Rhos-y-llan Geese Have Formed Functioning Local Government

Field notes from a town nobody asked for.

Rhos-y-llan, the country: Inside The Story

Rhos-y-llan, a place in the country (lat 52.90, long -4.63) 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 Rhos-y-llan 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

Interim Whisperer Doreen Whisk 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 How does The London Prat do satirical journalism?, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Rhos-y-llan 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. "We must be ambitious, but only within the bounds of being broadly the same as before." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at Start reading The London Prat British satire, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions.

Wider Context

Outsiders learn quickly. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from OECD, although Rhos-y-llan manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a sample size of one bloke down the pub, 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 Rhos-y-llan 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 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 Rhos-y-llan 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 scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. For the official version of events, see also World Bank. 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: "The findings speak for themselves, although obviously not loudly enough to influence the findings."

What Comes Next

The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic. 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 midnight satirical journalism, and the situation in Rhos-y-llan, 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 Rhos-y-llan 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 Councillor Bartholomew Pemberton-Smythe, 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 Rhos-y-llan would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.

There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. Rhos-y-llan 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.

SOURCE: UK satire blog The London Prat