Category: Getting around the country

Salisbury Plain, home to the famous tourist attraction Stonehenge, is once again in the news for the wrong reasons. The latest proposal for a bypass now incorporates a roundabout on top of the ancient monument.

Classic rock band Spinal Tap have already been booked to play at the opening of the new roundabout.

LCD’s Modernising Britain correspondent spoke to Progress Minister, Vic Torian-Values. “Wiltshire has fewer than its fair share of roads,” said Torian-Values. “And Stonehenge lies directly in the path of the shortest route from London to Cornwall.”

Yes, but why the interchange? “There is no satisfactory link between Swindon and Southampton,” claimed Torian-Values. “This is an important strategic pathway, and will become of paramount importance once the Isle of Wight becomes the sole point of entry into Britain post-Brexit.”

Torian-Values went on to reveal further modernisation plans for Britain, once we leave the EU in a blaze of glory. Cornwall will become one huge holiday complex. Donald Trump will be encouraged to bring his exceptionally successful golf business to any part of Scotland he chooses. Spaghetti Junction will become a rollercoaster in a new theme park, Aston Towers.

All the people too poor to invest in the Future Of Britain will be branded as traitors, and will be relocated to The North.

We quizzed Torian-Values on the location for the new roundabout. “The supports are already there,” he explained. “It just needs the tarmac.”

Think of the heritage, we persisted. Stonehenge is an important ancient monument! “It is visited by a few new-age hippie types twice a year,” Torian-Values retorted. “They will be welcome to drive the new road. If they can pay the tolls, of course.”

At this point Torian-Values left, muttering that he was “sick of bribing the f***ing jobsworth traffic wardens to turn a blind eye” to his Merc parked on double yellow lines in a bus lane.

Salvation or sacrilege? Answers on a brick thrown through the window of your local tree-hugger’s house.

LCD Views There and Back again correspondent has received news this evening that a fellowship of plucky civil servants have begun walking barefoot to Mount Doom in Brexitdor to dispose of the redacted sections of the Brexit impact statements.

“One referendum to bind them and in the Leaver darkness to bind them,” our correspondent whispers huskily.

“Each redacted page or paragraph or even word has this statement inscribed by magic elf fire on the paper. This has been scrunched into a powerful circle by the shit wizard Davis before he commanded the civil servants to go on their mission.”

It’s believed the servants are under a certain amount of time pressure to reach the erupting mountain and toss the edited out sections in.

“They have Keir Starmer on their tail too. He’s a proper Gollum, well some days. And most shockingly of all, a half rate wizard who inherited his magic via a mystical bank account called Rees-smegg.

It’s possible they may be caught and forced to hand over the papers and then God only knows what will happen should they fall into hands that will just show everyone what they already know!”

LCD has heard also from some rather unhelpful critics of shit wizard David’s strategy who have suggested that if he was that serious about keeping the reports secret from the dark alliance of parliamentary democracy he could just have called some giant eagles down to take them to Mount Doom a damn sight faster.

“They must be joking. A giant eagle would probably cart wizard Davis off and drop him into Mount Doom instead! Giant eagles don’t really do contempt of parliament.”

We wish the civil servants all the best.

It’s unlikely any of them will carry on and reach Mount Doom if they actually stop and read what they hold in their hands.

The government is expected to announce it’s found a solution to the Northern Ireland hard border problem after consulting professional smugglers.

“The first thing to understand is no one saw this coming,” a spokesman for Downing Street advised this august online publication,

“it would have been helpful if people in Ireland had raised potential problems earlier, rather than the President of Ireland, telling us the entire country was behind Brexit and go for it, only to now start raising concerns.”

It’s believed a complete radio silence on the border issue from across the Irish Sea has led to this abrupt spanner in the Brexit works.

“Nonetheless, we’ve got every other Brexit related problem ironed flat so we can turn our full energies and brains onto the problem created by the Irish.”

Something for which the Irish are expected to be grateful, as with all gifts from England.

“Clearly it’s impossible to stay in the customs union for Northern Ireland. We would advise the Republic comes out too, as that solves the problem right there. Failing that, we will be building a wall to support a new customs arrangement across the border.

But we don’t want people’s livelihoods to be interrupted. Brexit is about making a living easier and increasing rights and liberties of externally influenced, largely useful idiot MPs in Westminster, to more easily funnel taxpayer’s money into offshore accounts.

So to achieve this but keep the Irish happy we will be consulting professional smugglers on the best way passed, under, over or around a customs border, whatever its hardness.”

Once the learning of this engagement has been distilled into a slogan it will be printed out and handed to every citizen either side of the border.

“In essence, in order to fulfil the mandate handed down on that stone tablet from almighty God every Irishman and woman and child is going to become a smuggler. We can’t see any harm resulting from forcing these new opportunities on people stuck in the outdated ways of EU membership.

Let’s all get behind this solution and make a success of Brexit.”

People living in both Northern Ireland and the Republic are asked to speak up sooner the next time they decide to generate problems when Ms May is only trying to improve their lives with no thought of the personal cost.

Southern Rail have intervened in the deep political crisis in Zimbabwe today with their standard wisdom, in a way that has surprised few, by offering Robert Mugabe political asylum on the delayed 08:34 service between Clapham Junction and Brighton.

People who have never used the train service may find it a little baffling that they have chosen to offer the 93 year old, who many believe effectively a dictator, sanctuary, but for Southern’s regular customers it’s no surprise.

“I can see it being a neat fit,” Mr F Rustrated of Woking commented, “Mugabe has been all over reducing levels of customer satisfaction and forcing people to repress anxiety, hunger and despair at just how long it will go on for. Exactly the same as Southern. Not to mention the feeling the whole gig is rigged.”

It’s not clear what Southern Rail will do if their offer is accepted, although cancelling numerous trains in celebration is probably high on the list.

It’s also not clear how they intend to get Mr Mugabe onto the specified train.
“The train isn’t going anywhere fast,” a PR whiz from Southern commented, “and neither is the president of Zimbabwe. It seems. We’ll be snug as bugs together.”

The representative added he was personally hopeful that Mr Mugabe could be the new voice of Southern, while a little worried that Virgin Trains may pinch the contract from under their noses.

“We need to get up to speed on this one quickly. Or at least find a way to present the relevant statistics imaginatively enough to get a minister of state like Grayling on our side.”

Reports of passenger activity on Southern’s official Twitter account suggest passengers are turning to cannibalism in order to survive.

It appears the change in behaviour began late yesterday afternoon, during a record breaking delay in service which saw dozens of hungry and frustrated passengers stranded at Streatham Common station in southwest London for nearly an hour.

The tweets detailing the incident have since been removed, presumably by the train operator, but LCD Views has obtained transcripts from an untrustworthy source.

We took these to world famous anthropologist, Prof B. Leave-Me for analysis.

“It’s clear what happened,” the professor stated. “Let’s call my reply the ‘06:24 reply to LCD Views question regarding Southern rail passenger cannibalism’.”

As it was 06:24 and his answer was expected we agreed.

He then paused for an unexpected and lengthy delay. We had no choice but to wait.

“Just a minute,” Professor Leave-Me adjusted his glasses, squinted at the transcripts and appeared to go to sleep.

Inquiries as to why he had gone silent were unanswered. We had no choice but to wait.

Eventually the professor made the following statement:

“The 06:24 reply to LCD Views’ question regarding rail passenger cannibalism has been delayed.”

The professor then held up a hand drawn note with the time “06:38” written on it.

We settled in and began fiddling with our phone, seeking distraction in anything in order to pass the time. Ozzy Man Reviews got us through a few minutes. Followed by Jonathon Pie.

But given we were relying on the professor to make good his offer of assistance so we could continue to our next interview with a performance artist who combines eggs with faces in unexpected places, it was a nervous wait.

The professor began to snore.

Just as we were about to get up and leave his office he suddenly lurched out of his seat and made the following statement:

“The 06:24 reply to LCD Views’ question regarding Southern rail passenger cannibalism has been cancelled because of a shortage of brown sauce.”

Oh for f*ck’s sake.

The Isle of Man has broken with tradition for islands today by declaring, in an exclusive interview with LCD Views’ geography correspondent, that one man can be an island.

“You hear it all the time, people talking to each other,” the self governing, crown dependency situated in the sea between England and Ireland said, “no man is an island. Well, I’m fed up with all that! I am a man and an island. All this talk about my famous tail less cats is nice, but what about mentioning my history and geography now and again?”

It’s long been rumoured, amongst keen observers, that the island does look like the belly of a fat man lying in the sea. Indeed, the International Isle of Man TT race is known to ride all over that belly annually.

“It’s been staring you all in the face for centuries,” the island added. “Even as Scotland and England fought over me for centuries. Go and read up about me on wikipedia. I’m really a very interesting fellow.”

So what does the Isle of Man hope to gain by speaking out at last?

“I’d like to see the cliche modified. I’m not an extremist. I’m not out to do away with idiomatic phrasing referring to my good person.

But from now on, when a person says to another, ‘I’m alright Jack’ and their friend replies ‘no man is an island’, well, I’d like the one trying to help to add the qualification, ‘except for the Isle of Man, clearly’.”

Easy enough then.

And for additional clarity we have received the following message from Jack,

“There wright. I’m okay.”

Michael Fallon is reportedly still waiting today for masses of women to come forward and say light hearted sexual harassment, of the kind he apparently stood down as defense secretary over, was just fine ten years ago.

“Behaviour that was acceptable ten years ago like murder, fraud, theft of bicycles and jovial good natured sexual harassment of women who appear not to be able to give powerful, virile, sexually charged, irresistible, privileged men like me clear signals, like accepting we should be able to do whatever we want whenever we want with them, appears to have gone by the by in the modern climate of PC gone mad.”

The above line is imagined to have been in the initial draft of Mr Fallon’s resignation letter, but we don’t know for certain, it just seems fitting.

If it was, it must have been edited out for the more succinct suggestion that the way Mr Fallon apparently behaved with his female colleagues was accepted by all of them just a few years ago, but strangely not now.

LCD Views did a straw poll in our office to see how many hands went up in agreement with Mr Fallon amongst the men and women working here.

No one raised their hand in support.

One even went so far as to suggest understanding consent and the ability to respect the signals and statements made by other humans hasn’t actually changed since he was first subject to stirrings of desire decades ago.

To gain further insight into Mr Fallon we contacted the local paleontological society and spoke to an expert.

“Mr Fallon is perfectly correct to suggest that attitudes like his, as exposed by his resignation letter, wherein the man is unaware of his own sense of entitlement, even so far as to suggest it was once acceptable for him to behave in the way that has lead to his disgrace, were accepted in a past epoch. Unfortunately for him, we’d have to go back to about the Jurassic.”

Nevertheless, it is rumoured a Twitter campaign has been launched to find women to speak out in support of Mr Fallon’s concept of acceptable behaviour towards women a short decade ago, but so far only Donald Trump has endorsed it.

Southern Rail passengers in the south of England are reporting renewed feelings of dread as autumn places leaves on the line.

LCD Views sends all of our special correspondents for the south of England on Southern, even into the areas the franchise doesn’t operate in, and we can honestly say we never find any difference in service levels.

However, during our long publishing history in the world of print media [that’s not true, we’ve never been in actual print] and recently our launch into digital [it’s not that daunting once you get passed the head bang wall stage of setting up] we’ve always been concerned to keep a close watch on the pulse of the travelling public. We want them to know we care. We will fight their corner.

To this end we sent a reluctant correspondent out into the wintry gusts to a train station this morning to see what impact the changing weather is having on Southern Rail passengers.

“Personally?” Mrs T Tibs of West Norwood was the first to speak, “I am terrified. You stand here with me for a few minutes and tell me all those piles of leaves swirling about in the gusts and onto the tracks doesn’t feel you with complete and utter dread. It’s going to be leafpocalypse, just like it is every autumn.”

We did as requested, but not for as long as requested. It was just too terrifying.
One by one, or in great handfuls scooped up by an invisible wind genie, the browning leaves of plain trees made their inevitable way down onto the lines.

“How many leaves does it take to stop a modern locomotive?” Mr Barry Barryson asked, shuffling up to our correspondent like a man waiting to be shot at dawn, he just doesn’t know which dawn.

“Two or three? Piled up one upon the other?” we guessed.

“But there’s five just flown down now. We’re doomed. I may never see my family again. I wanted to watch my children growing up. Why didn’t I buy a car when my dying grandfather told me to? Why did I spend the money he left me on a kidney?”

All very good questions.

And as the expected announcement of a delay in service sounded across the station, we could only hold the terrified rail passengers close and ensure them we would give them a voice.

“But how will you do that if you get on the train with us?” Mrs Tibs demaned. “What if you never get off?”

One day it will end in cannibalism, we fear, as surely as a few leaves on an iron line bringing a system of transport nearly two hundreds years old to a complete standstill while everyone waits for some guy with a broom to make his way down and sweep them off.