A Seth Lord

I was talking yesterday to a colleague about mind control of cars – a daft enough subject, but occasioned by someone asking me to take a car for a A/C regas befoie the steering column had been connected – when someone slipped and asked if I was a Force-wielding Seth Lord. Not a Sith Lord, mind you, but a Seth Lord. And suddenly it all made sense.

Because up north a Seth Lord wouldn’t be some space villain in a black cape – he’d be a Miloner (or Mill Owner, for those down south). You can picture him now, can’t you? Chapel on Sunday, Bible in hand, tight purse strings the rest of the week. Appointed, as the Good Book said, to rule over looms, lives, and livelihoods. The clatter of the mill was his music, the wage book his weapon, and the rows of terraced housing his little empire.

These Seth Lords weren’t the stuff of fantasy. They were flesh and bone, striding through mill towns from Burnley to Bradford. Workers feared their coughs and cursed their cough lozenges. A glance could close a mill gate faster than any lightsaber. Sith Lords had their Death Stars – Seth Lords had their spinning mules and their tallymen.

And don’t be fooled by the piety. The storm-god Seth of the Egyptians would’ve recognised them. They brought chaos of their own – weaving lives into poverty while preaching salvation at the pulpit. Lords of chaos in clogs, keeping whole towns under their thumb with lint-filled lungs and a hymn at the end of it.

So yes, call me a Seth Lord if you like. Not because I’ve got the powers of a Jedi gone bad, but because I know exactly what those old Miloners were – appointed lords of industry and misery, ruling the North with Bible verses and a brass-counting fist. And truth be told, compared to them, Darth Vader looks like a soft lad.

As an aside, I set out, with a bit of help from AI, to create a cartoon of a Seth Lord for the blog post image – flat cap on head, looming figure, glowing miner’s lamp sabre in hand. Nothing outrageous. But the moment I dared type “Darth Vader mask,” the shutters slammed down. Violation of policy, apparently.

You can mock politicians, lampoon hypocrisy, even invoke the Egyptian god of chaos – but hint at Darth Vader and suddenly the lawyers are storming the gates. Never mind that the helmet itself was cobbled together from samurai armour and a German gas mask – those are fine. Call it “Darth Vader” though, and it’s treated like the Ark of the Covenant at Lucasfilm HQ.

And here’s the irony. By tweaking my words – no mention of Vader, just an “ominous mask,” an “industrial overlord,” a “miner’s lamp sabre” – the AI gave me exactly what I’d pictured in the first place. Same menace, same silhouette, flat cap perched proudly on the most recognisable snout in cinema. The algorithm couldn’t tell the difference, because there wasn’t one.

So who’s the real Seth Lord here? The chap with the glowing lamp sabre, or the faceless system lording it over us with the divine right of intellectual property lawyers? Either way, the joke still landed. You can’t stop parody with policy – you just force it to wear a flat cap.