media

  • Bizarre feudal remnants

    The unelected, alleged head of state of the English EmpireNews arrived today of a bizarre feudal remnant – one used by a human bizarre feudal remnant line his own already well-stuffed pockets.

    The human bizarre feudal remnant is none other than Mr Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor, alleged to be the head of state of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.), who generally masquerades under the alias of “King” Charles III.

    Today’s Guardian reveals that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is stealing the estates of people who die intestate – i.e. without leaving a will – or with no known relatives in the territory of the Duchy of Lancaster, which consists of consists of 18,433 hectares of land holdings, including rural estates and farmland, urban developments, historic buildings, and commercial properties across England and Wales, particularly in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Savoy Estate in London. Its principal purpose of the estate is to provide a source of independent income for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and his heirs and successors.

    This theft of other people’s assets is covered by the legal term ‘bona vacantia‘, meaning unowned property. The same practice of ‘bona vacantia‘ is employed by the Duchy of Cornwall to provide an income for the so-called ‘Prince’ of Wales, one William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor.

    The rich and powerful of this backward medieval country have been stealing the assets owned or used by others for centuries. From 1604 onwards the Inclosure Acts created legal property rights for the rich to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km2.

    These thefts of common land were commemorated in a popular poem in the early 18th century.

    They hang the man and flog the woman
    That steal the goose from off the common,
    But let the greater villain loose
    That steals the common from the goose.


    The law demands that we atone
    When we take things we do not own,
    But leaves the lords and ladies fine
    Who take things that are yours and mine.

    This practice of appropriating land owned and used by others reached its zenith during Britain’s colonial expansion under the concept of ‘terra nullius‘, literally nobody’s land. How could allegedly primitive people claim ownership of land when nothing concerning property rights was written down, was the flawed logic behind these seizures, which reached their height in Australia, where people now commemorated by street names and public artworks were responsible for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people, who have no public monuments by which to remember the victims. This was documented in all its brutality by the three part 2022 TV series The Australian Wars.

    Anyway, back from nobody’s land to nobody’s property in the north of England. The Guardian has found out that the Duchy of Lancaster has been secretly using the bona vacantia funds to renovate properties owned by the alleged king and rented out for profit. The Duchy’s accounts suggest it has collected £61.8m in bona vacantia funds over the last decade. Of those, only £9.3m or 15% of the total has gone to charities, which the Duchy maintains is the main reason for collecting the funds.

    Needless to say, this news has not gone down well in areas subject to the Duchy of Lancaster’s writ.

    Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester is on record as saying:

    I think many people in the north-west will be surprised to learn that the savings and assets of friends and neighbours are being taken in this way. I don’t recall this archaic system ever being explained to anyone here nor public consent for it being given.

    Burnham furthermore added that:

    This appears to be a bizarre remnant of feudal Britain. While we await the public acts of levelling up that we have been promised, it seems this country still has silent mechanisms of levelling down at work, redistributing wealth in the wrong direction.

    Furthermore, friends of some of those whose assets have been stolen have described their use to fix up Duchy properties for future rental as ‘unethical, ‘shocking and ‘a disgrace.

    The worst decision this country ever made was to readmit Charles Stuart (son of the late tyrant) in 1660. That would have avoided any future regal robbery of people’s property either in this country or around the world.

  • Bristol City Council & the English Language

    Bristol City Council logo with sinking shipBristolian may exist as a dialect with its own idiosyncrasies, but within the city and county of Bristol itself, there’s one place where English is used in a peculiar way: the Counts Louse (as pronounced in the local vernacular; some call it City Hall – or a variant thereof – after its renaming by the then Mayor George Ferguson in 2012. Ed.). In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell wrote the following:

    Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

    Down at the Counts Louse, the English language has been used to conceal what is really going on behind its mock Georgian façade, particularly where funding cuts and redundancies are planned, usually couched in terms such as redeployment, restructuring and the like.

    Perhaps the most famous use of such obfuscatory language occurred in 2013 when it was discovered – as reported by The Bristolian – that £165,000 in cash was missing from the council’s loss-making markets department (a department that’s supposed to make money for the local authority. Ed.). This was duly recorded in an internal report as ‘material income misappropriation‘.

    We ordinary mortals have a much more succinct phrase than material income misappropriation. We call it theft.

    That infamous bit of council-speak has now been joined by another phrase by Councillor Craig Cheney, the elected member in charge of the city’s purse strings, which was duly reported by the Bristol Post in relation to the evacuation of Barton House in Barton Hill due to structural defects.

    Barton House in Bristol
    Barton House. Image courtesy of Google Street View.

    What Cllr. Cheney said to the local press while commenting on Barton House included the sentence below.

    There’s perhaps not as much concrete as there should be.

    Perhaps? Most definitely not as much concrete, plus ignorance and non-observance of the building plans, according to your colleague Councillor Kye Dudd.

    Give yourself a pat on the back, Cllr. Cheney; that one sentence alone deserves its own special place in the annals of British understatement. 😀

    In less light-hearted reporting on Barton House, it has now emerged that the government warned Bristol City Council in 2017 – six years ago – about the condition of Barton House and four other tower blocks built using the LPS building system and perhaps more scandalously that no structural survey of Barton House had been conducted since 1970, i.e. over half a century ago. Municipal neglect of the city’s infrastructure is endemic down the Counts Louse. 🙁
  • Lookalikes – Eric and Leonardo

    Newsweek in the United States reports that Eric Trump’s recent comment comparing his family’s assets to the Mona Lisa amid their ongoing civil fraud trial in New York has spawned a wave of mockery across social media.

    Disgraced former president Donald John Trump and his three adult children – Ivanka, Donald Jr. and the aforementioned Eric are accused of frequently inflating The Donald’s own net worth and the value of his assets by billions of dollars from 2011 to 2021 to secure better deals and loans. Trump and his children have dismissed the accusations and maintained their innocence, accusing prosecutors of being politically motivated and attempting to harm the Dunning-Kruger effect’s candidate’s 2024 presidential campaign.

    Earlier this week Eric Trump – hardly one of the world’s towering intellects – claimed that the Trump family properties at play in the civil fraud trial are “worth a fortune” and called them “Mona Lisas of the real estate world.

    Below in true Private Eye style, the Trump Tower in New York and Leonardo’s famous painting are placed side by side, so readers can draw their own conclusions as to which of them are of greater value to the human race as a whole.

    On the left the Mona Lisa with the caption Trump Tower, New York. On the right the New York Trump Tower captioned Da Vinci's Mona Lisa
  • Dumb Britons bought property in Italy but voted for Brexit

    In what clearly counts as an instance of buyer’s remorse, today’s inews carries a piece about two Britons – one in his thirties and from Bristol, the other a pensioner from Winchester, who both voted for Brexit and now seem surprised they cannot get visas to live permanently in their respective properties, as per the screenshot below of the report’s headline and byline.

    Headline reads - ‘I made a huge mistake’: Brexit-
voting Briton can’t get visa to live in his £43,000 Italian home. Byline reads - A 35-year-old graphic designer from Bristol told i he wishes he could ‘turn back time and vote Remain’

    Both are now suffering remorse and a feeling of betrayal (remember all those smooth-talking right-wing politicians who lied to the public saying nothing would really changed in our relationship with the EU and its member states? Ed.).

    As defined by the dictionary, the phrase buyer’s remorse has two meanings:

    • a sense of regret or uneasiness after having purchased a house, car, or other major item; and
    • a sense of regret after having committed to an endorsement, policy, plan of action, etc.

    Either of both of those definitions may be applicable in these two instances.

    These stories have a moral, i.e. think before you vote (bearing in mind that all politicians lie. Ed.) and always remember the law of unexpected consequences.

  • Shropshire Star exclusive: donkey has waist

    The Shropshire Star is a local newspaper serving the county where your ‘umble scribe was born. However, its role in the field of science – and the discipline of asinine anatomy in particular – has not previously been recognised.

    Until now, that is.

    On Friday the Star carried a report of a donkey with its back legs and rear stuck in a storm drain somewhere undisclosed in the vicinity of Market Drayton, your correspondent’s home town.

    The incident was attended by crews from Market Drayton, Telford Central and Wellington fire stations, who were able to extract the donkey called Amigo from the drain.

    The Star was so pleased with its contribution to asinine anatomy and veterinary science that it incorporated it into its headline: Firefighters rush to rescue donkey stuck waist-deep in storm drain,

    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
    Here’s a donkey. Spot the waist.
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    There are two dictionary definitions of waist, one pertaining to anatomy, the other to apparel. Neither mentions donkeys:

    • the part of the body above and slightly narrower than the hips; and
    • the part of a piece of clothing that goes around or covers the area between the hips and the ribs.

    The Guardian also covered the story. Curiously, its account fails to mention Amigo’s waist. 😀

  • Dumb Britain abuses 999 service

    According to Wikipedia, “999 is an official emergency telephone number in a number of countries which allows the caller to contact emergency services for emergency assistance“, with approximately 35 million calls being made per year.

    The English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.) uses the emergency number to provide a certain number of emergency services – ambulance, fire brigade, police and coastguard being the main ones, as well as – depending on location – lifeboat, mountain rescue, cave rescue, mine rescue and bomb disposal.

    However, and this is quite a significant however, one of the services not offered is advising the hard of thinking where they can get a haircut in the wee small hours, as the Bristol Post duly reported after reading Avon & Somerset Constabulary’s social media feed on X, formerly known as Twitter before man-baby Elon Musk spent his pocket money on the company.

    The post reads:

    999 call: Caller has stated he is in an emergency, as his local barbers are closed at 01:00am. Upon reflection, the caller agreed that it is unlikely that any barbers would be open at this time, and that this was not a Police matter.
    Tweet from Avon and Somerset Police Control Room reads 999 call: Caller has stated he is in an emergency, as his local barbers are closed at 01:00am. Upon reflection, the caller agreed that it is unlikely that any barbers would be open at this time, and that this was not a Police matter.

    The tweet was sent by Mr Plod as part of International Control Room Week which aims to highlight the work done by people working in 999 control rooms across the emergency services.

  • Cancelled show moved to imaginary Shropshire town

    Omid Djalili. Image courtesy of Wikimedia CommonsOne of the cultural jewels of Market Drayton – the town where your ‘umble scribe grew up – is the Festival Drayton Centre. However, in those days it was Frogmore Road Primitive Methodist chapel, a venue where my late mother took to the pulpit as a lay preacher when I was a child.

    Last Thursday Iranian-British comedian and actor Omid Djalili pulled out of a show at the Centre due to “personal threats due to the situation in Israel“, as reported by the BBC.

    The BBC did manage to get the essentials of the story correct. However, one significant national news outlet did not.

    Step forward The Independent, once a decent broadsheet newspaper that refused to publish trivia about the so-called royal family, but now sadly reduced to a badly researched news website with irritating properties and mediocre content.

    In its rendition of the story, The Independent wrote as follows:

    On Thursday (19 October), Djalili was scheduled to perform at the Festival Drayton Centre in West Drayton, Shropshire. However, the show was pulled hours before its scheduled opening due to safety concerns for the star.

    No gazetteer of Shropshire features such a place as West Drayton. Whilst Market Drayton itself consists of two parishes – Drayton in Hales and Little Drayton (also known as Drayton Parva. Ed.), but of an occidental Drayton, there’s not a sign.

    Within the polluting embrace of London’s M25 orbital car park there is the London suburb of West Drayton, whilst another village of the same name exists in Nottinghamshire.

    Your correspondent notes that the Independent piece was written by a ‘culture reporter and reviewer‘ writing mostly for titles based within that there London, so perhaps the geographical ignorance can be excused. 🙂

  • Dumb Britain personified

    One of the regular features of Private Eye magazine is its Dumb Britain column, which typically records the answers clueless quiz show contestants have given on TV.

    The advent of social media has now enabled the entire population to show how stupid they can be without the need to apply to appear on a TV quiz show, as in the case of one unidentified woman from Armthorpe near Doncaster, which was duly reported 2 days ago by the Daily Mirror.

    Headline reads Woman slams selfish paragliders who
made her think Hamas were invading Doncaster

    The story was also picked up by other tabloids, with Daily Mail commentards questioning the lady’s sanity – quite a feat given their single-digit IQs.

    If Hamas were contemplating invading Yorkshire, their paragliding aviators would have to train really hard, given the distance between Gaza City and God’s Own County is several multiples of the current world paragliding record of some 612 km for a straight line flight.

  • City rejoins Gloucestershire – Bristol Live exclusive

    One time long ago there was a county called Gloucestershire. It was a large county that included the city of Bristol as one of its major centres of population. However, that all changed in 1373 when Bristol was granted county status in its own right by the king through the usual expedient of paying him a sufficiently large quantity of cash.

    However, that has now all changed and Bristol is once again in the embrace of Gloucestershire, even though the news has been suppressed and can only be found by a creful reading of the Bristol Live website, where it appears in a piece by Emma Flanagan inviting readers to vote for their favourite Chinese takeaways.

    Headline reads Where can you get the best Chinese takeaway in Bristol? Photo caption reads Tell us the best Chinese takeaway in Gloucestershire and we'll crown a winner

    The headline to the article asks Where can you get the best Chinese takeaway in Bristol?. There’s no mention there about the city being returned to its former historical county 650 years after making its escape from the clutches of the county that grew up based on the old Roman settlement of Glevum.

    The clue to Bristol returning to Gloucestershire is well concealed, hiding in the photo caption near the top of piece; it reads Tell us the best Chinese takeaway in Gloucestershire and we’ll crown a winner.

    Will this mean a change in the city’s extortionate rate of council tax? Better public services? Improved public transport? Not a word mentioned.

    No corresponding article asking readers to rate Chinese takeaways in Bristol has been found on Bristol Live’s sister title, Gloucestershire Live (so far. Ed.), so this dreadful piece of copy has not been shared with other Reach publications.

    Moving Bristol to Gloucestershire was not the only inaccuracy of the geographical kind appearing on the Bristol Live website today. By some strange alteration in geophysical forces, the city has been moved from nestling on the banks of the Bristol Avon to those of the mighty Severn/Hafren, as per the screenshot below.

    Headline reads https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/five-star-severn-bore-live-8790077

    Since this morning the text of the headline has now been changed to read Five-star Severn Bore live as ‘the greatest ride on earth’ rolls through West Country.

    If the Bristol Live website ever had a corrections and clarifications column, it would be several times larger than the paper’s website! 😀

  • Syndicated bad English

    Local news titles owned by Reach plc, which also owns the Daily Mirror and Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.) frequently share stories so frequently that anyone would think either that slow news days were commonplace or that the the country’s major cities had annexed vast swathes of territory well removed from their location.

    An example of this practice occurred earlier this week in the Bristol Post, supposedly the city’s (former) newspaper of record, as per the following screenshot.

    Headline - 'Madness' as ship longer than 22 London busses arrives in small West country town

    Last time your ‘umble scribe looked, Fowey in Cornwall was not – and has no intentions of being – a suburb of Bristol. The entire story has been copied and pasted en bloc from Cornwall Live, a sister title to the Bristol Post/Live, including a glaring spelling error – busses – in both the headline and the copy.

    That spelling error is one that should have been eradicated in primary school, not allowed to persist into the professional life of an alleged ‘journalist‘.

    Your correspondent recalls talking to a former sub-editor some years ago, who was then lecturing at the University of the West of England, teaching online journalism to media studies students. He remarked that before before he could start training them in how to report stuff online, he had to teach them basic English first!

Posts navigation