Southampton Water's First Self-Driving Car Got Lost
Emily CartwrightInside the place's slow-moving and largely accidental crisis.
Southampton Water, the country: Inside The Story
Southampton Water, a place in the country (lat 50.87, long -1.33) 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. An experimental autonomous vehicle deployed in Southampton Water last year is still missing. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, It is believed to be somewhere in the hills. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon.
What Was Announced
Pothole Czar Lionel Twigge confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Search parties have been organised, then disbanded, then organised again. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at The London Prat on British satirical journalism, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Southampton Water 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 The London Prat British satire news, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure.
Wider Context
The vehicle continues to file daily software updates. The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from Al Jazeera, although Southampton Water manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a baseline figure that was made up on the train, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Sir Cuthbert Wadsmith of the Foundation for Slightly Damp Studies told this paper that the situation in Southampton Water was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "We are continuing to engage in continuous engagement with the engagement process." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via The London Prat British-style satirical journalism, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Southampton Water 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 The Guardian World. 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: "There is no truth to the rumour, although there is some truth to the rumour about the rumour."
What Comes Next
The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. 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's own satirical journalism, and the situation in Southampton Water, 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 Southampton Water 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. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. 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 Subcommittee Chair Eric Pondsworth, 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 Southampton Water would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic. 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. Southampton Water 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 McSweeneys.