Weekend Dispatch #55

Hello, and welcome to the Weekend Dispatch.

Inside this week: Pink ladies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a sauerkraut diet.

Let’s get to it.

We started the week up in Sheffield, where Miles Ellingham profiled John Hemmingham, captain of the England Band — the group of trumpeters and drummers who follow the nation's football team everywhere they go.

It's a beautifully observed piece about patriotism, loyalty and one man's attempt to wrestle with his Englishness.

You can read it here.

And if you've still not had your England Band fix, check out Hemmingham and co. performing in Dallas before England's first match against Croatia — and during it.

We then sailed down to Brixham, Devon, where Jack Burke reported on how the fishermen of England's most valuable fishing port are faring post-Brexit.

As the good people at Longreads put it:

“Brexit campaigners promised that once Britain left the EU, the British fishing industry would thrive. Did it ever happen? The answer Jack Burke finds is nuanced. No, there was no revolution, but neither did the dire predictions of Remainers fully come true. And, as it turns out, the real problems facing British fishing lie much closer to home. It's time Britain looked to its own shoreline.”

You can read the full piece here.

That marks the end of our Brexit coverage ahead of next week's tenth anniversary.

If you haven't already, catch up on our previous reports:

• Thijs Broekkamp reported from Brussels, the beating heart of the EU, which is grappling with serious problems around gang violence and the drug trade.

• Max Jeffery reported from Gibraltar, where a Brexit deal has only just been agreed. (The piece was so good that Gibraltar's chief minister felt inspired to write a 2,300-word response.)

The UK’s campest anti-immigration group is heading for warmer climates.

This week, the Pink Ladies launched a Tenerife faction, which has already amassed 96 members in its Facebook group.

Announcing the move, the group’s local organiser, Mel, said she had been “watching the work of the Pink Ladies in England” and wanted to bring the movement to the island “before things get out of hand here”. 

For those unfamiliar with the group, the Pink Ladies are a women-led initiative promoting British nationalism and campaigns for remigration. They’re hard to miss at anti-migrant protests across the UK, most recently appearing at the Unite the Kingdom rally in bright pink outfits and waving matching pink Union Jack flags.

Will the British Pink Ladies and their nationalist views become a popular export to countries who feel similarly “invaded”?

Stay tuned for updates.

(With thanks to Florence Ingleby for the tip.)

Happy summer solstice!

If you happen to be down near Stonehenge today, consider taking a detour along one of England's mysterious ley lines.

And if you need a guide, look no further than Marianne Eloise.

She attempted exactly that for Dispatch last year. You can read about her wonderfully strange journey here.

Would you rather have a Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello or Michelangelo?

No, not a painting, but a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Following the franchise's popularity in the 1990s, Britain saw a boom in terrapin ownership, leading many new owners to discover that terrapins are rather less suited to domestic life than the cartoons suggested.

Thousands were abandoned or handed into sanctuaries — and this week brought news that the fallout is still being felt.

The National Turtle Sanctuary near Boston, Lincolnshire, has announced that it has reached full capacity, with around 400 terrapins now in its care.

Thursday's by-election in Makerfield brought disappointing results for Reform, for Restore — and, crucially, for Count Binface, who secured a miserly 95 votes.

The self-described “independent space warrior” has become a near-permanent fixture of British elections, campaigning on policies such as asking European countries whether they'd like to join the UK and renaming London Bridge to Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

At one point during Friday morning's count, he was interviewed by a visibly bewildered Sky News reporter, where he explained that one reason for standing was that he was “at a loose end”.

But who is the man behind the mask?

Binface is, in fact, comedian Jonathan Harvey, a former writer and producer on Have I Got News for You and The Thick of It.

Crucially, he is not to be confused with Lord Buckethead, who first stood for election in 1987 and was originally portrayed by Mike Lee. The character lay dormant for decades before Harvey also revived him to run against Theresa May in 2017.

But after Lee got in touch to say his replacement didn’t have his blessing, Harvey later struck out on his own and created Count Binface.

Incidentally, the man who came last in the Makerfield by-election — polling a grand total of eight votes — may be familiar to Dispatch readers.

Paul Gould is one of the most outspoken opponents of the proposed Peak Cluster pipeline, which could soon carve its way through the Peak District.

Earlier this year, Roland Hughes reported from the villages at the centre of the growing resistance movement.

You can read his piece here.

Over in Boston, Massachusetts, a 14-year-old boy has been arrested for armed robbery of a lemonade stand.

The stand's 12-year-old proprietor, David Byrne — who ran it with his sister — was unimpressed: “I was just a little annoyed because we're 12 and 11, and you shouldn't really do that.”

Our thoughts this week are with the residents of Coleorton in Leicestershire, who have been living under siege from an aggressive buzzard.

One victim was left with deep lacerations stretching from his forehead to the top of his scalp after the bird struck with its talons. According to one resident, there is now an attack almost every day.

Sympathy will no doubt flow from Flamstead, Hertfordshire, where residents endured something similar last May, when a Harris hawk attacked around 50 people over the course of a month, hospitalising one.

That saga ended when a local runner managed to trap the bird under a cage. Nicknamed “Bomber Harris”, it is now in the care of a professional falconer.

Incidentally, Rachel Dickinson wrote a beautiful piece for us last year on America's falconers in Wyoming, and the struggle to keep the sport alive.

Pour yourself a bourbon and read it here.

Have you heard of Vincenzo Grappa?

The prominent European sports journalist has developed a niche for himself by claiming to measure the noise levels of football crowds, generating headlines across the continent.

Just this week, The Times carried a story based on his claim that Scottish fans had broken the World Cup noise record.

There was just one problem.

As ITV journalist Harry Horton spotted, Grappa doesn't exist.

His profile picture is AI-generated and he previously operated under the name Luca Chianti, making similarly dubious claims about Everton supporters breaking noise records in the Premier League.

The Times has since removed its story. Unfortunately, dozens of other outlets have not.

In a totally unrelated development, it was revealed this week that trust in the news has fallen to its lowest level since the Reuters Institute began tracking it more than a decade ago.

One final thought on next week's Brexit anniversary.

Does anyone remember the Museum of Brexit?

The project (still registered with the Charity Commission) was launched in 2017 with the aim of creating a permanent home for the artefacts and memorabilia of Britain's departure from the European Union.

Nine years later, however, the museum remains entirely theoretical, despite continuing to attract donations and support from a roster of Tory MPs and Vote Leave veterans. In the financial year ending March 2025, it raised more than £35,000.

What has that money been spent on?

Well, its social media accounts are active enough, posting images of Winston Churchill and quote-tweeting the European Parliament's official account to mock it. But that pretty much seems to be it.

If you've heard anything about it, please get in touch.

As far as legacy policies go, Keir Starmer's decision to ban social media for under-16s has certainly proved controversial, not least because it has produced some genuinely entertaining interviews with devastated teenagers.

But perhaps all is not lost.

In Russia, the Kremlin is reportedly preparing to reverse a ban on the gaming platform Roblox following a backlash from young users and slipping approval ratings.

If British teenagers are looking for allies, they may have found them in an unlikely place.

If you find yourself in Wiltshire this summer, head to Lacock Abbey, where the last photographs Martin Parr took before his death last year will soon go on display.

Parr's eye for life's small absurdities was one of the founding inspirations for Dispatch: a belief that nothing is quite as ordinary as it looks.

We touched on it in our interview with him last year — his last before he died.

Sports latest:

Today is National Hollerin' Contest Day across the US.

Next Sunday, the World Egg Throwing Championship takes place in Swaton, Lincolnshire.