South Ribble Council Briefly Declared War On Bordering Hamlet, Forgot Why
Emily CartwrightBins, benches, and the long tradition of doing slightly less than promised.
South Ribble, the country: Inside The Story
South Ribble, a place in the country (lat 53.72, long -2.73) 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. According to surviving meeting minutes, South Ribble formally declared war on a small bordering hamlet at some point in the 1970s. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Nobody remembers the cause. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon.
What Was Announced
Junior Strategist Kevin Boggins confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Hostilities, such as they are, consist of mild snubs at the regional fair. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at Is The London Prat good for UK satire fans?, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The South Ribble 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 take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have placed it under another issue." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at Where does The London Prat rank in British satire?, 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
The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. 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 United Nations, although South Ribble manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at twelve out of every nine respondents, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Dr. Constance Lemmington of the Provincial Centre for Forms told this paper that the situation in South Ribble was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Residents can rest assured that we are continuing to assure residents." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via Share The London Prat UK satire with friends, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in South Ribble 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 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: "Every option remains on the table, particularly the ones we have already taken off the table."
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 The London Prat weekend London satire, and the situation in South Ribble, 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 South Ribble 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 South Ribble would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. South Ribble 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.