A wonderful Betty MacDonald fan club ESC surprise for Betty MacDonald fan club ESC fans from all over the world is waiting for you.


Send us your ESC 2016 votes, please.
12 points for 1st place and until 1 point for your 10th place.
You are not allowed to vote for your own country.

Deadline: April 30, 2016
We are going to publish Betty MacDonald fan club ESC TOP 10 in alphabetical order.
Don't miss the chance to win two Grand Final ESC 2016 tickets.
It'll be very exciting.
Who will be Betty MacDonald fan club ESC winner 2016? 



Have a nice Friday,
 

Carina 

Don't miss this very special book, please.





Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald fan club

Betty MacDonald forum  

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )

Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )

Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University 

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel 

Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD

Betty MacDonald fan club items 

Betty MacDonald fan club items  - comments

Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I  

Betty MacDonald fan club groups 

Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund  











Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF  ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles 





David Cameron left dangerously exposed by Panama Papers fallout

PM gives only partial answers over father’s fund as revelations reverberate globally, forcing his Icelandic counterpart to resign




David Cameron faces questions from journalists about his family’s tax affairs during a visit to PwC in Birmingham
David Cameron was left dangerously exposed on Tuesday after repeatedly failing to provide a clear and full account about links to an offshore fund set up by his late father, as the storm over the Panama Papers gathered strength in both the UK and elsewhere around the world.
The prime minister and his office have now offered three partial answers about the fund set up by his father Ian, which avoided ever paying tax in Britain. The key unanswered question is whether the prime minister’s family stands to gain in the future from his father’s company, Blairmore, an investment fund run from the Bahamas.


After Downing Street said on Monday that the fund was a “private matter”, a journalist asked Cameron about it during a visit to Birmingham on Tuesday. Cameron replied: “I own no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.”
He dodged the key part of the question about whether he or his family stood to benefit.
Having failed to satisfy reporters, Downing Street issued a further statement that Cameron’s wife and children also do not benefit from offshore funds but again left the main question about the future unanswered.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who had called earlier in the day for an independent investigation, told the Guardian: “Three times Downing Street has been asked to provide a full and comprehensive answer. The public has a right to know the truth.
“We need to know the full extent of the links between Britain and the web of tax avoidance and evasion revealed by the Panama Papers at all levels.”



The leak of 11.5m files from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca continued to create uproar and upheaval around the world. The documents were leaked to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian, the BBC and other media organisations.
The latest developments include:

  • Barack Obama calling for tax evasion to be tackled worldwide.
  • The row claimed its first victim, Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who resigned in a row over his family’s offshore investments.
  • The German justice minister, Heiko Maas, said the country planned to introduce a new national transparency register to make offshore companies disclose their owners’ identity.
  • France’s finance minister announced that Panama would again be blacklisted as an uncooperative tax haven.
  • Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, announced that he would set up an independent judicial commission to investigate whether his family was involved in anything illegal through ownership several offshore companies.
  • Revelations that the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has secretly built one of the single biggest offshore property empires in Britain, owning dozens of central London properties worth more than £1.2bn through offshore companies supplied by Mossack Fonseca.
The row embroiling Cameron picked up pace on Tuesday morning when Corbyn responded to Downing Street’s assertion that the matter was private by telling reporters: “Well, it’s a private matter insofar as it’s a privately held interest. But it’s not a private matter if tax is not being paid. So an investigation must take place, an independent investigation, unprejudiced, to decide whether or not tax has been paid.”

Later in the day, Cameron told reporters: “In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares. I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some interest from and I have a house, which we used to live in, which we now let out while we are living in Downing Street and that’s all I have.”
Downing Street returned to the issue later. A No 10 spokesperson said: “To be clear, the prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The prime minister owns no shares.


“As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father’s land, which she declares on her tax return.” Downing Street also attempted to shift the argument back to Labour. A source called on people “suggesting that Mr Cameron and his family are benefiting from off shore trusts” to come forward with evidence. “The onus is on them to put up or shut up. The prime minister has put out a very clear statement.”
As well as pressing Cameron, Corbyn called for a cleanup of Britain’s overseas territories and dependencies, such as the British Virgin Islands, which accounts for about half the companies named in the Panama Papers, the Cayman Islands and Anguilla.
He said the government should consider imposing direct rule on British overseas territories and crown dependencies, which lie at the heart of the allegations.

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The government had already scheduled a meeting of G7 countries in London on 12 May to discuss the overseas territories and crown dependencies. Tax campaigners, however, said that government officials had been downplaying expectations for months, telling them that tax would not be high on the agenda and that instead the main item would be corruption, such as the low-level bribery of officials.
The shadow leader of the Commons, Chris Bryant, who was responsible for overseas territories and dependencies when Labour was in power and was involved in a standoff with them over transparency, said: “There is a great deal of power the government has if it chooses to exercise it, even without the nuclear option of direct rule.”
He said he had pressed them to be more transparent and tried to put pressure on them by refusing to authorise loans, but the standoff ended when the Conservatives took power.
The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, also responded to the Panama Papers. It said: “The FCA has written to a number of firms about this issue, including those on our systematic anti-money laundering programme, and we are working closely with a number of other agencies who are also looking at this.
“As part of our responsibility to ensure the integrity of the UK financial markets, we require all authorised firms to have systems and controls in place to mitigate the risk that they might be used to commit financial crime. We have also today published our annual business plan which identifies financial crime and anti-money laundering activity as one of our priorities for the year.”
In the US, Obama addressed reporters at the White House, making the highest profile intervention yet in favour of the global reform of tax avoidance.
“There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem. The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal,” he said.
The US president said the leak from Panama illustrated the scale of tax avoidance involving Fortune 500 companies, running into trillions of dollars worldwide.
“We shouldn’t make it legal to engage in transactions just to avoid taxes,” he said, praising instead “the basic principle of making sure everyone pays their fair share”.
Only about 200 US citizens have been identified so far in the leaked data, but the US justice department, which aggressively pursues cases both domestically but internationally, issued a statement saying it “takes very seriously all credible allegations of high level, foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States or the US financial system”.



Mister Tigerli’s  Eurovision Song Contest

Copyright 2013/2016 by Letizia Mancino
All rights reserved
translated by Mary Holmes

 

Are you saying that Mister Tigerli is in love with a new girl, Letizia?


You’ve got it, Betty.


And what’s happened to his beautiful Russian girl?


He loves her. She was with him for two whole weeks when I was in the USA. It’s just that Tigerli sometimes needs a bit of a change!


But he’s already got three girls.


He can still imagine having another.


But four would be enough!!


Not for the Casanova-cat. Oh Betty why is there in every cat a cock?


And why is there in every man a cock, Letizia?


Why, Betty?


My 'dear' Bob said  that three hens is only the “hors-d’oeuvre” for a cock


Am I only an “hors-d’oeuvre”?


Who then is his new flame?


“Natalie Horler!”


Surely not! Natalie of Cascada?


Exactly Betty, she is Mister Tigerli’s new love.


A television love then?


She sings beautifully and she is wonderful to look at!


That cat has taste!


Let’s wait and see if our Mister Tigerli feels the need of a top-model or a tennis star?


Is there also a good woman vet on the list?


Whatever for? Tigerli is a picture of health, Betty. Love keeps him young!!


In any case Tigerli is a clever cat: he is good at keeping his women occupied. You pay the rent and for his keep, Renate works in his rose garden, the Russian girl strokes him and licks his fur and Natalie?


Natalie takes care of his entertainment!


A cat with a good artistic sense!


A good artistic sense? Our Mister Tigerli? But Betty, what about my art? I hardly get to do any painting in my studio these days because I have to protect him from breathing in the turpentine fumes! 


I thought it was his studio?


Yes, yes but in the time before Mister Tigerli (b.m.t) I painted many oil paintings, but now when I sometimes do paint the pictures are covered with cat hairs!


You paint using a mixed technique, Roman Nose! Very modern!


But Betty, no one in a hundred years would believe that I had ever painted those pictures!


You’re right. The art historians will attribute all your works to Mister Tigerli!


What bad luck!


Be happy about it. That will be the only way that your pictures will come into the museums. Cat art is very sought after! When art is not innovative it has no chance!


Betty, why am I not a cat?


But now I want to know, Letizia, does Tigerli wants to get to know Natalie in person?


Naturally, and at once! He wants to practice with Natalie.


Does he want to chase mice with her?


No, he wants to sing with her!


What a wonderful idea!


You’re right Betty! In 2014 he wants to put on a performance with her!


No!!!


Yes, at the Eurovision Song Contest.


They will win!


He is already practicing the Eurowalk at home.


What is the Eurowalk?


Taking long strides in very high-heeled shoes.


That must be exhausting for a cat!


And how! He walks so slowly when we walk together round the house, he needs a whole hour to mark out his small territory.


We? You also?


No I don’t do that. Naturally he marks his area alone. But I’m there as his escort!


Yes, someone could kidnap him. He’s so famous!


At the beginning he was really scared of Natalie!


That’s how a great love can start to grow!


Oh the cat is cheeky enough. But he was afraid of her shoes!


He’s such a small chap.


He’s not so small! Have you seen the height Natalie’s heels?


Sky scrapers.


You’ve said it Betty.  A woman becomes three meters tall.


A woman would have no trouble biting the heads of the men.


Have you seen how strong the soles are? Just a kick from Natalie and Tigerli would be dead as a doornail!


That would be such a tragedy. These shoes are really weapons against men!


Absolutely!


One kick from these shoes could put a man’s delicate lower regions permanently out of action!


Better that spraying pepper in their eyes!


Then be careful when you both meet Natalie, Letizia. It would be best if you carried Mister Tigerli on your back. Do you also wear high heels?


Unfortunately not, Betty. I wear only ballerina type shoes.


Then Tigerli will not be able to look into Natalie’s eyes!


That is a problem!


He’ll only be able to look at Natalie’s breast!


But that will certainly charm him.


And also her.


I have once had a delicate cat bite on my breast and I can only recommend that to any woman.


What a pity that Mister Tigerli doesn’t live in Seattle!


It is a pity, Betty! Your Bob and Don wouldn’t have been against it!


Happy Natalie!


Tigerli and Natalie Horler together will certainly win the next Eurovision Song Contest!


Yes I’m sure of it!


But Tigerli will change the name from “Cascada”.


 Why, is he frightened of water?


No, but the name “Cascada” gives an image of water falling down, no upwards zip. The group would have no chance of winning with that name!


Tigerli is right. What name will he give the group?

 “Geyser”!
That's good! Very zippy!!


Like when he marks the trees!


With this name Tigerli and Natalie will have no trouble in winning the Song Contest! Do you know which song they will sing?


”We cats we can!”



END

Mr. Tigerli's favourite lady Natalie Horler. Isn't she Glorious?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HYTd7WDCPg


Cascada for Germany – Natalie Horler fährt zum ESC nach Malmö