Shami's £500,000 to help girls get degrees - despite them already doing better than boys at university...

Eastern Kentucky and other areas of Appalachia hit hard by a sharp drop in coal jobs would share in a $1 billion lifeline under the budget proposal put forth Monday by President Barack Obama, though the budget faces difficult prospects in Congress (note from Ben -- it was controlled by the Republicans at the time).

The budget includes a proposal to release $1 billion from the federal abandoned mine land fund over five years for reclamation projects that could improve the economy of distressed coal communities.

Though details are still to be worked out, distribution of the money would be based on factors such as unemployment rates and the potential to link reclamation of land and polluted water to job-creating strategies, according to the White House.

Wikipedia wrote:An estimated 90%[41] of Appalachia's earliest European settlers originated from the Anglo-Scottish border country—namely the English counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, County Durham, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the Lowland Scottish counties of Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire and Wigtownshire.

Most of these were from families who had been resettled in the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland in the 17th century,[42] but some came directly from the Anglo-Scottish border region.[43] In America, these people are often grouped under the single name "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish". While various 20th century writers tried to associate Appalachia with Scottish highlanders, Highland Scots were a relatively insignificant percentage of the region's early European immigrants.[43]

Germans were a major pioneer group to migrate to Appalachia, settling mainly in western Pennsylvania and Southwest Virginia. Smaller numbers of Germans were also among the initial wave of migrants to the southern mountains.[16] In the 19th century, Welsh immigrants were brought into the region for their mining and metallurgical expertise, and by 1900 over 100,000 Welsh immigrants were living in western Pennsylvania alone.[44] Thousands of German-speaking Swiss migrated to Appalachia in the second half of the 19th century, and their descendants remain in places such as East Bernstadt, Kentucky, and Gruetli-Laager, Tennessee.

Lord Foul wrote:Is this sort of thing the point at which "positive discrimination" becomes mere discrimination, and looses all "positivity"?