“These super-cheap boards won’t even see out the day, never mind the week. Some of them are broken within two hours."
A sinister development in the Chinese masterplan to fuck the world.
A little over eighteen months after a mutant virus escaped the ancient city of Wuhan, and as its war machine readies for a war with the west over Taiwan, it has been revealed that Chinese-made bodyboards selling for as little as sixty pence (around a buck) are “poisoning UK beaches” and killing its leatherback turtles.
See, tourists come, buy the kids a couple of the boards, bust ‘em or tire of ‘em, and then toss ‘em in the bin or leave ‘em to self-destruct on the beach.
The UK’s Daily Mail did a little walk around Devon and “we saw hundreds of plastic, brightly coloured bodyboards in use and picked up handfuls of rainbow-coloured polystyrene bits as we walked along the beach.”
Beach ranger Holly Robertson told the Mail, “These super-cheap boards won’t even see out the day, never mind the week. Some of them are broken within two hours. They get dumped and they break up into tiny fragments. To birds, the pieces look like food. They think it’s a fish egg. But it’s killing them… The leatherback turtles out there between us and Lundy Island are being killed by plastic pollution. These are the same turtles pictured on the kids’ bodyboards. How ironic is that?”
Now, and in a spirit y’might called Churchillian, stores are fighting the Chinese on the streets and on the beaches, refusing to stock the shitty one-surf sleds and offering, instead, higher-priced alternatives.
Nathan Lockwood, from the UK Bodyboarding Association, said, “They are not sustainable in any way and give the sport a bad name.”
Bodyboarding is still a sport? Who knew.

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I was just dozing on how sanitized the WSL is when suddenly Jack Robinson wins the Mexico contest with a Finals wave performance of all time, if you haven’t seen his winning wave , and consider it was the last wave of the final and the guy is 20 years old, wow it changed my mind about how to finish a barrel and I grew up a couple minutes from Honolua and have probably seen more waves just like that one than most people … not that I’ll ever be doing it just watching him blow doors this guy looks like the next champ from Kauai now that he’s over there …
Leatherback Turtle – sounds like either a TikTok dance or a bizarre sex act.
I spent half my life questing for playmates ( of the month ) and the rest of the time playing with mates . Both were fun .
Do tell. Playmate stories are always welcome Bicko.
A Tale of Two Titties
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ……
Did you read more than one Dickens? I tried but then quickly decided there was little pleasure to be had.
I loved the musical Oliver Twist as a young kid in the early 70s ( still do ) but was much more influenced by Orwell’s 1933 memoir” Down and Out in Paris and London” then Dicken’s work from 70 years earlier …..
My mates have been selling those exact boards in France for the last 30 years for 10 to 20€ a pop …… I have even tried to upsell people from the 10 € Hawaiian print to the 25 € hello Kitty just for the fun of it ….Please don’t tell Bex …..giggles
Whadda they cost? No more than a couple of euro(s)? Always unsure about the ess.
Comment 1st…read “article” 2nd…stores fighting back…buying for a dollar selling for two…
Bodyboarding is something anyone can do… But not anyone can do it well!
Step 1: get a boogie board
Step 2: find a water source (use your imagination)
Step 3: get on boogie board.
Voila! You’re bodyboarding!
💩💩💩💩
Add flippers,
Mao Tse Boog!
I’m no tub hustler but it sounds like the democratisation of surfing to me.
Has Kelly been informed?
In a strange twist of fate one of the branches of the banking and wine growing family Rothschild ….. after partaking in a surf lesson , asked my mate where they could find a bodyboard / body boards to buy ….. my mate pointed him in the direction of our mates surfshop….. he then stopped and asked if the surfshop had 2nd hand body boards ?
The great irony of all this is that it’s in Devon…
I just learned, now, that somewhere in California after reading this news, Devon Howard was admitted to a hospital having seizures…
Bugger I hope he will be ok
( or we’re you just hamming it up ? )
Hahaha only an joke about his name hahaha
Fake news!…plastics will save us all!…boogie wonderland.?
Aah! the age of plasticity…I used to revel in the fact you could travel the globe with a passport and a credit card…all in the palm of your hand!…Silly Ignorant man I am!…(because of co vid? )
Sport
noun … etc
verb
verb: sport; 3rd person present: sports; past tense: sported; past participle: sported; gerund or present participle: sporting
1.
wear or display (a distinctive item).
“he was sporting a huge handlebar moustache”
Similar: wear, display, exhibit, have on show, show off, flourish, parade, flaunt
2.
play in a lively, energetic way.
“the children sported in the water”
“the children sported in the water brightly-coloured-chinese-made-body-boards poisoning UK beaches” and killing its leatherback turtles.”.
This Sporting Life ….
They were overrated, I reckon. The flute, yep.
It depends if you were there at the beginning on JJJ 80s 90s way before they were on TV during the 2000 Olympics ….
Xie xie merica
https://youtu.be/lFvjuhXErNU
Dementia in Chief
Wow, that’s regan on steroids ….
I, uh, err …
We should ask the Chinese to build surfboards of this quality so surf can get it’s bad name back.
From my upclose observation it appears to be so deeply embedded now as to be an intrinsic part of the culture rather than a sport partaken by select individuals. Am on Devon coast at present after the week prior being in Cornwall. Plagues of surf schools. Can confirm every parent, child and grandparent has a wetty and a lid or mid length soft top. Those with lids do not have fins and consequently bob about but seem happy with that result. Have seen about 3 waves surfed in total by the midlengthers. Very few of the lids are the esky foam versions though so unclear to me what the fuss is about – maybe the illegal restrictive trade practices of the local surf shops are working? The food trucks consistently selling out by early afternoon is, however, fucking outrageous.
How up close are you Dimmy?…sounds like party politics too me!..comrade?..things like lying and cheating become normalized…but I like where you’re going and the soft cock riding grannies, and finless children…
Way close. So close that I had to drag the troop further away from the poly tarp windbreakers to get a piece of the serenity.
Jimbo, I’ve not seen, knowingly, a Saltrock tshirt but there was, on the way to the slightly rusted Tesco(s) in an outatheway part of town, a Saltrock shop which caused my wife to ask if it was a surf brand to which I said, I dunno (but now I know).
The surf culture here is somewhat weird, quite a lot of local brands making ordinary product. The hot item on the beaches is the dry robe – an oversized raincoat in an A line cut lined with polarfleece. The peeps proudly wear their KKK beach towels after walking their softies down to the beach 2×2 (one to the front, one to the rear, one under each arm) and then dry robe it afters.
Anyways, back to my locally distilled rum (everyone’s into the gig of diy grog) and coke that pleasingly tastes just like bundy and coke.
Dim are the Surfers from Devon still rockin’ in Saltrock t shirts .
30 years ago , my mate , Parky ( the Legend ) and former Andre Agassi doppelgänger from Tiverton , was covered from head to toe in the 90s brand S Rock …..
Body Boarding is the rehabilitation sport of kings.