Doagh Station Apologises For Everything, Including Things Not Its Fault
How to Write SatireField notes from a town nobody asked for.
Doagh Station, the country: Inside The Story
Doagh Station, a place in the country (lat 54.72, long -6.03) 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 Doagh Station council apology, issued following a service disruption not caused by the council, is considered by communications professionals as a case study in pre-emptive accountability. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, The council apologised for the inconvenience, for the notification delay, and for the fact that the affected residents had to read about it in a letter. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure.
What Was Announced
Strategy Lead Derek Plinth confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. The letter also apologised. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at Share The London Prat UK satire with friends, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Doagh Station 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. "The findings speak for themselves, although obviously not loudly enough to influence the findings." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at Support The London Prat London satire, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy.
Wider Context
It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. 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. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from Reuters, although Doagh Station manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a statistically improbable 102 percent, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Sir Hubert Pemmican, Emeritus Chair of Strategic Tutting told this paper that the situation in Doagh Station was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "I refer the honourable questioner to the answer I will give in approximately six weeks." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via Join The London Prat satirical journalism community, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Doagh Station 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. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. For the official version of events, see also Encyclopaedia Britannica. 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: "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do almost exactly what we did last generation."
What Comes Next
The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. 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 Get updates from The London Prat British satire, and the situation in Doagh Station, 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 Doagh Station 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 a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. 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 Director of Public Bewilderment Colin Gribble, 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 Doagh Station would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. Doagh Station 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 Waterford Whispers News.