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[[Category:Politics and Society|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]==Politics and society==__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Foxcroft1009473085|title=Calories The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand yearsTom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We’re in Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that postapplies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-Christmas period when all 2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pastybook for you. If that's what you're looking for, bloatedI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, over-fed but under-nourished complexion{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight compelling read and a new year’s resolution should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to Get Healthypolitics. So it’s ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the perfect time for seventh book in a new diet book to hit series which looks at the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, impact a government has made and the cover does little to dispel co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note most important. This book follows the subtitle, if you willwell-established format: '''a history series of experts from various fields review the state of dieting the nation when the coalition took over 2000 years'''in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dennis O'DonnellAlastair Humphreys|title=The Locked WardLocal|rating=45|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel |summary=Dennis O’Donnell spent 7 years working in a Scottish hospital Alastair Humphreys has walked and this is cycled all over the account of his time thereworld. And then written about it. It takes a special type of person For this book he walked and cycled very close to work home and then wrote about it. As he says in Mental Health serviceshis introduction, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and though Oaccess, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…''Donnell ultimately leaves One of the Locked Ward, he clearly is one joys of those people, made all the more remarkable by book for me was that the fact biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that this wasn’t his life long vocationthere are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', having previously worked as that every upside is likely to have a school teacher (downside for somebody and that there are some might say an equally challenging role)hard choices ahead. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224093606</amazonuk>1785633678
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Denise KiernanEdel Rodriguez|title=Signing Their Rights AwayWorm: A Cuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=Many Americans believe that the Declaration We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of Independence is the cornerstone as a saviour of the American democracycountry, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, the fountainthose hours-head long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren't in the American Way happiest of Life places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the American Dreamfather being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. The 4th of July is mother gets the couple jobs with the national holiday and often thought party to be ease some of the single most important date heat, but in American history.this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>159474520X</amazonuk>1474616720
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard HeinbergSarah Wilson|title=The End of GrowthThis One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured world
|rating=3.5
|genre=Business and FinanceLifestyle|summary=With My favourite Mary Oliver line is the newspapers full of economic doom one in which she asks ''What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'' I get to love that line so much because my answer is ''This! Precisely this.'' I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and gloom precious life the last thing you might way I want to. Sarah Wilson is equally lucky. In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I can't see that she acknowledges the source) she pushes us to pick up a book think about whether we really ''are'' living the life we want – the best life that reiterates it and then somewe could be living. Her answer is an unequivocal ''no, we are not''. But while this book may seem at first glance to Don't care what you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she's effing furious about the fact that we are not.|isbn=1785633848}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=5|genre=Travel|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a bit history of travelling by unconventional means with a downer, it also provides preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an insight into how things might just work out ok in the endelectric car was not totally outrageous. YesIn fact, they’ll it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153050|title=Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=Seeking some big changes – there have to be because light relief from the direction we’ve been heading in current political turmoil which is just not sustainable – but if we’re willing coming to adaptseem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards ''Britain's Best Political Cartoons of 2022''. Sharp eyes will have noted that we will survive was 're not yet through the main message I picked up as I flicked through year: the pagescartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905570333</amazonuk> Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David LammyB0B7289HKQ|title=Out of Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the Ashes: Britain After TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the RiotsSoul of America|author=Kari Loya|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=Just about everyone in Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the country was shocked as pictures of way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the 2011 riots (which began in Tottenham and spread period between two jobs seemed like a good time to other major cities in the UK) unfolded on our television screensdo it. EveryoneThe decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, that isVirginia to Astoria, except David Lammy, MP for the areaOregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. He might not have known when They had 73 days to do it would happen or what would trigger - slightly less than the riot, recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a year before, he said challenge that it would happenbe for most people who considered taking it on. This wasn't a lucky guess: Lammy Merv Loya was born in Tottenham 75 years old and brought up on the Broadwater Farm Estate as one of five children raised by his singlehe was suffering from early-parent mother and he knows whatstage Alzheimer's happening on the ground.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0852652674</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1739593901
|title=22 Ideas About The Future
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ed VulliamyJane Goodall and Douglas Abrams |title=Amexica: War Along the BorderlineThe Book of Hope
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society|summary=More than 38,000 people have been killed in The done thing is to read a book all the last 3 years in what Ed Vulliamy argues is way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an unacknowledged warexception here, on because I don’t want to lose any of the long border (2experience of reading this amazing book,100 miles) between Mexico and the United StatesI want to capture it as it hits me. The war And it is between drug trafficking gangs over control of the lucrative drugs trade from Mexico to the UShitting me. In this compelling and disturbing work of reportage Vulliamy travels through the borderlands meeting some of the people affectedThis beautiful book has me in tears. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546566</amazonuk>024147857X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Hayashi Danns and Leveque Sandrine1788360737|title=StrippedArtivism: The Bare Reality Battle for Museums in the Era of Lap DancingPostmodernism|author=Alexander Adams|rating=32|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Before I can start, I should qualify that I have never been, nor tried to Can art ever be, apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a lapdancervacuum. It is made by people. Nor have I ever gone to a lapdancing club, nor ever tried Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes tomodifying the social environment in which he develops’’. I have no opinion on the matterTherefore, save that I can't imagineall art must be political, even implicitly. Alexander Adams in the world of free internet porn, paying some averagely attractive woman to wiggle her semi-nudity his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the general direction Era of my face, and thinking Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it erotically arousingis art for art’s sake. So I come The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to this academicallybecome more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-designed volume on the matter with no prejudicewing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. If only that were the case with the creatorsOr at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905570325</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen H Segal1398508632|title=Geek WisdomThe Wilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde|rating=4.5|genre=Popular ScienceLifestyle|summary=I am by no means It had been on the cards for a fully fledged geek, while but on it was the Big Bang scale I'm probably more week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of a Leonard than a Pennyeating only wild food. I The end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was weaned on ''Star Trek ''perhaps not the best time to start, chose ''Hitchhiker’s Guide... '' as my reading aloud piece for in a Year 7 examworld where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and think it would be more than a little fun to take pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a trip to Comic Convariety of terrains. At the same timeShe had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, there are gaping holes in my knowledgefreezer and dehydrator. My first celeb crush might have been ''Blake’s 7’s'' Villa but I've never seen She had a ''Batman'' filmcar - and fuel. Most importantly, never read she had shelter: this was not a comic book, never quite understood what all the plan to ''Star Warslive'' fuss was about. If Sci Fi is a religion, then this is the book that can fill me in one the stories, the parables, the rules, as it were, of geekdom. I had wild just to have itlive off its produce.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594745277</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laurence Manley (editor)1529149800|title=The Cambridge Companion Things You Can Do: How to the Literature of LondonFight Climate Change and Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows|rating=3.54|genre=Politics Home and SocietyFamily|summary=The history We begin with a telling story. All the birds and animals fled when the forest fire took hold and most of London is a long them stood and storied onewatched, unable to think of anything they could do. The tiny hummingbird flew to the river and it's unsurprising began taking tiny amounts of water and flying back to drop them into the fire. The animals laughed: what good was that so many people have written about the capitaldoing. ''I've always loved m doing the citybest I can'', its history and novels and plays set within Londonsaid the hummingbird. And that, so was really keen to get my hands on this new volume in , is the only way that we will solve the Cambridge Companion seriesproblem of climate change – by each of us doing what we can, however small that might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521722314</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1638485216
|title=Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement
|author=Frederick Reynolds
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. It has everything to do with character. Period.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Frank FurediMatthieu Aikins|title=On Tolerance: The Life Style Wars: A Defence of Moral IndependenceNaked Don't Fear the Water|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Furedi It's easy to forget at times that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not by any means a Professor of Sociology at criticism, but rather a testament to how well Matthieu Aikins – a UK university so he'll know Canadian citizen who decided to accompany his subject matter inside outfriend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast and at times painful journey. The short preface tells us that 'tolerance has been emptied There are tense moments and gripping accounts of its moral and intellectual meaningborder crossings which had me on edge the whole way through.' This publicationBut it's aim is written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to argue perfectly envisage the case for tolerance in societyenvironments and people described.|isbn= B09N9157T6}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785633074|title=Staggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry|rating=4. How its meaning has changed over 5|genre=Humour|summary=Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the centuries until today''primus inter pares'' (that's rather fuzzy for those of you who are Eton and wateredOxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime'' movers are the special advisers - the SPADS -down meaningwho are the driving force behind the government. Professor Furedi We are in the privileged position of having access to the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who was spurred on to writing this book because behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he firmly believes that tolerance has been lost somehow, will certainly be the man to be almost invisible in some areas of public and private lifewatch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441120106</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Mullin1846276772|title=A Walk-on PartThe End of Bias: Diaries 1994 - 1999How We Change Our Minds|author=Jessica Nordell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We tend to remember where we were and how we heard about Anyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the deaths of people like John F Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Princess Diana, but I'd add another person extent to the listwhich they suffer from it: John Smith. I remember sitting in my office and it's simply a colleague coming in to tell mepart of everyday life. She added 'I suppose we'll have that dreary Gordon Brown as leader now'White men will always come first. We'd many angst-ridden miles to go The able will come before that came about but Smith's death is the opening entry in thisdisabled. Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the third volume (but first chronologically) preserve of Chris Mullin's Diariesthe white man. This book covers Even when those who wouldn't pass the first period medical become a part of an organisation it'New Labour's rare that their views are heard, from Smiththat their concerns are acknowledged. It's death until Mullinpersonally appalling and degrading for the individuals on the receiving end of the bias but it's assumption into government in July 1999not just the individuals who are negatively impacted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685230</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tina Rosenberg1529148251|title=Join the ClubMisfits: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the WorldA Personal Manifesto|author=Michaela Coel
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Teenagers in South Carolina have become involved in the anti-smoking movement, passing out information encouraging their peers ''How am I able to educate themselves be so transparent on paper about the ways big tobacco companies try to get them hooked. There are youngsters in South Africa who’ve refused to have sex without a condom because of the danger of HIV rape, malpractice and AIDS. Minority students in Texas have challenged data going back years by succeeding at calculus where traditionally students of their race have struggled. Whypoverty, yet still compartmentalise? Because other people have done It's as though I were telling the same thing, and they want to fit intruth whilst simultaneously running away from it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848313004</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Max Pemberton0008350388|title=The Doctor Will See You NowWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=The NHS ''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is one of those things that everyone seems to have an opinion aboutbe seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and this of course includes those of us who work for said organisation (the worldultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' 's 3rd largest employer, don'tcha know). Max Pemberton is one of those people: a doctor, though despite what you might assume from the title, not a GP but a hospital medic. This is his third book on the subject of life (and death) within the walls of a hospital, plus the odd excursion We Need to rather misnamed Care Homes, and itTalk About Money''s not a bad read. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340919949</amazonuk>}}by Otegha Uwagba
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bob Marshall-AndrewsRichard Brook|title=Off MessageUnderstanding Human Nature: The Complete Antidote A User's Guide to Political HumbugLife|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLifestyle|summary=Bob Marshall-Andrews entered Parliament in 1997I am a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, rather too late to be a career politician (he was already an established QC) and with a profound distrust sometimes books choose us. In my case, this is one of authoritythe latter. He Not so very long ago, if I had no aspirations towards officecome across this book I'd have skimmed it, found some of it interesting, which was perhaps as well for all concerned as he but it would become best known for being a dissidentnot have 'hit home' in the way that it does now. I believe it came to me not just because I occasionally enquired as was likely to which party held his allegiance and eventually concluded give it a favourable review [ ''full disclosure The Bookbag's u.s.p. is that he went with his conscience. The last three Labour administrations have spawned more political memoirs people chose their own books rather than any other getting them randomly, so there is a predisposition towards expecting to like the book, even if it doesn't always turn out that way'' ] – and but also because it is a book I did wonder if this would be just one more needed to add to the pileread, right now.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846684412</amazonuk>1800461682
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Blixen1787332098|title=Out Of AfricaHow to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World|author=Henry Mance
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Some books are hard to read''When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and even harder to reviewgroups: cows, dogs, foxes, elephants and so on. This is particularly true of what are essentially academic or "professional" books and you come to And we assign them as a lay reader. This then is my starting position places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on Ashes sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and Sparksmillions of wild animals stay out there, ''somewhere,'' hopefully on the next David Attenborough series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521170907</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Hewlett1523092734|title=The Sarkozy PhenomenonA Women's Guide to Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort|rating=45
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=The old saying is that 'cometh the hour, cometh the man' and whether or not it's the electorate's ability to pick the man or whether he was only seen as the right man She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in retrospect is a moot pointher life. There are, though, some surprising people at the head of European countries at the moment – with Silvio Berlusconi Again and again and Nicholas Sarkozy at the head of my personal listagain. My [[Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni: The True Story by Valerie Benaim and Yves Azeroual|last attempt]] to find out more about Sarkozy proved to be too light-weight for my tastes'' (Alma Derricks, but this time I've gone to the opposite end of the scale with a book from Nick Hewlettformer CMO, Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick and published by Imprint Academic. I mention those points because there is no attempt to present this as populist writing: it's scholarly from beginning to end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402391</amazonuk>}}Cirque du Soleil RSD)
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dambisa MoyoPolly Barton|title=How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly And the Stark Choices AheadSounds|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Moyo's first bookWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Dead AidWhy Japan?'' was Japan has been on my radar for a well regarded while and oft discussed title when if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I worked in Developmentwould have visited by now. In a country where it was hard to find any book at all, somehow every ex-pat household seemed to have at least one copy of I may get there later thisyear, and but I followed the sheep and had a readam not hopeful. It was a great, insightful book that we could all identify withAnd like Barton, and I was eager don't know the answer to read the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her secondfeelings in respect of the question in the first essay, if somewhat unrelated workwhich is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846142350</amazonuk>1913097501
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|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=Xinran I was brought up on maps and first came to my notice with her 2002 book "The Good Women -person narratives of China" which retold tales of the women she had come across through her work in Chinese radiofar away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, where for many years she I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had hosted which was the local equivalent of a cross between Woman's Hour guts to simply go out and a late night phone-in talk showdo it. She has been busy bringing us other stories in I also didn't inherit the meantimekind of steady nerve, but in this latest work she returns ability to talk to those early days in radio strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the stories she learnedrequisite 'bottle'. Many In order words I'm not the sort of these stories she decided were too painful to tellperson who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years. They speak of children, specifically daughters, abandoned by their Chinese mothers one way or anotherFabes did precisely that.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535750</amazonuk>1788161211
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Politkovskaya1504321383|title=Nothing but the Truth: Selected Dispatches Single, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Louisa Pateman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyAutobiography|summary=Anna Politkovskaya worked for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, becoming particularly famous for her critical reports on the wars in Chechnya, on Putin, on state corruption ''You can't be happy and fulfilled on life in Russia under his regimeyour own. She never avoided controversy and received You are not complete until you find a number of death threats before she was murdered in October 2006. She had reason to know these were no idle threats – one of her articles here entitled man'Is Journalism Worth the Loss of a Life?' reports the attempted murder of one of her colleagues.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526689</amazonuk>}}
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