This blog has written before about the changing messages that appear on a garage wall at the apex of the junction of Russelltown Avenue, Cannon Street and Whitehall Road (posts passim).
The message has now changed again and reads as per the photo below.
According to Urban Dictionary, bumbahole is a synonym of arsehole in British English and asshole in American English.
One can safely assume that the Boris being referenced is none other than the superannuated Billy Bunter-like figure of one certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has been inexplicably promoted beyond his competence to the office of Prime Minister of the English Empire, a job he fulfils to his own satisfaction on a part time basis.
Among the less favourable characteristics of Bunter’s personality are gluttony, laziness, racism, deceit, sloth, self-importance and conceit, all of which have been extensively documented down the decades by others more eloquent than your ‘umble scribe (e.g. his former employer Max Hastings) as also being present in the part-time alleged prime minister’s character.
Since the widespread dismissal from newsrooms of sub-editors, the very people who would have spotted and corrected any inaccuracies and/or anomalies, many more hidden exclusives are being reported nowadays by our free and inaccurate press, provided one knows where to look and reads carefully.
Last week, the Shropshire Star had a hidden exclusive buried deeply in a piece on towpath repairs to the Shropshire Union Canal and local traders’ fear of loss of footfall in my home town of Market Drayton.
Betton Mill on the Shropshire Union Canal in Market Drayton. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Canal & River Trust, which manages the waterway, is planning to close the towpath through Market Drayton for repairs lasting two months. This will also entail a loss of moorings during the works.
The fact that is has chosen do these works in the ten weeks from July 5 to September 10 hasn’t gone down too well with the director of one local boatyard, who is quoted as intimating that the closure would be a hammer blow to the summer trade, preventing visitors from mooring in the town and visiting shops and restaurants.
In a quotation in the report, she said the following:
It is basically the full length of the canal that goes through the town. Boats that would normally moor up and walk round the town, they won’t be able to do that.
Boats that would normally moor up and walk around town?
These two actions surely would be consecutive and not concurrent?
When did boats evolve the means of locomotion to be able to walk round the town?
Why have the national and international media not picked up the Star’s exclusive? After all, it is not every day that aquatic craft evolve enough to generate limbs.
If you have an answer to any of the above questions, please leave them in the comments below. 😀
The new right-wing TV channel GB News (affectionately known as GBeebies by some. Ed.) seems to be getting off to an even worse start than had been predicted.
Today Nation Cymru reports that the channel is achieving worse viewing figures than some content on S4C, the Welsh language free-to-air television channel.
The latest figures revealed that a maximum of only 32,000 tuned in on Thursday last week. whilst a mere 31,000 could be bothered to turn in for Chairman Andrew Neil’s own flagship show.
In particular, Nation Cymru notes that GBeebies’ viewing figures were lower than those of S4C shows such as the long-running Welsh language soap opera Pobol y Cwm, which attracts an audience of 44,000 viewers, according to S4C’s latest statistics.
Moreover, there are other Welsh language shows produced by S4C that attract even higher figures, such as Patrol Pawennau (the Welsh language version of Paw Patrol. Ed.), which draws audiences of 161,000 people.
Forget-me-nots (Myosotis) are a genus of flowering plants. The name Myosotis derives from the ancient Greek μυοσωτίς meaning mouse’s ear, which the leaves are said to resemble.
According to its English Wikipedia page, the colloquial English name of forget-me-not has been in use since the late 14th century and is a direct translation from the German Vergißmeinnicht.
According to one legend, a knight was walking by a river with his lady. He bent over to pick her a flower, but toppled over due to his armour and fell into the water. While he was drowning, he tossed the flower towards her crying out “Forget me not!”
It goes without saying that the legend fails to explain why the hapless knight felt the need to don his armour for what was ostensibly a safe situation. No health and safety risk assessments or technical standards for PPE in those days!
Talking of risky situations, the forget-me-not has become a flower of remembrance in the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador where it is used to commemorate those who were killed in the First World War.
Similarly in Germany the forget-me-not became a flower of remembrance for those who fell in conflict from WW1 onwards.
In other countries, the forget-me-not has assumed a different commemorative function, one dealing with those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, as happens in the Netherlands and New Zealand.
Yesterday, the right-leaning part of the population who seem to believe that culture as they know it is in danger of being cancelled (whatever that may mean. Ed.), was fulminating against yet another of those left-leaning organisations – English Heritage. Its crime: amending its online information about the children’s author Enid Blyton to reflect more accurately her writing and views.
While English Heritage’s blue plaque commemorating Blyton remains unchanged, the charity’s online information about her now details the problematic aspects of her writing and views.
In particular, the information on Blyton has been amended to describe her writing as including racism and xenophobia whilst lacking literary merit.
To illustrate Blyton’s racism, English Heritage’s online content notes that in 1960 Macmillan refused to publish Blyton’s children’s novel The Mystery That Never Was, noting her “faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia”.
As a child, I can’t say I remember noticing the racism and xenophobia so much on the very rare occasions I picked up Blyton as a child (the golliwogs should have started the alarm bells ringing. Ed.), but the lack of literary merit was clearly apparent to my developing brain. Her work came across as simplistic and formulaic, but my brother loved her stories, a matter in which he persisted despite the mocking and urging from my sister and me that he read something less lightweight.
Although she did not specifically mention Blyton by name, it was clear that actor and comedian Joyce Grenfell clearly had Enid in her sights in her monologue Writer Of Children’s Books, as embedded below.
One of the staples of local news reporting is the activities of the emergency services – police, ambulance, coastguard, fire service – and in this regard Bristol Live – formerly the Bristol (Evening) Post is no exception.
Yesterday’s online edition reported on the fire service’s attendance at a possible incident on Colston Street (soon to revert to its original name of Steep Street after the city’s Victorian great and good renamed it after a slave trader. Ed.).
However, once again the reporter’s poor English is disappointing to read.
In the second paragraph readers are informed that
The alarm was sounded after what was believed to be an electric fire in Colston Street at around 8.22pm.
Where was the said domestic appliance left? In the roadway? On the footway/pavement?
Clarification was helpfully supplied by the fire service, whose spokesperson commented as follows:
Upon investigation, the issue was determined to be under the pavement and originating from an area of recently excavated electrical works.
So the fire, if it ever existed in the first place, was electrical, not electric.
As an aid to passing hacks wishing to improve their vocabulary, there follows below a handy pictorial guide to the difference between the two. 😀
An electrical fire. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
An electric fire (aka electric heater). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The outcome of the now-concluded G7 summit in Cornwall was to have been so different. Flying in the Red Arrows to impress the forrins with high-speed aerobatics, wheeling in Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor and her family in to schmooze and press the flesh; even the notoriously fickle English weather behaved itself.
Yes, the impression part-time alleged prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his organising committee wanted to do was show a reinvigorated English Empire, confident and occupying a major place on the world stage now Brexit had been done and the country had broken free of the shackles ostensibly imposed upon it by the Brussels Eurocrats.
However, what has emerged is the English Empire’s diminished role and importance in the world as a consequence of Brexit. The G7 media headlines have been dominated by the problems caused by Brexit and in particular the UK’s failure to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol, a binding international treaty signed as part of the divorce agreement between the EU and the English Empire, a matter which earned the part-time alleged prime minister a rebuke from US president Joe Biden.
However, Biden’s was not the only reprimand earned in recent days by Johnson’s government of none of the talents. On social media David Frost, the English Empire’s chief Brexit negotiator, who is also known as Frosty the No Man on account of his negotiating style, earned the displeasure of those on Twitter who can see further than the White Cliffs of Dover for turning up to a crunch meeting with the EU wearing tacky Union Jack socks.
In addition, Frost and other members of the alleged government have been widely quoted in the right-wing British media as calling on the evil EU to be less purist in its interpretation of the Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol. Consulting an online dictionary, one of the definitions of purism is a strictadherence to particularconcepts,rules.
That’s right. The EU is and always has been a rules-based, whereas Britannia has long preferred to waive the rules.
The above-mentioned meeting between the EU and the English Empire did not end well, with EU officials clearly exasperated by the attitude of the English Empire government.
In particular, the words attributed to on EU official quoted have been interpreted as patronising by the Daily Brexit, which some still call the Express.
According to the Daily Brexit:
An aide to the EU chief told Channel 4 News that the tweet “was in English so that the British can understand it”.
This anonymous quote clearly falls into the definition of a studied insult.
In this context studieddenotes an insult that is either the result of deliberation and careful thought or is based on learning and knowledge.
In 1965 the village of Capel Celyn in the valley of the Afon Tryweryn valley in Gwynedd was flooded to create Llyn Celyn reservoir to supply water to the towns of Wirral peninsula and the city of Liverpool in England.
Needless to say, this act of colonial vandalism met with almost universal condemnation in Wales, represented a pivotal moment and event in Welsh nationalism and gave a huge boost to the Welsh devolution cause.
In addition, the drowning of the Tryweryn valley had a wide cultural impact.
In response to the impending flooding of the Tryweryn Valley, author Meic Stephens decided to paint “Cofiwch Tryweryn” (sic), Welsh for “Remember Tryweryn“, on a rock. Eventually he settled on the wall of a ruined cottage named Troed-y-Rhiw for his artwork. Because the original Cofiwch Tryweryn is grammatically incorrect, subsequent restorations of the wall have repainted the message correctly as Cofiwch Dryweryn, adding the consonant mutation.
The original mural in Llanrhystud after 2019 restoration. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The mural has since gone on to be reproduced on T-shirts, pitchside banners at Welsh international football fixtures and replicated at other sites in Wales.
Which brings us to Maesteg and Bridgend County Borough Council.
Today’s Wales Online reports that Maesteg resident Sian Thomas-Ford’s Cofiwch Dryweryn, painted in 2019, had incurred with displeasure of Bridgend County Borough Council, which, in that accommodating manner peculiar to all local authorities, had ordered the mural’s removal.
Bridgend Council took the attitude that the mural was an advertisement and notified Ms Thomas-Ford last summer that she could be prosecuted if she did not paint over the mural. Furthermore, the council told Ms Thomas-Ford that their highways department found the mural is a “distraction to drivers”. The council’s planning fees for advertisements range from £120 to £460. Ms Thomas-Ford’s response to the council was defiance, stating she did not intend applying for planning permission because the mural is not an advertisement, but rather a celebration of Welsh history and a reminder of an event that should not be forgotten.
Ms Thomas-Ford told Wales Online that the mural had sparked lots of conversations locally about Welsh history and culture.
The council has now dropped its bureaucratically absurd position of regarding the mural as an advertisement. In a bit of municipal face-saving, a council spokesperson is quoted as saying:
From the council’s perspective, advertising consent is required to protect the householder, but we do not currently intend to take any further action. It remains open to the owner if they wish to regularise the matter.
Never trust a man who combs his hair with a balloonCorruption and the part-time alleged prime minister of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.), one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, are often closely entwined.
Disregarding the current crowdfunded litigation against the government's awarding of PPE and other contracts during the pandemic, which was frequently characterised as less than transparent and evidence of a chumocracy, due to the frequent involvement of Tory party donors, I am reliably informed by Keith Flett’s blog that Johnson and his third bride Carrie Symonds recently spent a mini-honeymoon at Chequers, the grace and favour country house in Buckinghamshire provided at public expense for the use of prime ministers, alleged, part-time or other.
Keith Flett’s blog post also comes with the interest fact that William Cobbett, the pamphleteer, journalist, Member of Parliament and farmer, referred to such sinecures as Chequers as the “Old Corruption“.
Further delving into the topic of the Old Corruption took me to the website of St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster, which reveals that, before the 1832 Reform Act, the “Old Corruption was a system by which the elite benefited from selling of offices, sinecures (jobs which paid a salary for little or no work) and pensions. Patrons also influenced the small electorate, often through monetary incentives, to secure election for their friends and allies to parliament“.
However, the sale of offices and other abuses did not entirely die out after the enactment of the so-called “Great” Reform Act of 1832.
Honours continued to be sold throughout the Victorian era, culminating in the actions of David Lloyd George when Prime Minister. Lloyd George made the practice of selling honours more systematic and more brazen, charging £10,000 for a knighthood, £30,000 for baronetcy and £50,000 upwards for a peerage, and by so doing prompting the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. Furthermore, practically every single prime minister since has repaid favours with honours such as a seat in the House of Lords, knighthood or such like.
More evidence of corruption, neither ancient nor modern, but extremely blatant, emerged this past week and once again involved a certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the other members of the cast being one Peter Cruddas, billionaire, and the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
In December 2020, it was announced that Cruddas, a former Tory Party treasurer, would be made a life peerage after a nomination Johnson, despite the contrary advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
As reported by the Mirror, a few days later Cruddas made a donation of half a million pounds to the Tory Party.
The Old Corruption is perhaps not so old at all, but surprisingly contemporary
The outcome of the now-concluded 
