SWINE FLU NO PROBLEM FOR THE PROPER CORNISH!!

Professor Monty Tremeglos has developed a geographically-specific solution to the swine flu pandemic, which means that the good people of Relubbus can heave a sigh of relief as the rest of the world mutely bows its head to this potent variant of the annual killer.

In a revolutionary development, Tremeglos has pioneered a vaccine, drawn from a combination of substances found all over Cornwall, which will completely neutralise pandemic H1N1.

However, it is also true that the vaccine will only work within a specific geographical area – as illustrated in RED on the left . Whilst the vaccine will be found to be particularly efficacious in Greater Relubbus, Professor Tremeglos believes that it will be ‘strong enough’ all the way up as far as the Tamar. On the other side of the Tamar – in fact just over the other side of the bridge – it will sadly have few, if any, beneficial effects.

The ingredients of the vaccine are said to be distilled from mineral, animal and human elements from all over Cornwall. People walking along the lane past the Professor’s backhouse (or ‘outside toilet’ for those unfamiliar with the expression) have heard him intoning strange words in the manner of some obscure magical incantation: “Eye of toad and tongue of cat, tail of badger, nose of bat.”

However, the good Professor has refused to be drawn on the nature of any of the ingredients -- except to say that neither human nor animal was harmed in the production of the vaccine, apart from a bad scratch on the arm of one of his assistants, who had failed to properly anaesthetise a cat before milking it.

Another astounding fact about the workings of the vaccine that has emerged in trials, is that it will only have a beneficial effect on people who are born in Cornwall of Cornish parents and with wholly Cornish grandparents on both sides.
Mr Archibald Lutey (31) (shown left) of Bramangath Avenue in Relubbus caught swine flu at the same time as his wife Tamsin (30).

When both caught swine flu, they volunteered to be part of Professor Tremeglos’s extensive testing programme. This produced astounding results.

In wholly-Cornish Mr Archibald Lutey’s case, a full recovery was made.

However, in the sad case of poor Mrs Lutey (pictured left before the illness - you will note that she and her husband shared the same dentist!) there was a different outcome.

Her grandmother had the misfortune to have been born across the border in Plymouth (“visiting my enty, who was took bad fer a few weeks”) and this has been shown to have had an enormous impact on her "Cornishness' and, consequently, on the efficacy of the vaccine in her case.

Whilst the worst ravages of the pandemic have been avoided so as to preserve her life, she has been left forever bearing the obvious scars of having had swine flu, as the picture on the left displays.

The Greater Relubbus Urban Council (GRUC) and the Cornwall Council have combined forces so as to make Professor Tremeglos’s vaccine available to everyone in Cornwall, with the notable exception of those living in the dark depths of the People’s Republic of Hayle.

Meanwhile the rest of the world looks on enviously….and the Roundup will report further.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FOR THE CORNISH

In a extraordinary piece of "blue sky thinking", Danish architect Per Simmon believes he has hit on a revolutionary way to solve the chronic housing shortage in Cornwall.

It is well known that a variety of toxic factors -- for example, the purchase of second homes and holiday homes by absentee owners, massive immigration by wealthy retirees from more prosperous areas of the country, and the sale of communal housing stock (a significant proportion of it now resold to well-heeled incomers) -- has meant that a large section of the local population struggles to put a roof over its head.

To solve the problem, Per Simmon has designed what he calls a "traditional stone bungalow" that will be cheap to construct and affordable even by people on depressed Cornish wages.

Said to be based on traditional 18th century "2 up, 2 down" miners' cottages, the "Fogou" is in fact a "0 up, 1 down" design. Its designer claims that it is very environmentally friendly, being built entirely of locally-sourced materials -- granite, wood, moss and mud -- and using no oil, electricity, or gas for heating (there is none).

Per Simmon's backers propose to build two estates, each consisting of 100,000 Fogou dwellings, near Helford, in south Cornwall, and Rock, in north Cornwall.

The new houses will be built by local craftsmen using traditional skills that have been employed in the region for millenia.

Coming as it does hot on the heels of similar plans by Trewern Builders to build affordable ecohomes for rent or sale to local people, this proposal is good news indeed.

The Roundup applauds this initiative as an imaginative attempt to fix a long-standing social problem. Well done, Per!

BIG FORTHCOMING VILE EVENT!

The RELUBBUS PANOPTICON theatre is proud to be able to present a two year season of CURT VILE and his 500 strong Kazoo orchestra.

The performances will take place 6 times a day non-stop for the next 730 days (with extra performances over Christmas, New Year and Bank Holidays!!).

Although the PANOPTICON seats 20,000 people at a time, you are advised to book now early so as to avoid disappointment.

Curt, pictured here on the left at the start of his prolific career only 85 years ago, will be conducting all of the shows AND singing all of the songs, which are, of course, his own compositions.

These are just some of the old favourites he will be singing for you:
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I’ve got the time, I’ve got the place, but it’s hard to find the girl, Olivia!

My wife’s friend’s sister’s old blue hat

Just pass me that bucket right now!

What I wouldn’t do - for a woman just like you

My tiepin fell down through the plughole in the sink

And afterwards I shake it three times gently
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Seats - Stalls £150 Circle £250 Dress Circle £450

Curt Vile playing old favourites for the young at heart!!

Concerts sponsored by RELUBBUS AIRWAYS

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RELUBBUS AIRWAYS OFFERS 1 MILLION SEATS FOR JUST £1 ONE WAY!!!!

Air Travel Crisis? What Air Travel Crisis??!! Ryanair – eat your heart out!!

Yes, the next 1 million seats will be sold for just £1 ONE WAY**

RELUBBUS AIRWAYS with its fleet of 10,000 2 seater bi-planes – each manned by a fully-trained pilot and a nurse/stewardess (like the dream craft pictured left) fly all over the world from RELUBBUS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT and are waiting to whisk you away on the flight of your dreams!

Remember, we fly at heights of up to 1,000 feet in all weathers and so passengers are requested to wear a warm coat, gloves and hat with strap.

Lavish in flight refreshments (a sealed flask of hot BOVRIL and two Jacobs Cream Crackers) are served by our stewardess to each of the two passengers.

For longer flights, such as those to Australia, additional crackers may be made available.

These reduced flights will soon go, so don’t delay, book today!!!!

**Flights back home should be booked with the cheap £1 outward flight to avoid the 750,000% surcharge. Without surcharge, flight back from Newquay just £345, from Paris £12,567 and from Canberra £69,500.

ECOHOMES – GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS!

The Roundup has been investigating the recent proposals for the construction of thousands of ecohomes in Cornwall, a place long plagued with a chronic shortage of housing.

One proposal foresees the building of over 5,000 homes in the St Austell area over a period from 2012 -2025. It is envisaged that some 40-50 percent will be what is described as “affordable”.

The company behind the proposal, Twiddle and Snatchit, (whose plush Paris headquarters are pictured left) were reluctant to disclose what this questionable term ‘affordable’ meant.

When the Roundup, for the fortieth time and using thumbscrews for good measure, pressed their spokesman for a reportable response, he eventually confessed that it would mean that it would be affordable to a hard-working family, provided that both parents were doctors of consultant status.

The 50% to 60% of new homes not designated as “affordable” would apparently be beyond the economic reach of the above-described hard-working family, even with the two consultants working round the clock.

This frankly lunatic proposal takes no account of the immediate need such housing creates for a supportive infrastructure of health provision, education support, employment prospects and transport connections.

Fortunately this is not the only proposal. Trewern Builders Limited are targeting the local population with the offer of very affordable homes for locals in small developments near existing towns and hamlets with access to the necessary supporting infrastructure.

The homes will be available to rent, so says owner Madron Trewern for a weekly sum of only ‘Thirty bob a week”. Houses will also be available for sale at a cost of £4,500, with 120% mortgages available from Trewern Builders Limited.

These special houses will only be available to good folk of Cornish ‘extraction or inclination’, who work in Cornwall or who are looking for work in Cornwall and who are earning at or below the LOCAL average wage.

Mr Trewern, a respected Relubbus businessman of considerable personal wealth, is believed to be making this offer to encourage other wealthy Cornish names to provide similar support to the people of the land.

The environmental credentials of these houses are impeccably high. They draw all power and heat from the soil, the sun and the wind. Their water is from the rain and is recycled. All waste can be is recycled.

It has now come to our attention that the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, who have recently been shamed by the exposure of their huge environmental footprint, have decided to sell up all their other housing and to move to an ordinary Trewern home in Camborne. The Duke and Duchess are also said to be realising almost their entire wealth and putting the cash into the Trewern scheme to provide affordable homes for Cornish people.

With the hand-wringing so typical of the Duke, he recently confessed to our reporter ("over a mug of tea, just like working people!") that he hoped that this action would restore his standing with the good people of Cornwall, whose support he intended henceforth to earn.

It is understood that the Duke will be taking up a job as a janitor and groundsman at a local school, whilst his wife, the Duchess will be delivering ‘Meals on Wheels’.

UPPER TOWANS SALE TRIGGERS REACTIONS AROUND CORNWALL

The sale of Upper Towans beach in Gwithian for the huge sum of £80,000 to a mystery buyer, widely believed by locals to be a complete idiot and sucker ‘extraordinaire’, has set tongues wagging.

The primary advantage of ownership seems to be the ability to point at the beach, and say “I own that beach, I do!” whilst holidaymakers surge past, completely ignoring you, with dismissive words such as “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

There are no usual proprietorial rights. Indeed there are restrictive covenants, the most surprising of which are that 'ownership extends only to that portion of the Towans which is covered by water' and that 'ownership is only enjoyed when the water is frozen’. The sale of such paltry ownership rights for such a high price is a breathtaking triumph for the Economic Ministry of the People’s Republic of Hayle.

Tregavarah Ventongimps (42), ruler of the rogue state that is The People’s Republic of Hayle, is believed to have encouraged the sale, the proceeds of which are said to flow straight into his personal coffers.

Ventongimps is a sad and extremely reluctant exponent of the art of ‘combover’, after four failed, but very expensive, hair transplants undertaken outside the People’s Republic at the famed Norton Clinic in Relubbus. With £80,000 now at his disposal, he is rumoured to be set on ‘blowing the lot’ at the Norton.

With this frankly wholly unexpected sales success, it is expected that similar sales will be tried in respect of the whole of Hayle’s Three Miles of Golden Sands’, particularly with the gullible purchaser of Upper Towans, who, the Roundup can exclusively reveal, is none other than Madonna.

This amazing sale has given rise to a plethora of other ‘special offers’ in respect of the Cornish seaside and coast, dreamed up by hopeful locals, seeking to transform their finances.

Mounts Bay (Airspace) Extremely Limited is to sell the entire airspace above Mounts Bay from a height of 75 feet above the sea to a height of 80 feet above the sea for the astronomical sum of £48,000,000. Eager billionaires eager to get any slice of Cornwall are believed to be queuing up to be able to bid for the exclusive ownership rights of this huge airspace.

Spokesman for the vendor company, Denzil Trevains (47 and believed to be a descendant of the famed Cornish enetertainer "Banjo Trevains", pictured left), who until now has made a living as an ice cream salesman in the summer months, said, “This is a one-off opportunity to own a vast tract of airspace over a beautiful part of Cornwall. The owners will be able to charge seabirds – and there are many – every time they fly across it, so the earnings potential is huge!”

Other Cornish beaches rumoured to be likely to be sold – on copycat conditions of the Upper Towans sale – are Porthmeor, Gwenver, Porthtowan, Porthminster (pictured) and Sennen. Part of the deal will be a teashirt with the words “I own this beach, I do!” printed on the front. On the back, the Kernewek word GOKY will be printed in large letters.

The Roundup will report further on this developing story.

POLGLAZE ON CLIMATE, CHARLES AND CORNWALL

The eminent scientist, environmentalist, amateur fireman and President of the Relubbus Institute for Earth Sciences, Professor Madron Polglaze (121), has requested space in the august columns of the Roundup to pass comment on the recent speech by His Eariness the Duke of Cornwall on action to combat climate change.

The Roundup is honoured to make space available to this aged, but esteemed and venerable Relubbus academic (pictured here 60 years ago on his honeymoon in Finland with his civil partner – Professor Polglaze is the one with the speaking trumpet).

Whispering softly, but with passion, through his speaking trumpet, the great man said:

“Charles of Cornwall has made a statement to the effect that the Earth has only 96 more months in which to take effective action to combat Climate Change.

"You may well be asking “Just how does he know? Why is it not 95, 97 or 197?

"The answer is very easy. This man who would be king not only talks to plants, he also talks to little green men.

"These are strange little aliens (pictured left) with fanciful names like Porritt (Hobbit?) and Juniper.

"Many believe that, because of their spontaneous spitefulness, they are related to piskies, although they are clearly distinguished from true piskey folk by what psychiatrists have termed “the saviour complex”.

"These poor sad smug deluded ones have long believed that they alone have Flash Gordon solutions to save the Earth.

"Accessing universally available data on climate change and other environmental perils (data which is only contested by the severely mentally challenged, such as Clarkson), they have divined that they alone have the solutions.

"Such solutions involve other people doing exactly what they feel like telling them to do. However, if you are a saviour you need to be able to get your message across, and so they look for a means of transmission.

"With this aim in view, they then espy him - the man always desperately looking for a mission – the man with a life on his hands, looking for something to do, the man who wrings those hands and grins apologetically from one elephantine ear to the other for being there, the man looking for a purpose.

"Curiously, he is also the man who will do what ‘they’ tell him – as he has always been surrounded by those who tell him what to do and say. However, he is also the man whose titles make certain other recognition-thirsty folk listen. So how effective a person can he be in calling on others to make drastic change?

"Unlike most people on the Earth, Duke Charles is surrounded by many obvious signs of profligate opulence. He has, for instance, not one, not two, not three, but FOUR residences – all fit for a prince: Clarence House in London, Highgrove in Gloucestershire, Birkhall in Scotland and Llwynywermod in Wales.

"(His Dukeship can be seen in the attached photo uncharacteristically smoking a Havana cigar, whilst inspecting his new property acquisition with “one’s latest squeeze”).

"He is a travelling man with a fleet of vehicles, a world-beating air miles collection and a host of followers. He is a man with many servants and even more lackeys (defined as people, almost always folk of economic substance, who have somehow climbed the greasy pole whilst elbowing others off, folk who choose to defer and demean themselves in his presence in the hope of mere approval.)

"However, if you examine his direct (and indirect) environmental footprint, it is greater than that of almost any other person on this planet!

"Of course, the fawning, deluded little alien lackey boys ignore this fact completely.

"So how can this poor man redeem himself? Firstly, he should leave the matter of climate change and solutions to the United Nations. Global problems demand global solutions and, for the first time, we have a man in the White House who can deliver commitment on international agreements.

"Secondly – and remember we are speaking of redemption here – he should remember his wife’s title – Duchess of Cornwall. He should also remember that the only public place in which he and she first got a real welcome was in Cornwall – on the Isles of Scilly. He should recall his own title – Duke of Cornwall – and he should put his weight behind the recognition of Cornwall’s special claims, its nationhood, by campaigning for it to be granted the self-government it deserves, no less than its cousin nations of Wales and Scotland.”

121 is a good age. However, it is still sad for us to report that, after making this heartfelt plea, Professor Polglaze expired his last.