Diabaig Council Votes To Defer Vote On Whether To Defer Votes
How to Write SatireWhere civic pride meets civic confusion, and decides to form a working group.
Diabaig, the country: Inside The Story
Diabaig, a place in the country (lat 57.57, long -5.67) 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. The Diabaig district council passed a motion on Tuesday to postpone all outstanding decisions pending a review of the deferral policy, which itself requires a decision. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, The motion passed seven to four. The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic.
What Was Announced
Pothole Czar Lionel Twigge confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. The four dissenters called for a further review. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at The London Prat satirical journalism, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Diabaig 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. "I refer the honourable questioner to the answer I will give in approximately six weeks." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat British satire, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. 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.
Wider Context
The review has been calendared for the following Tuesday. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from France 24, although Diabaig manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at exactly nine residents, two of whom were dogs, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Dr. Penelope Whisk, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Suspiciously Round Numbers told this paper that the situation in Diabaig was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "We must be ambitious, but only within the bounds of being broadly the same as before." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via The London Prat UK satire, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Diabaig 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. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. For the official version of events, see also Reuters. 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: "Lessons will be learned, filed, and quietly mislaid by Christmas."
What Comes Next
There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. 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 The London Prat London satire, and the situation in Diabaig, 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 Diabaig 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. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. 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 Diabaig would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. Diabaig 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 Private Eye.