One of the many famous utterances of Homer Simpson, is that “it’s funny ’cause it’s true”. The same could be said of this spoof article – aside from the idea of sending modern day looters there, which hasn’t been suggested yet by the government, but it doesn’t take too much stretching of the imagination to imagine it happening.

Afterall, how could any modern day obstreperous larrikin hoping to save a couple of hundred pounds on a TV hope to compete with some of the great British looters of old, who are now revered as great adventurers, discoverers and protectors of world history.

The only thing that wouldn’t occur if it happened is people in the government managing to see the irony in the plan.

From:
Daily Squib

Looters of Summer 2011 Rehabilitated With Visits to British Museum
By Sir Neil Sloane 4 hours 50 minutes ago

LONDON – England – The Summer of 2011 was notable for the riots across Britain, and the chaos that ensued such riotous looting behaviour. There is some positive news about the people involved in the rioting, as government agencies have rehabilitated over 95% of the looters, sources claim.

“The looters of 2011 are all rehabilitated and cured. It was actually quite a simple operation to cure the majority of the looters and vandals who perpetrated such heinous bouts of rioting during the late Summer 2011. We simply took them on weekly excursions to the British Museum in London to show them that looting is a terrible crime and must be stopped at all costs,” Angela Brinkinstowe, a health worker at the government’s Loot Less Initiative told the Daily Mail.
Read the rest of this entry »

A Belgian newspaper appears to have re-printed the story about the real origins of the Elgin Marbles from Artnose, without realising that the whole story was originally written as a satirical spoof.

From:
Guardian

How the Belgians lost their marbles
Fiachra Gibbon, arts correspondent
Saturday December 7, 2002

It looked like the archaeological scoop of the year. The Elgin Marbles were not Greek after all, but the work of a wandering stonemason from Devon called Phil Davies who changed his name to Pheidias to ingratiate himself with his ancient Athenian patrons.

And it got better. The British Museum, sick of a century of Greek whingeing about its refusal to return to sculptures to the Acropolis, was now demanding the repatriation of the entire Parthenon to Britain where it would be rebuilt as a part of a “shopping centre and multiplex cinema” in the West Midlands.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Elgin Marbles were carved by a Welsh sculpture called Phil Davies – allegedly…

The problem is that the story sounds more plausible that some of the other mis-information that is used to justify the continued retention of these sculptures in the British Museum.

From:
Artnose

Elgin Marbles were made by Englishman, claims Oxford don
By Percy Flarge
Artnose Cultural Heritage correspondent

THE ELGIN MARBLES were made by an English sculptor and are therefore definitively English and should stay in Britain, according to new research by the renowned Oxford archaeologist Dr Rex Tooms.

Dr Tooms’s research has uncovered fresh evidence that Pheidias, the Greek sculptor of the Parthenon Marbles (one shown above left) was not in fact Greek at all, but an itinerant worker of British extraction named Philip Davies who settled in Athens around 453 and who changed his name to Pheidias in order to insinuate himself into Athenian social and artistic circles.
Read the rest of this entry »