Category: The Evening Snail

By Chris P. Bacon

THE “piss poor” standards of “churnalism” on The Evening Fail plumb ever deeper fathoms.

Or so says my bitter ex-Sub Editor in Barrovia.

(He was made ‘redundo’ when US-owned Scroogequest took over and anyone local aged over 40 in possession of half a brain cell left the company very sharpish.)

Ever since, the “culture” on The Fail has been to cheaply rope in young, green and out-of-county web surfers; many of whom have never stepped foot in The People’s Republic of Barrovia.

Trawling the internet from distant counties to find stories mentioning Barrow; this meaningless production of irrelevant clickbait has only hastened the paper’s headlong gallop to the grave.

Hence another daft “story” on The Fail’s website about Bardsea (in the Lake District, apparently, which will be news to anyone from Bardsea).

Firstly, Bardsea is barely a village, never mind a town.

(One of Bardsea’s least famous residents, the now retired and legendary Mail news editor, Mike Rushton, would be throwing custard creams at whichever dingbat on the Mail’s reporting staff dropped a bollock of this magnitude.)

The article over-confidently declares that “Cumbria’s coastline is home to cliffs“.

The nearest proper cliffs in Cumbria are surely at St Bees nearly 50 miles up the coast?

The article then suggests that touroids in the Lake District go to Bardsea because it’s quieter.

Wouldn’t that ruin the very qualities that put it on the phoney list in the first place?!?

(The list itself was the work of Time Out Magazine and was probably dreamt up by a web trawler based in London who also couldn’t find his arse with his own hands.)

The piece also irresponsibly recommends ‘venturing’ out to Chapel Island, which as any local would know is an area notorious for fast-rising tides, quicksands and horrific drownings over the years, so you do need to know what you’re doing.

It does suggest a guide, but how many Lake District touroids have ended up on a mortician’s slab having refused good safety advice!

And as one reader pointed out in the Mail’s comments section, the article also makes another howler – putting Bardsea on the wrong coastline.

“I never knew you could see the Isle of Man from Bardsea!,” they wrote. “I thought it looked towards Morecambe and Blackpool.”