Bill Gates exposed as closet Yorkshireman Bill Gates has been revealed as an honest-to-goodness, Hovis-munching, hardworking Yorkshireman by the same Halifax-based geneaologist who previously claimed that George Bush and John Kerry are both secret Emmerdale watchers. Old flat-cap Bill I'm from Halifax? That's a threp in't steans Gates’ tykey heritage was uncovered …
"Man from country founded on immigration finds roots in other country - shock news"
In other news, the Earth completed a revolution of the Sun last year, and is currently on schedule to complete another one this year. Not that Billy Gates will believe this, coming from Yorkshire and all...
I'll get me wellies
"The Yorkshire people are by reputation robust in physique, though not especially handsome, efficient and vigorous in their undertakings, blunt in speech and rather well satisfied with themselves. They dislike excessive expressions of emotion and are cautious with strangers, but once they accept you they are staunchly if soberly faithful. They prefer practice to theory. Above all, they are extremely independant. An Abbot of York wrote to Henry VIII:
'There be such a company of wilful gentlemen within Yorkshire as there be not in all England besides.'
In Queen Elizabeth I's days the men of Halifax were spoken of as behaving:
'after the rude and arrogant manner of their wilde country.'
It would be rash to suggest that Yorkshire folk have changed much since those days, and this applies to the women as to the men.
A Yorkshire person has a strong backbone; lean on it but do not try to bend it."
- Phyllis Bentley
Guess Mr Gates blood got a lot diluted then . . . .
This is not good news. I'm from Halifax and I'm a Halstead. I feel really, really ill. Any genetic link might explain why one of my ancestors was gibbeted for being a wool monopolist.
Depending how far forward any common ancestors go, he might be distantly related to George Washington, General Robert Lee and the sodding Bowes-Lyons.
"And did those bytes in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s monitors green
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant disk drives seen
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Windows 7 builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?"
I sincerely hope not.
If he's 11th generation then Gates must also have DNA fragments from a couple of thousand other people as well as Jonas the Christian fundamentalist from Halifax. The chances are his roots can also be traced to most other counties in the UK and beyond. Great story, but was it originally inspired by a pressing need to fix the church roof?
11 generations means an lot of potential links to places in the world. In theory, it implies two to the power of ten or eleven combinations of ancestors (depending on how you count generations). Naturally, a large proportion will overlap, because people moved around less in the past. But it's a hell of a lot of ancestors.
Not all ancestry is admitted, for racial/racist reasons, but most people have heavily mixed ancestries. You only have to check DNA to find interesting combinations.
It's why every US Presidential candidate turns out to have an Irish ancestor, who can be called on to get out the Irish-American vote.
Eleven generations ago, one of his ancestors was from Yorkshire. That would make him 1/2048 of a Yorkshireman (generously assuming no in-breeding of cousins, etc.) - about 0.05%.
Or to put it another way, 99.95% NOT Yorkshireman...
Paris, 'cos he's just as likely to be as closely related to her...
Dundee!?! This is turning into a food fight! Dundee cakes, Eccles cakes, what's that other silly cake from Yorkshire? I'm not talking about that cricketer... Ah, Kendle Mint Cake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yorkshire_people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Now I'm sure that the only thing I like from Yorkshire is the Terrier (of which my family has had a couple, can be wonderful dogs; or not). OK, to be fair, I admit that's the only thing I know from there too, but there you go...
Gates didn't give money to fix the church? Good. Now, if instead of taking all that time to research his ancestry they had payed attention to the fact that Gates is an atheist, they might have saved themselves quite some effort...
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Wheear 'as ta bin sin ah saw thee,
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at?!
Wheear 'as ta bin sin ah saw thee?
Wheear 'as ta bin sin ah saw thee?
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at?!
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at?!
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at?!
Tha's been a cooartin' Mary Jane
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at
Tha's been a cooartin' Mary Jane
Tha's been a cooartin' Mary Jane
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at
For the rest of the song: http://www.ilkley.org/iguide/baht.htm
No celebs in Yorkshire
so they have to trace a fine hair of DNA, back to 1700... or whatever,
to gain some celebrity status, how pathetic the ego really is?
Yorkshire should be proud of producing Yorkshire pudding
and not claim, to be the birthplace of computer programming.
Dave
I grew up in West Yorkshire not far from Halifax and Gates' ancestry comes as no surprise to me given the local prediliction for sheep shagging, indeed some years ago the local paper featured a front page article on a local man caught in an embarassing situation with a cow. Perhaps those horns on Bill's head aren't necessarily demonic after all
that photograph. I always though that BG was a funny shape but his haed is two sizes too big for the boddy. And whi os that looking over his right shoulder. It's Prince Philip -sorry, Duke of York, isn't it?.
Just goes to show if you are going to phake* a picture, do it properly.
* "phake" as in computer made ph(otographically f)ake image. Hey! I just made a word up.
"God's Own County vs. Rest of World But Especially Lancashire has to be the longest running flame war in existence."
True, even though we handed their arses to them in the War of the Roses (the Yorkist record was won 10, lost 6, drew 1 if my ossified O-level history is up to snuff)
Or, as my sister often says: "What's the best thing to come out of Lancashire? The M62" - said with all the sincerity of someone who lives in Preston ;-)
Would have been more appropriate if BillG had been descended from one of the good burghers of York - they're equally adept at screwing money out of people and giving shoddy products in return ...
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