It's a joke. In the UK, before cable turned up almost all of the landline telephones were run by the Post Office which was then then split to British Telecom ; BT was privatised in the mid-80s. But Kingston-upon-Hull (Yorkshire, northern England) has had a separate arrangement owned by the city for many years, and still partly is though about half was floated a few years back. Nowadays it's diversified owns an ISP and other interests, as well as still running local phone services there.
http://www.kcom.com/aboutus/ourhistory/
Back to SIMs, perhaps even the cheapest countries to call may be able to host them, if the termination fees are based on other forwarded numbers ... which means they might come from anywhere