$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf(tomshardware.com) |
$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf(tomshardware.com) |
Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.
The billion dollar company is monitored by ecologists and other professionals to make sure they build things according to environmental impact laws and follow their permits (e.g., after digging, restoring the top soil, etc).
Randos moving and stacking stones, especially in large numbers, may alter habits for (small) animals and cause erosion:
* https://www.ausableriver.org/blog/leaving-no-trace-rock-stac...
* https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation...
https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/occitanie/tarn/albi/au...
Almost as if ecoologist are not listened to. What a surprise ...
There's some open space near my house with a fenced off area saying to stay on trail to protect the ecosystem, but of course oil and gas companies can drive their trucks through to setup fracking rigs.
"This area is ecologically insensitive. I'm not too worried what you do here."
Until they define some map or scale of what "ecologically sensitive" means, I put zero weight on that statement. It's meaningless. They say it about everything because it is their job to do so.
https://bsky.app/profile/dsquareddigest.bsky.social/post/3ms...
The anecdote starts at 16m55s: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-connect-the-wor...
Non-British people might also like to know that the UK news media is in what's called the silly season, where they run any old nonsense as news because Parliament is in recess, the MPs are on their holidays, and there's a dearth of serious announcements to cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season
To be fair, in the UK (and much of Europe) bronze age remains are everywhere. But there’s only 1 fictional Dobby grave.
Like farmers will regularly dig up a bronze age thingamabob while plowing a field. For example [1], [2]. There’s a story like this every couple of years.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/farmer-bronze-ag...
[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/rhubodach-scotland-bronze-ag...
every single entity has (normally) a single (real) burial site. Us grouping many unknowns in one group, and comparing to a single specific one is not quite fair...
there is only one burial site of many other fictional characters including some other well known and beloved ones.
Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po...
The associated pseudoscience has a wikipedia page too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiology_(pseudoscience)
Many fans have visited the beach to lay painted rocks, several crosses, and many socks in Dobby’s memorial. However, as the memorabilia has had a negative effect on the environment, the beach asks that visitors just interact with the site by taking photos.[4]
> Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people"-or, to put it more plainly, elves-in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people."
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/4/wall-street-on...
What makes you think that? If you own it, it isn't a listed building, and zoning laws allow it, you can knock it down in most countries. I'm not sure that would be illegal anywhere.
Deconsecration is part of canon law for some religions. Whether you as an individual care about those or not is a personal matter. I doubt that there are many cases where the previous owner forgot to deconsecrate the church when they sold it off.
I am a Christian and it would not occur to me that that was a thing. It's just a building.
https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/pcnpa/application-d...
https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/pcnpa/application-d...
The latter application includes a Archaeological Written Scheme of Investigation (WSI) which explains what needs to be done to avoid disturbing things of archeological importance. No mention of fictional elves in there, but I wasn't expecting any.
This is specifically with Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, who are responsible for the beach. Pembrokeshire County Council have their own planning authority, e.g.:
https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/pembrokeshire/appli...
They can call it what they want, I call it "paying off an industry to support the government" because that's essentially what it is. It's a make work project for whoever benefits and that industry will thereafter go to bat for the BS because they don't want the gravy train to stop.
Ofcourse the really old churches are turned into monuments and they come with free dead people under the building. Can't do much with those.
If they'd left a big pile of rocks in the spot, I'd bet I could find that.
Not doing anything might indeed be better for the environment alone in isolation, but has to be balanced with other considerations, like the benefits of a power cable carrying clean power.
Because beaches are terrible places for graves, one good storm, the beach shifts and you've got to bury them all over again.
[1] https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-be...
I guess my point is that I think the problem is nimbies, not environmentalists, and since I think we need a faster and cheaper planning system in the UK I think it's important to identify the actual problem. Getting the Campaign to Protect Rural England or whoever to produce a ranking of places by importance does nothing if we still have a system where local residents can raise objections about building on locations at the bottom of the ranking and it takes forever to push something through.