Oddities | Steve Woods

Dumb Britain surfaces in Easton

02/12/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

For many years – longer than your ‘umble scribe chooses to remember – satirical magazine Private Eye has featured a column entitled Dumb Britain, which documents the hilariously wrong and ingorant answers given by contestants on television quiz shows.

However, dumbness in the form of lack of knowledge, intelligence or common-sense is not confined to the small screen; myriad examples may be found in real life, as evidenced by the photograph below taken in St Mark’s Road (note the apostrophe, Bristol City Council! Ed.) in Easton last week when the street was undergoing road works.

Maybe Private Eye should expand the criteria for Dumb Britain.
Pizza places to close in two non-existent counties

21/10/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities
According to Wikipedia, “A county is a type of officially recognized geographical division within a modern country, federal state, or province.”

Within England shires were established in the Anglo-Saxon period, shires were established as areas used for the raising of taxes and usually had a fortified town at their centre. This became known as the shire town or later the county town. In many cases, the shires were named after their shire town (for example Bedfordshire).

Middlesex is one of the thirty-nine historic counties of England. Its name is derived from its origin as a homeland for the Middle Saxons in the early Middle Ages, with the county subsequently part of that territory in the ninth or tenth century. As a county it managed to survive for the best part of a millennium, finally being abolished by the London Government Act 1963, which came into force on 1 April 1965.

The cardboard county of Avon has a rather different history to the former shire named after the home of the Middle Saxons. It was a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county in the west of England which existed between 1974 and 1996. Named after the Bristol Avon, it comprised the cities of Bath and Bristol plus parts of south Gloucestershire and Somerset, which formed the other two local authorities – Northavon and Woodspring – within the county. Avon proved to be deeply unpopular, with locals bemoaning in some instances Bristol’s loss of county status in its own right, as well as traditional affiliations to both Gloucestershire and Somerset respectively. In 1996, the county was abolished and its administrative area split between four new unitary authorities: Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

Although both Middlesex and Avon have officially been abolished that does not mean their use has been discontinued, usually by the uninformed. There are still organisations out there which believe Bristol is part of Avon and that the county named after the Middle Saxons still exist. One of these is currently in the news.

One of those organisations is Pizza Hut, which has announced a number of closures of its outlets in the Untied Kingdom, as reported by the Bristol Post/Live.

All told, 68 Pizza Hut restaurants will close after the company behind its the US brand’s UK venues entered administration. These include the following five outlets in the aforementioned non-existent counties, as listed by Bristol’s paper of (warped) record:
- Bristol, Avon;
- Cribbs Causeway, Avon;
- Enfield, Middlesex;
- Feltham, Middlesex; and
- Hayes, Middlesex.
A few news outlets, such as the BBC, actually took the trouble to remove the erroneous county labels instead of blindly copying and pasting the list verbatim from the original press release.

For those still in need of a junk food fix, plenty of other pizza outlets are still open to the public in both real and non-existent counties. 😀
Local rag treats bereaved like software

19/10/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Tech

Yesterday’s Bristol Post featured a report of a man found dead at the scene of a camper van fire at the Hengrove Mounds nature reserve in south Bristol.

Reports about unexpected or unexplained deaths are not exactly uncommon fare for the local press anywhere.

However, what made this particular incident unusual was the manner in which the reporter chose to represent the subsequent action of the police after attending the incident, as quoted directly from the piece itself.

Efforts are currently ongoing to identify him in order to update his next of kin.

Update?

Use of appropriate language is just as important in writing for the local media as it is to a scientist writing a paper or an author penning a work of fiction. The poor man’s next of kin are not like software or kitchen cabinets!

For the benefit of any passing media studies graduates pretending to be journalists, you would have been told by any half-decent sub-editor that relatives and the next of kin are either notified or informed of their loved one’s untimely demise. Lumping grieving family in with software that needs a bug fix is not only very bad English indeed, but abysmal writing not worthy of being classed as journalism.
For British read English?

14/10/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

Yesterday’s Guardian carried a piece entitled Most of Great Britain’s major rail operators are back in public hands – is it working?.

At this point it would be easy – and flippant – to refer to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, but your ‘umble scribe wishes to delve further into the substance of the article without invoking said law and saying no.

Given that the map handily provided to illustrate the article manages to miss the line to Oban, one might question the accuracy and utility of the entire piece.

Rail privatisation was a project undertaken with subsequent disastrous results by the Conservative government of John Major. It separated management of the track from the running of rail services of said track. It has resulted in services that no longer serve the travelling public (e.g. no holding a local service if the train from London is running late, especially if they services involved are provided by different operating companies. Ed.).

Ever since the end of the Covid pandemic some renationalisation has been undertaken. As train operating company franchises have expired, the services themselves have been taken back into public ownership, mainly due to concerns over financial woes and poor performance. This process started under the last Conservative government. In Cymru and Scotland, where transport is a devolved matter, Trafnidiaeth Cymru/Transport for Wales and ScotRail were both nationalised by the Welsh and Scottish devolved governments in 2021 and 2022 respectively, since when the latter abolished peak fares on its services in September 2025.

Withing England the pace of renationalisation has accelerated under the present Labour government, with three operators appearing in the public books since May: South Western Railway, C2C and Greater Anglia.

The next stage, according to the Guardian article, is the establishment of a new state-controlled company called Great British Railways, expected next year, which will manage rail infrastructure and services.

The logo for Great British Railways is a real dog’s dinner, consisting principally of the old British Railawy InterCity logo from 1966, combined with that Bloody Butcher’s Apron that some call the Union Jack.

Given that services are already nationalised in Cymru and Scotland, your ‘umble scribe wonders if what is being proposed is actually applicable to those devolved administrations. Although the information the government has released to date states it is applicable to England, Cymru and Scotland, all the announcements made to date all relate to train services provided solely in England.

Your correspondent believes this indicative of the centuries-old English colonial attitude to the island of Great Britain and perhaps a more apposite name for the government’s intentions would be English Railways minus the Great (which frequently happens to be grate. Ed.) with the corresponding logo in the colours of the flag of St George.

If any passing readers can supply more details about the ownership of infrastructure and provision of services in either Scotland or Cymru or how Great British Railways is likely to develop, kindly comment below.
Slow news day in Shropshire

10/10/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a slow news day as ‘a day with little news to report‘.

Slow news days are typically when a lot of ‘filler‘ material (like food hygiene ratings if your name is the Bristol Post/Live. Ed.) is published to fill the otherwise empty space in a traditional dead tree publication.

However, this tendency and the phrase itself seem to have adapted without any trouble to the digital age and online publishing.

A fine example of this was apparent when your ‘umble scribe visited the Shropshire Star website earlier today and scrolled down the news page as far as the Motors news section.

Click on the image for the full size version.

The observant visitor will notice there is not a tinned, motorised three piece suite in sight in any of today’s stories for petrolheads!

A return visit at 14.00h revealed the pace of news had picked up: one of the pieces shown above was finally replaced by a motoring article.
Hotels and roundabouts

03/09/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

Commenting on the present intimidatory actions of the far right out in the streets, this still from a well-known scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail currently doing the rounds on social media has been given the meme treatment.

No further comment is required apart from saying that in the film, Clees and his companions within the castle were all playing forrins, insulting and humiliating Arthur and his knights of the round table.
Gourmet baked goods

01/09/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

The story of baked pastry dough wrapped around is tasty filling is a long one. Sometime before 2000 BCE, a recipe for chicken pie was written on a tablet in Sumer – the earliest known civilisation – in southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq. Ed.), according to Wikipedia.

Moving forward a couple of millennia, the 1st century Roman cookbook Apicius includes several recipes involving a pie case.

It would therefore seem evident humans have been munching pastry baked around a filling for at least two millennia.

Coming right up to date, one of today’s largest producers of baked goods in the Untied Kingdom is Greggs, founded in the Gosforth area of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1939. From the 1970s onwards, Greggs embarked on a string of acquisitions and mergers. In June 2025 the chain had 2,649 outlets and also employs over 33,000 staff. Some items are only sold in particular regions, whilst the company also sells some of its products (e.g. bakes, melts and pasties) through the Iceland supermarket chain.

As a mass market supplier, Greggs is frequently mocked for being down-market and this brings us neatly to humour and punning, a social media staple.

Greggs Benedict?

Sounds delicious!

However, there was once – but no longer – an actual Greggs Benedict available under a fine dining ‘experience’:

For breakfast and brunch, don’t miss out on the “Greggs Benedict” – the Greggs Sausage, Bean and Cheese Melt reimagined with smoked ham, poached Cacklebean eggs and a velvety Hollandaise sauce. Our ‘Full English’ celebrates the icon that is the Greggs Sausage Roll alongside bacon, mushroom, tomato, baked beans and a choice of eggs – scrambled, poached or fried. The dish also comes as a vegetarian and vegan option.

Bon appétit !
Auntie’s hardware malfunction

29/08/2025 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Tech

Back on 2nd February 2004 singers Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson issued a statement attempting to explain the 38th Super Bowl half-time show controversy, during which Jackson’s right breast was exposed. In that statement the phrase wardrobe malfunction was coined.

Fast forward to August 2025 and it would appear that the nation’s quasi-state broadcaster has had what can only be described as a hardware malfunction in which the wrong sort of device was exposed.

Earlier today BBC Breakfast had a long segment about the 30th anniversary of the release of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.

As this is TV there were some visual props on hand, as shown in the screenshot below.

Observant readers will have noted that the hardware used is in fact a Macintosh SE, a machine manufactured and sold by Apple between March 1987 and October 1990.

That’s right! It was discontinued five years before Windows 95 was introduced.

Furthermore, the Macintosh SE also ran on Apple’s Classic Mac OS, not MS-DOS and Windows.

In bygone times, the BBC used to brag about the accuracy and trustworthiness of its broadcasting. It still does, but that boasting appears to be on very shaky foundations indeed.

Who else likes the smell of facepalm in the morning? 😉
Public health information

31/07/2025 Steve WoodsOddities, Politics, Social Media

From your ‘umble scribe’s social media timeline this morning.

Outside St Thomas’ Hospital in central London at the other end of Westminster Bridge from Halitosis Hall.

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.
Spot the difference

27/06/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics, Security, Social Media

From my social media timeline.

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.).

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