One neoligism (posh for new word. Ed.) that has become prominent in recent times is doomscrolling, defined as the activity of spending a lot of time looking at your phone or computer and reading bad or negative news stories.
This can naturally be extremely depressing, hence the tendency of folk to seek comfort in online content not concerned with people’s inhumanity to their fellows to alleviate the feelings of despair, be this fluffy cat and dog photos, even fluffier photos of sheep (yes, I’m looking at you, Mastodon! Ed.). These are joined by wildlife and avian photography.
One of the sources of wildlife images that turns up in your ‘umble scribe’s timeline comes courtesy of Namibia Weather. This features a live webcam at a waterhole in the Gondwana Namib Park, which claims to be Namibia’s first live webcam and regularly posts stills from the feed on Mastodon.
The West of England Combined Authority – usually abbreviated to WECA – was established in February 2017 and covers the local authorities of Bristol City Council, Bath & NE Somerset and South Gloucestershire. The decision to establish WECA – after being proposed by central government – was one taken by the local authorities involved. There was neither consultation of the residents concerned, nor a referendum of the relevant electorates to seek their approval. Your ‘umble scribe therefore regards its democratic legitimacy as dubious.
The first election for the mayor of the new authority was held on 4th May 2017. It was won by South Gloucestershire Conservative politician Tim Bowles, a man who shunned publicity so much he was known by some in local social media circles as Invisible Tim.
The invisibility of the WECA mayor all changed when the next incumbent arrived in 2021, Labour’s Dan Norris. Norris so craved publicity he made great efforts to get his name in the media and in the public’s head so much that his efforts bordered on the narcissistic, leading your correspondent to refer to Norris in social media posts as Dan, Dan the Vanity Man. Indeed, it could be said that Norris would have attended the opening of an envelope if a press photographer was present to record the event.
Norris was renowned for two acts of self-promotion during his term of office, both involving buses. Firstly, his name appeared on posters on every bus stop in the WECA area, but more on that topic later. Secondly, not content with getting his name of every bus stop in the district, Norris decided he ought to be on the side of a bus as well, purporting to promote driving a bus for a living and advertise a free bus travel scheme, but actually a chance to get likenesses of a vain man and his dog on the side of a double-decker. WECA spent £10,000 on this sycophantic stunt that was ultimately ruled to have been spent ‘unlawfully’.
Norris’ term as WECA mayor ended in disgrace. He became an MP and was for the last part of his term of office Dan ‘Two Jobs’ Norris. In April 2025 Dan, Dan the Vanity Man was arrested by Avon and Somerset Police on suspicion of rape, child sex offences, child abduction and misconduct in public office.
Continuity vanity
In May Norris’ term of office ended. His replacement is Helen Godwin, who has been involved in local politics since 2016, according to her Wikipedia entry.
However, very little has changed with the change of incumbent. There’s still a free bus travel scheme (but for children of school age. Ed.) and the bus stop posters now feature Godwin’s name instead of her predecessor’s.
One might believe on the strength of the above evidence that something is seriously amiss in the West of England Combined Authority. For the last four years and for the foreseeable future, the authority seems to be in the grip of what is normally referred to as the cult of personality.
Wikipedia defines the cult of personality as follows:
A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, is the result of an effort which is made to create an idealized and heroic image of an admirable leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Historically, it has been developed through techniques such as the manipulation of the mass media, the dissemination of propaganda, the staging of spectacles, the manipulation of the arts, the instilling of patriotism, and government-organized demonstrations and rallies.
In addition to obvious examples like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Argentina’s Juan Peron, the cult of personality has over the centuries affected countries spanning the entire alphabet from Albania to Zimbabwe. It is currently flourishing in the United States where his MAGA lout supporters think Donald John Trump, the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist in chief, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat, can do no wrong.
In 1988 the US band Living Colour released a single, The Cult of Personality off their debut album Vivid. Taling about the single, band member Vernon Reid stated; “The whole idea was to move past the duality of: That’s a good person and that’s a bad person. What do the good and the bad have in common? Is there something that unites Gandhi and Mussolini? Why are they who they are? And part of it is charisma.“. Reid also remarked: “‘Cult of Personality’ was about celebrity, but on a political level. It asked what made us follow these individuals who were larger than life yet still human beings.“
One wonders why governments around the world are not at all keen in eradicating the scourge of the ultra-rich, whom the planet can ill afford to accommodate. Just look at the emissions from their private jets, let alone the dubious company they keep (e.g. the inauguration of the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump) and their attempts to buy elections.
One can only hope that any passing politicians will absorb and act on this valuable health advice.
Later today, the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, is due to land in Scotland for a bit of recreational cheating – assumed to be of the golfing rather than the extra-marital kind – at his two resorts of Turnberry on the Ayrshire coast and Menie in Aberdeenshire (“Twinned with Epstein Island”) in a break from his mission to Make America Grate Again (or something similar. Ed.).
Scotland’s The National has of course, put the news on its front page, but does not stoop to the sycophancy that The Donald craves and has come to expect.
The only people your ‘umble scribe has noted are actually looking forward to The Felon’s visit are the Scottish First Minister John Swinney and the alleged Prime Minister of the Untied Kingdom, one ‘Sir’ Keir Rodney Starmer, both of whom have arranged to hold meetings with tRump during his Scottish sojourn.
Meanwhile the Scots are planning a traditional warm welcome – hopefully carrying the force of emotion of the late Janey Godley.
Some consumer clickbait from yesterday’s Bristol ‘Live’, a Reach plc local news title.
Articles for the same product also appeared in other Reach plc titles such as the Manchester Evening News and Birmingham ‘Live’, although their readers were not informed that curvaceousness comes in four colours, as were the good burghers of Bristol.
The reason for this is because the headline writers on those papers can recognise ambiguity, unlike those at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth.
More years ago than he cares to remember, your ‘umble scribe was asked by one of his local ward councillors (now retired) to come up with a hashtag to publicise our fight against grime – litter, fly-tipping. fly-posting and other environmental crimes – in Bristol’s inner city wards of Easton and Lawrence Hill.
And so #TidyBS5 was born.
Well over a decade later, it’s very encouraging to see others using it, as per this mattress currently gracing St Mark’s Grove.
After Mandarin Chinese and Castilian Spanish, English is the third most spoken native language in the world today, as well as the world’s most widely learned second language, according to Wikipedia.
How it reached that position is a long and complicated story which has been reduced to a 22 minutes’ historical romp by the excellent Rob Words on YouTube.
Rob’s story of English from its earliest origins to the present day starts a long way from the shores of present-day England or even the eastern shores of the North Sea of what is now Frisia, northern Germany and Denmark where most of the origin stories for English start.
No, Rob starts in Asia around the shores and land between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea where it is believed the original ancestral language of English began, before moving both west and east to become the ancestors of the modern European languages and those of the Indian sub-continent based upon Sanskrit, the so-called Indo-European languages. For want of an actual name that has survived down the centuries, this ancestral language is referred to as Proto-Indo-European.
On the move westwards, the branch of Proto-Indo-European from which English developed is known as Proto-Germanic, which predated not just English and German, but also Dutch, Frisian and the Nordic/Scandinavian languages, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.
The story of English on the island of Britain actually begins in the 5th century after the departure of the Romans and mercenaries from across the North Sea who eventually settled are involved.
The influences of subsequent invasions – such as the Vikings and William the Invader‘s wine-drinking, Francophone former Norse marauders are also noted, as are the roles of Shakespeare, Caxton‘s printing press (especially Chancery standard English. Ed.) are all covered as is the effect on English of England’s/Britain’s role in invasion, conquest and colonisation since the mid-sixteenth century.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video as much as me; and learn something too, which I definitely did.
The dictionary definition of ambiguity is “the fact of something having more than one possible meaning and therefore possibly causing confusion“.
Any sensible person would therefore believe that ambiguity has no place in a newspaper headline.
However, newspapers are not written nowadays by sensible people: or so it would seem.
This is exacerbated by the modern media practice of trying to cram the entire story into the headline in a condensed form, as shown by the screenshot below of this piece from the Daily Post, a title in the Reach plc stable which serves the north of Cymru.
For the benefit of passing illiterate Reach ‘journalists’, an unambiguous version of the headline would read “Prisoner with smiley face tattoo and links to North Wales on run”.
It has since been rumoured that the smiley face tattoo has been recaptured by police. 😉
For those unaware of the actions of the racist US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under the less than benign presidency of the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, the mock-up US road sign is on the right (naturally. Ed.).
The cruel actions of ICE are all part of The Felon’s chief mission to Make America Grate Again (or something like that. Ed.).
![Close-up of bottom-right corner of poster which bears the wording West England [sic] Helen Godwin Mayor of the west of England](http://xislblogs.xtreamlab.net/slwoods/wp-content/uploads//sites/23/2025/08/weca1.jpg)
