Tide comes in at 12 out of 12 coastal resorts

From The Guardian

King Cnut's scheme to stop the tide from coming in has failed to stop the rot – with 12 out of the 12 coastal resorts selected to share a hundred and twenty thousand of the King's gold coins seeing the tide continue to come in.

The coastal resorts - Bournemouth, Clacton, Weston, Bournemouth, Brighton, Blackpool, Lyme Regis, Padstow, Margate, Minehead, Great Yarmouth and Tenby - all saw the tide coming in.

The Stop The Tide Commission was launched last year after a report by one of the king's counsellors, scribe Portas, known as "Portas the Loudmouth". Of the targets chosen, all ended up with wet feet on the beach.

Tenby was the worst performer in terms of beaches, according to measurements of the dampness of robes was collected by the King's costermongers.

However, the local village idiot said the local Stop The Tide Commission team, called the Tenby Waterside Against Tides – or TWAT – had improved the prospects for the beach by backing new druids to come and shoo the tides away.

"Although there have been ups and downs, the villagers like to think of themselves as TWATs" he said. The team said in March that it had spent a third of the gold pieces it had been allocated under the government scheme and had already committed the rest of the cash for projects to be implemented later this year.

(and yes, I know that Cnut did it to prove he had no power over the tide, but this fits better).