New Canal Crisis!!!!!

March 28, 2021, 4:54 pm , by Newsdesk

Sir Howard Elston, our live action reporter, blows another story out of monumental proportion

I am sitting on the bonny banks of the Yorkshire waterway at the centre of a crisis that is now threatening to cripple the English economy (writes Sir Howard).

Hundreds of commercial barges are blocked either end of the Leeds- Scragglethorpe international Canal crammed with crates of Theakston Best Bitter and mountains of inedible pickled onions. The reason:

Yes, a gargantuan canal boat, the length of the Eiffel Tower if the craft was turned on its end and suspended from the Humber Bridge, has run into the notorious Bronte Mudbank stopping all water traffic.

Skipper Phìl from Sheffield warned me in a crunch mobile call: ‘Howie, if the tugs can’t move that barge, it’ll cost the taxpayer £3.45 each per day in lost pork pie revenue alone’.

Tonight, a crane the size of Lancashire will be installed to stretch more than 60 miles high to place the barge inside a giant paper bag the shape of David Hackney’s head and the size of Brooklyn.

The Leeds-Scragglethorpe Waterway is not only Yorkshire’s prime aquatic leisure touristic facility opportunity but one of the world’s busiest trade routes stretching from Leeds to Scragglethorpe, an industry insider told me as he flipped frantically through pages and pages of Google. ‘Hey, oop, lad, they’ll be a bunch of great big girls’ blouses if they can’t lift that boat’ he proffered.

As the world nervously waits for the shock crisis to end, the traffic jam increases on the canals of this sceptered isle set in a silver sea.