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Isle of Wight condemns ‘provocative’ balloon airspace violation



Tensions remain high in the Solent region today following the detection of a balloon flying over the island.


An Isle of Wight Department of Home Defence spokesperson briefed reporters.


“Yesterday our Advanced Early Warning System – Cowes Neighbourhood Watch – reported an object subsequently identified as a balloon illegally entering our airspace. It was tracked as it travelled inland, passing over a number of sensitive garden centres and charity shops sowing panic and confusion amongst the (mostly elderly) customers.


We debated whether to shoot it down but there was concern that this might cause collateral damage when it landed. Unfortunately also none of our weapons could reach the great height at which the balloon was flying – estimated to be well in excess of 100 feet.


The issue was eventually resolved when the string underneath the balloon got tangled in the branches of a conker tree just outside Shanklin. After a lengthy health and safety risk analysis, leading fireman Barney McGrew of the Island Fire & Rescue Service volunteered to climb the tree and retrieve it.


The balloon is now under investigation in our forensic laboratory. It has a picture of an evil-looking character with a name of Ronald McDonald. We suspect this has something to do with the power struggle underway on the mainland within the People’s Republic of Hampshire. We have already made a formal complaint about this provocative action to their ambassador.”


A People’s Republic of Hampshire spokesperson responded.


“The peace-loving People’s Republic utterly denies this outrageous slur. The research balloon was accidently released by a young party member outside one of our healthy and nutritious proletariat street canteens. We shall utterly crush the capitalist lackeys, hyenas and running dogs of the illegal breakaway Isle of Wight in due course. We plan to mobilise our invincible armed forces to invade – once we have bought the ferry tickets and the railway strikes are settled."

image from pixabay



First published 6 Feb 2023


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Dorset threatens to annex 'Wightland'


Tensions are rising along the south coast of England as Dorset prepares to claim the Isle of Wight as its own. Dorset County Council has denied sabre-rattling. However at a packed press conference a council spokesperson stated:-


“The Isle of Wight is vital for our security, and it is blatantly unable to defend itself against hostile actors. We have creditable information (supplied by the West Midlands Police ‘Intelligence’ Department) that the Island – or Wightland as we shall rename it – is under imminent threat from invasion by Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent. We also understand that Rutland is urgently looking for a warm-water port for their navy.


It is not true that we are only interested in the island’s vast mineral wealth. I mean how much chalk do you actually need? However we might be interested in some of the highly valuable rock deposits, although we may have some challenges with the wording in the middle, for example changing Shanklin to Swanage. And we are definitely not interested in the dinosaurs. We have enough of the old codgers who moved to Bournemouth to retire.”


However the spokesperson did admit that the county acquiring more coastline was an attractive proposition. “Sandbanks is one of the most expensive places in the country to live. If we could replicate this on Wightland we could drive council tax takings into the stratosphere. With the obvious benefits for education, social services, and Council Leaders salaries.......”




AI writed this headline: The future is now



It has been announced that the Isle of Wight’s best-selling free weekly ‘newspaper’ the Ventnor Harvester (not to be confused with the popular eatery) will be the first newspaper to be totally generated by AI with no human intervention whatsoever.


Proprietor Muppet Murdoch said, ‘We are proud to be world leaders to take news publishing into the sunlit uplands of an exciting tomorrow. Our innovative and exciting AI news-gathering will anonymise from where we plagiarised – oops, I meant creatively and lovingly duplicated – all of our exciting material. Here is an example of an item from this week’s exciting issue:-


‘In an exciting, sensational development today, some political bloke slagged off another political bloke, and accused him of being an anarchist / Reform fascist / Tory scum / Labour scum / Liberal scum / vegetarian / train spotter / Johnny Foreigner. The other political bloke hit back, accusing the first political bloke of being a sheep shagger and or Welsh / priest or bishop / former Post Office Chief Executive / Newsbiscuit contributor. Another political bloke standing outside his party’s stunning / iconic / exciting HQ slammed the first two, insisting that they were totally out of touch with the popular zeitgeist and that only his party could bring the county together and make the Isle of Wight Great Again (stylish baseball caps available in the Harvesters online store.)’


Mr Murdoch continued, ‘I had made the decision to bring the Harvester bang up to date. I found out that our neighbour’s son is doing GCSE Computing. His first project investigating Jaguar Land Rover’s IT systems didn’t go quite according to plan, so he was happy to have a stab at AI. People have been claiming that some rag called Newsbiscuit has been using AI for years – and when you look at the bad grammar, stilted prose and total lack of anything remotely funny this is probably right.’


When asked what the initials AI stood for, Mr Murdoch confidently responded 'Artificial Insemination'.



Image credit: perchance.org

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