Betty MacDonald Fan Club. Join fans of the beloved writer Betty MacDonald (1907-58). The original Betty MacDonald Fan Club and literary Society. Welcome to Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society - the official Betty MacDonald Fan Club Website with members in 40 countries.
Betty MacDonald, the author of The Egg and I and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Series is beloved all over the world. Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald biography and his very witty interviews on CD and DVD!
If you are interested in joining this Betty MacDonald fan club project you are welcome.
Several
Betty MacDonald fan club fans shared very interesting details and info
regarding Betty MacDonald's fascinating experiences in Hollywood.
Thanks a million!
We are going to publish some new Betty MacDonald fan club interviews by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel who is working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography.
Good luck dear Wolfgang Hampel! Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is a great guy even if he is a bit strange.
My British friends would say he's a bit eccentric but that's like Onions in the Stew, don't you think.
Do I agree with Betty MacDonald's description of women and men? Oh yes I do!
Betty MacDonald was such a very intelligent lady and she knew very well what she was writing about.
If we believe that Mr. Tigerli acts a bit strange what can we say of the behaviour of some men?
Betty wrote the truth! By the way I don't hate men! I love them - some of them - especially mine!
My family and friends adore Traci Tyne Hilton's books very much.
We are very happy that she is one of our great Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.
Betty MacDonald fan club fans from all over the world like Linde Lund's interview with Traci Tyne Hilton very much.
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.
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:
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”.
Betty MacDonald fan club interview with author Traci Tyne Hilton
Copyright 2014/2016 by Traci Tyne Hilton & Linde Lund
All rights reserved
I can find several interviews with you. Which two ones do you prefer?
Here
are two recent interviews. The second one is a "character interview"
with the characters from my newest book, which is kind of fun.
This
is a picture of me on my tenth wedding anniversary at The Betty
MacDonald Farm on Vashon. My sweet husband planned our weekend away, but
didn't realize that I actually wanted to STAY at the farm! But he did
drive me there to see it before we went home, though. I'm pretty little
in the picture, but if you look closely, you can see me by the door to
the barn.
Which book by Betty MacDonald did you read first?
My
mom gave me her copy of The Egg and I when I was about 11. It was my
first taste of Betty Macdonald, but I was definitely hooked! I read it
at least once a year until I was in my twenties and finally got around
to finding the rest of her work at my library...and then collecting
reprints.
What do you like most in Betty MacDonald's books?
I love her over the top humor paired with her brutally honest representation of life.
Is there anything you dislike in Betty MacDonald's books?
One
could call her portrayal of the Native Americans of the Pacific
Northwest in the Egg and I racist, but she was a woman of her time, and
the things she writes about, such as alcoholism, are not untrue. They
are just reported with that brutal honesty that she also uses for her
white neighbors--no one is safe from her sharp pen. So, it makes me a
little uncomfortable to read, but at the same time, I think it is real
(from her perspective at least, and her perspective is valid,) and I
don't dislike it, if that makes sense.
Oh yes! I wish I had had them as kids, but I have been reading them to my
kids which is even better! My sister in law bought me Nancy and Plum
several years back, and I love it. I don't know why it's not a classic
on par with the Secret Garden or the Little Princess! But...even better
than Nancy and Plum are the Piggle-Wiggle books. They crack my kids up,
and were the first chapter books that my girls really devoured. They
crack me up, too!
What is your favourite book by Betty MacDonald?
It
is still The Egg and I. It's a book that formed so much of my opinion
on fiction and held such an important part of my growing up--I don't
think anything could beat it. My husband and I call snobby activities
"The Theatah and the Dahnce" and I've been known to say "I itch, so I
scratch, so what?"
Did Betty MacDonald influence you as author?
Absolutely. Though I write mysteries I want them to be funny, and I hold Betty MacDonald's work up as a standard for humor.
What do you think is the reason Betty MacDonald is beloved all over the world?
Betty's
work gives us a glimpse into a world that we would have never known
without her. Both life in the Olympic Mountains and on Vashon are so
different from regular town and city life. I think readers love to
escape, and the more remote the location, the more different the people
we get to meet, the more we love the work! Betty's books help us all
escape to a time that is getting farther and farther away, and a place
that doesn't even exist anymore, but even when it did, it was
unexpected, hilarious, and stunningly beautiful.
Dearest Traci I hope I don't bore with so many questions. I
wasn't a bit bored! Betty MacDonald is definitely my favorite author
and I loved having a chance to talk about her work and why I love it so
much!
As I already mentioned there are several Betty MacDonald fan club fans who enjoy your books very much.
That
people who love Betty MacDonald also like my books is almost
unbelievable to me, and really is a dream come true, as an author. When I
was a young girl, curled up with her work, escaping to that remote egg
farm, I never dreamed that someday people who loved her, would also
enjoy what I had to say.
Dearest Traci thanks a million for this wonderful interview.
Lots of love to you and your family.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends. His Interviews have been published on CD and DVD by Betty MacDonald Fan Club. If you are interested in the Betty MacDonald Biography or the Betty MacDonald Interviews send us a mail, please.
Several original Interviews with Betty MacDonald are available.
We are also organizing international Betty MacDonald Fan Club Events for example, Betty MacDonald Fan Club Eurovision Song Contest Meetings in Oslo and Düsseldorf, Royal Wedding Betty MacDonald Fan Club Event in Stockholm and Betty MacDonald Fan Club Fifa Worldcup Conferences in South Africa and Germany.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honour Members are Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald's nephew, artist and writer Darsie Beck, Betty MacDonald fans and beloved authors and artists Gwen Grant, Letizia Mancino, Perry Woodfin, Traci Tyne Hilton, Tatjana Geßler, music producer Bernd Kunze, musician Thomas Bödigheimer, translater Mary Holmes and Mr. Tigerli.
