New Covid-19 App to be trialled on Isle of Wight

Dave, working from home

In some exciting news, the Isle of Wight has been selected by the UK Government to act as a testbed for the new UK Covid-19 Tracing App.

This marvellous technology will allow the IOW to re-open for business by using phones to track where everybody is and who they meet.

“It’s very simple,” said Ryde resident and technology guru, Charles Babbage, 229. “Every time your telephonic device is within a few metres of another telephonic device, both telephonic devices record this meeting. Should you then indicate on your telephonic device that you have symptoms of the dreaded plague, it will alert everybody you have met.”

Not everybody on the island is happy about news.

“I don’t want to be having to carry my telephone around with me,” said Yarmouth resident, Albert Codger, 81. “For a start, that there cable’s only going to reach to me back yard.”

For those residents of the Isle that haven’t confused a landline with a mobile phone, there are still going to be issues as the sudden download of the app by the twenty or so Islanders with mobile phones could overwhelm the isle’s cellular network.

“I was getting up at four thirty to go and stand on top of Ventnor Downs,” said Dave Sell, 28, who is the cellular network for the island. “I stood there all day with my mast on my head until half ten at night, when I can go home. Except for half an hour lunch break about one. All that downloading’s going to be making my masthead very heavy.”

At the moment, due to government Covid-19 restrictions, Dave is working from home, and has put a chair on his roof.

“Working from home isn’t too bad,” he said. “It does make coverage quite spotty for anybody not in Newport, but I get to use an inside toilet and my wife can pass me a sandwich.”

Dave, who prefers not to be named for legal reasons, used to move to areas of high mobile traffic, such as the Garlic Festival (RIP), when a ferry is coming in to Cowes or when the traffic lights in Newport are working. All traditionally hotspots of cellular activity.

“If everybody is downloading the app at once,” Dave said, “I’ll have to go back up Ventnor Downs, and the café’s shut. Nobody thinks of me, do they?”

Isle of Wight Citizens given Diplomatic Immunity

Following a debate that ran into the early hours of this morning, the Isle of Wight Council has narrowly voted in favour of granting all residents of the Island diplomatic immunity.

The surprise move comes after a recent report by the Association of Chief Police Officers indicated that up to 12,000 police officers are to lose their jobs. Many of these redundancies are likely to affect the Isle of Wight.

In a bid to ensure that the reduced police force on the island can cope with their obligations, the council will, from 1st April 2011, bestow the status of diplomatic immunity on all residents currently registered on the electoral roll.



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Isle of Wight to Secede from the UK

Councillor for Cowes, Mr David Pugh, has vowed that the Isle of Wight is to secede from the UK due to a row over the new Pound coin, however, he is keen to stress that this has nothing to do with Brexit.

Island residents prefer the coins from 1935 to the new ones.

"Our desire to secede from the United Kingdom has nothing to do with Brexit," the councillor said in a statement this morning. "I cannot stress this enough. We do not want to leave the UK and join the EU, as their coins are even worse than this new-fangled pound coin London is trying to foist off on us."

A recent estimate by Beryl in accounting has indicated that changing to the new pound coin would cost the island thirty-five billion pounds, money the island can ill afford.

"We need to change all the parking metres," said Pugh. "As many are aware, parking metres are the major source of income on the island, funding everything from social services to the audiobooks of Harry Potter in Ventnor library."

As well as parking metres, the ATMs on the island are the only ones in the UK that dispense pound coins, and these too would need major overhauls to allow the new shape to be stored. Pugh is hopeful that the banks themselves would pay for this refurbishment. However, IoW U, the island's largest bank, is adamant that this is not the case.
 
“In the banking crisis of 1934, the island government bought out the bank,” said bank CEO, Charles Moneypenny, 66, told the IoW News. “It was expected that they would return the bank to private hands at some point, however the receipt was lost in the war, so it’s remained in the Island’s hands ever since.”
 
Another major income stream, the vending machines, would all also need switching over to the new pound coins.
 
“The cost is too high for a small company like ours to contemplate,” said Vinny Vendor of Ventnor Vendor Vending Machines, located in Ryde. “We will be seeking assistance from the Island council.”
 
Many of the Island’s more than a thousand residents are backing Pugh’s approach to the new pound coins.
 
“We don’t like change,” said Phyllis Bathnight, 108, of Yarmouth. “Never have, never will.”

Womble family sue 2017 for being too modern

A family from Ventnor are trying to sue 2017 for being too modern.

Mr and Mrs Womble last week

"There's a natural order in the universe," said father of two, Dick Womble. "And that's the order ordained by God."

According to Mr Womble, the invention of indoor plumbing, supermarkets, television and the internet are not in the Bible and therefore ungodly and to be shunned. Whilst the Isle of Wight is still part of Europe Mr Womble will be petitioning the European Courts so that he may sue 2017 for existing.

"Our children have had to share a school with boys who wear dresses," Mr Womble said. "My wife and I are disgusted."

"I'm disgusted," said Mrs Henrietta Womble, "at everything my husband has said."

"Where in the bible does it say that men wear dresses?" Mr Womble demanded. "Apart from the children’s one that shows Jesus and all his disciples in a frock? And all those bishops and popes and vicars in dresses. We blame the internet."

"The internet," said Mrs Womble, "shows us the rest of the world."

According to the Wombles, the Internet lets people see what other people think, and this is obviously a bad thing.

"We should be told what to think by God," said Mr Womble. "Through his intermediaries here on Earth who are just and godly."

The previous three priests that the Wombles prayed with have all been arrested for sexual offences.

The Wombles have cited that all this modernity, especially the realisation that there is more to biology than the Janet and John explanations in High School, is confusing to children brought up solely on a diet of simplified religion.

"Our Book provides all the answers anybody needs," Mr Womble. "As long as they don't have actual questions."

Mr Womble also refuses to admit that there is more than one Book, and that the stories within his own Book are as likely as those in the comic 2000AD.


"We wish to return to a more holy existence," Mr Womble said. "A time when we didn't have electricity, running water, flushing toilets, schooling, indoor jobs without heavy lifting, women in work and divorce. People have often said that the Isle of Wight is stuck in the fifties, well I don't think that's far enough back, we should be living in pre-Roman times! That was the time when everybody followed the Bible."


Mrs Womble looked at her husband, tutted and left with her bags.

Isle of Wight residents are reminded to move their calendars forward tonight to 2013. Despite the annual spring reminder and widespread use of the Internet there are many hold outs to sharing the 2013 calendar across the island with many communities still following specific years of their choosing. Freshwater prefers 1905, Shanklin 1923 and Bembridge is split between 1958 and 1959.

The people of Ryde would like it to be Christmas every day

Calendar confusion on the island is a mystery to many tourists. While many are charmed by the slower pace on the island they are not sure why it is slower in some places than others.

The debate on standardizing time on the island has bedeviled local politics for decades. Conservative proponents make a strong argument for sticking with a year they know brought prosperity rather than subjecting residents to the vagaries and whims that may come with accepting a new year every twelve months. Futurists say that the past is the past and the future is the future, so there! In the middle is the moderates who have tried to bring the factions together by proposing a common era or decade for all with limited success.

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IoWNews Blog Admits "No new stories"

Bring back our editor!

There have been rumours circulating across the internet that the Isle of Wight News blog has had something happen to it in the eight, nine? months since its last entry.


There have been rumours that the editor has been abducted by aliens, that the CIA noticed one of the stories matched one of their 'overthrow a government' plans or that the editor had been on a massive, murderous rampage, taking out all the contributors. None of these rumours are true.Nor is it true that the Isle of Wight sank into the sea, was towed closer to France by Jersey and Guernsey island pirates nor has it been merged with the Isle of Dogs and renamed Isle of Poodle.


The truth of the matter is that the editor got a little fed up with the Isle of Wight News Blog, and wanted to concentrate on 'There's An App For It' instead for a while, even going as far as producing App World! a book for the Kindle. Not satisfied with that, he got drafted (or draughted, given the alcoholic incentive) into contributing to The Dorking Review, a paper back available from Amazon. However, being a flighty flibbertigibbet, the editor soon tired of inventing apps for the iPhone and writing fictitious stories constrained to a small town in Surrey, and has decided to return - at least for a while - to the Isle of Wight News. No doubt, over the coming months, the blog will be back in full swing, churning more tissues of lies than Kleenex. 


This will all happen once the aliens have returned the editor to his sofa in Dorking.

Isle Of Wight's Most Wanted Evades Capture Once Again

Master criminal and Isle of Wight's most wanted man, Curly O'Halloran evaded police yet again, after a four hour siege in a barn on the outskirts of Shanklin.

The wily thief had recently robbed a bakery van and fled to the secluded barn, with the islands police in hot pursuit. Armed response units were called, and a siege situation took hold.

Fearing that the siege could last days, with O'Halloran bedded in with more than enough baked goods to last him a fortnight, police officers worked hard to try and talk the thief out. But their attempts were in vain.

Unbeknownst to them, O'Halloran was hard at work in the barn constructing his get-away vehicle, using items he found laying around inside.

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