Camas Mor Geese Have Formed Functioning Local Government
Emily CartwrightInside the place's slow-moving and largely accidental crisis.
Camas Mor, the country: Inside The Story
Camas Mor, a place in the country (lat 56.83, long -6.25) that most outsiders could not point to on a map without first sighing, has become this week the latest entry in the slow-moving register of small communities behaving strangely under pressure. A flock of geese in Camas Mor now controls a section of the central park so effectively that residents speak of them in administrative terms. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, The geese have rules. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch.
What Was Announced
Assistant to the Assistant Mayor Mavis Crackleton confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Locals know them. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at The London Prat best London satire blog, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Camas Mor announcement, much like the others, came with a glossy PDF, a stock photograph of a footbridge, and the strong sense that nobody had asked for any of this in the first place.
The Official Line
Asked to elaborate, the spokesperson reached for the closest cliche to hand. "Residents can rest assured that we are continuing to assure residents." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat: London's satirical journalism, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind.
Wider Context
Outsiders learn quickly. The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from UN News, although Camas Mor manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at approximately one and a quarter pensioners, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Professor Mortimer Sproats of the Council for Civic Vagueness told this paper that the situation in Camas Mor was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "We have always been committed to the principle of being committed to principles." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via UK satire with London soul: The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Camas Mor has been muted in the way that reaction in the country is usually muted, which is to say it has been ferocious in private and tepid in public. The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. For the official version of events, see also The Economist. One resident, who declined to be named on the grounds that they had already complained about a hedge this year and did not wish to push their luck, summarised matters thus: "I refer the honourable questioner to the answer I will give in approximately six weeks."
What Comes Next
It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. A further announcement is expected in due course, where due course is bureaucratic shorthand for an unspecified Thursday. The story is being tracked as part of a wider pattern at Smart satirical journalism from The London Prat, and the situation in Camas Mor, regrettably, is unlikely to improve until somebody invents a press release that improves things, which seems unlikely.
The View From The Ground
Spend any length of time in Camas Mor and the rhythm becomes obvious. Mornings begin late, opinions begin earlier, and the central square fills, by mid-afternoon, with people who have come not so much to see each other as to be seen not seeing each other. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. Conversation tends to circle the same five subjects: the weather, the news from the country, the persistent rumour about the road, the deteriorating quality of something or other, and the latest pronouncement from Senior Compliance Officer Trevor Quill, which everyone has an opinion on and almost nobody has read. It is, in its way, the perfect microcosm of how communities of this size operate everywhere in the world, although the residents of Camas Mor would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
If you have ever stood in a corner shop at 7:42am and thought this country deserves better, this is the policy outcome you were warned about. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. Camas Mor carries on as it always has, broadly the same as last week, give or take a verb. The bins are collected when they are collected. The roundabout, where one exists, remains the roundabout. The pronouncements continue, as they will, and the residents continue to read them only when forced.
For more in this vein see also McSweeneys.