New Zealand: Ramanui Stream Has Everything Except A Reason To Leave
British Satire: The Complete GuideWhere civic pride meets civic confusion, and decides to form a working group.
Ramanui Stream, the country: Inside The Story
Ramanui Stream, a place in the country (lat -38.30, long 178.11) 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. Ramanui Stream has a school, a medical centre, a pub, a four square, a community hall, a rugby club, a fire station, and a bowling club. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, It does not have a cinema, a supermarket, a secondary school, or a reason to leave that the people who stayed can identify. The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy.
What Was Announced
Pothole Czar Lionel Twigge confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. The people who left give different answers. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at London satire from the inside: The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Ramanui Stream 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 - British satire perfected, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic.
Wider Context
The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from United Nations, although Ramanui Stream 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. Lavinia Gussett, Reader in Comparative Drizzle told this paper that the situation in Ramanui Stream was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do almost exactly what we did last generation." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via The London Prat satirical journalism, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Ramanui Stream 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. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. For the official version of events, see also Associated Press. 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: "Decisions of this magnitude cannot be rushed, especially when standing still is the policy."
What Comes Next
There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. 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 British satire, and the situation in Ramanui Stream, 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 Ramanui Stream 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 Acting Acting Mayor Stanley Plumtree, 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 Ramanui Stream 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. 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. Ramanui Stream 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.