Filed under: Historic Wight, Wight Ways | Tags: History, Inbreeding, IOW, Island, Isle of Wight, IW, Osbourne House, ovener, Queen Victoria, Romans, vectis
he Romans arrived on the Island, which they called Vectis, under Vespasian in AD 43 (incidentally he was the first Italian Vespa to arrive on this island but they now come in large numbers every August Bank Holiday at the scooter rally)
You cant really go wrong when the occupying force produce mosaics of men with chickens heads like the one found at Brading, now that’s culture for you! 
The Island remained under the Roman government for the next 400 years. During this period there was no doubt a marked decrease in the traditional practice of inbreeding amongst the islanders due to all the randy centurions on the loose and a long way from their wives and girlfriends.
When the Romans finally skedaddled there followed a long period where inbreeding showed a marked return. That is when the locals weren’t being murdered en masse, 
firstly by the Saxons who took Carisbrooke around AD 530 and continuing for several hundred years culminating with Danish pirates having a go as well from AD 787 until the Norman conquest in 1066.
The islanders had to keep their heads down for another couple of hundred years and then things really took a turn for the worse in 1377 when the French kicked off. It remained well dodgy throughout the next 500 years and the inbreeding steadily increased 
until Queen Victoria took a fancy to the island and bought Osbourne House in 1845. This made the island the height of fashion attracting Dukes and Earls as well as Tennyson, Dickens etc. Once again with the influx of culture we had a decrease in the inbreeding as Victoria was initially so concerned with the level of the problem that she sent in the army to remedy the situation. However following the demise of The old Queen the inbreeding again steadily
increased, the tide only stemmed with the advent of the overners who began moving to the island and once again brought cultural reform with them. So it is clear that falls in the patterns of inbreeding in the island population have throughout history been directly linked to the influx of people from the mainland, along with their cultural input, improving the island itself and beneficial to the islanders by widening their gene pool. Today we have fresh hope that the remaining inbreeding will be further eradicated thanks to the rapidly developing phenomenon of the Vectisexual.
Filed under: Historic Wight | Tags: Communism, corruption, council, IOW. IW, Isle of Wight, Karl Marx, Ryde
arl Marx has always been somewhat of a hero of mine in fact he is almost my favourite Marx, coming in a very close second to Groucho. 
So when I caught wind that the father of communism used to stay at 11 Nelson Street in Ryde I immediately despatched one of my spies to investigate. Karl and his wife Jenny stayed at Nelson Street for some weeks in 1874 whilst Karl was recovering from a bout of illness. His doctor had forbidden him to work, Marx did however study the numerous island newspapers of the time and it is recorded he commented on the local electioneering. 
Quite what impact the way the island was run had on Karl’s ideology we can only speculate but Marx was concerned about corruption within 
the socialist movement itself as the very progress of the movement was threatened by the corruption of its leaders the source of the corruption was bourgeois society and its wealth. It seams that our Karl also had a jovial side as he and Jenny would have bouts of uncontrollable laughter to the extent that they dare not even glance at each other for fear of going into one.
Quite why the council haven’t acknowledged the presence of the great man on the island, with a plaque to commemorate him, I feel raises further suspicion that Karl’s views of the islands leadership were far from favourable. Could they still be in fear of revolution? 
So I have designed a plaque, and shown how nicely it would adorn number eleven if the council would only get their collective finger out, as a celebration of the father of communism who together with Friedrich Engels produced the Communist manifesto.
