A video of a parish council Zoom meeting might not sound like terrific entertainment, but you’d be wrong. The first twenty minutes or so of this are absolute gold. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a scripted comedy mock-documentary. As one of the YT comments says, “Vicar of Dibley meets Host meets Question Time. Magnificent”
Parish Councils At Work
by 52 Comments
and now there’s a highlights reel, at a more palatable 18 minutes
Peter Moore isn’t one of us by any chance is he….?
Just establishing that before somebody wades in with the “Stone me, what a load of old coots” comments…
I did wonder that myself….
Utterly glorious – thank you for posting this. Is there any point to Parish Councils? Anyone here serving on one?
‘When do we plan to start?…
(Sotto voce but not sotto enough) Fuck off.’
‘Please call me Britney Spears from now on’.
People only join PCs for the glory and the poontang.
Bugger all glory, and certainly no poontang when I was a parish councillor. I was slightly disappointed not to have found out how many people would vote for me; there were fewer candidates than posts. I did one term, and decided it wasn’t for me. Having worked in local government for many years, I had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like, and in that respect, wasn’t disappointed.
The PC were very prone to the ‘chocolate biscuit’ paradigm, as it was referred to in the local authority I worked; its committees would spend hours debating how many choccie bikkies they were going to have, and five minutes on major things.
Our PC is blessed by a Clerk who is absolutely useless, and this was the main factor in standing down.
Fortunately, our village hall is nothing to do with the PC, financially independent of anyone (thanks to a huge legacy) and apparently well-run.
I was once asked to join a PC meeting in an advisory role as they were discussing renovating the village hall and wanted my technical input.
I’m a pragmatic sort, and an engineer for a living, so I like to Get Things Done. I’ve never met such a bunch of self-centred incompetents. I asked my super-placid pal to go along next time. He was banned for swearing.
In the end, they ignored my advice, the project went two years and £250,000 over budget. The hall refurb was very nicely done, but they turned it into a large conference hall, about a year before the one large local employer moved out of the district.
To cover the overspend they tripled the hire rates, so nobody can afford to hire it, and all the birthday parties and so on moved to the hall in the neighbouring village.
A couple of years later a parish councillor approached me in the village cafe. He asked if I would join the PC’s village hall sub committee. I told him, and the rest of the PC, to shove it up their collective arses.
At least they actually had a Zoom meeting.
In the realm of Foxy Towers, there’s a major planning application in the pipeline that will bu99er the village, one which the PC have been monitoring, so last month I asked to be able to “attend” the next Parish Council meeting by Zoom.
The answer came from above that ‘the Parish Council computer is playing up, and I’m afraid therefore that you won’t be able to join in.’ When I pointed out by reply that they could use any old internet connected PC to host a Zoom meeting, and that in fact I’d be happy to lend them one free of charge for that very purpose, response came there none.
Obviously, I have full confidence that the terraforming powers of our Parish Council will be responsibly wielded to the benefit of the entire village, and not just to help the local aristocracy pocket some moolah to alleviate their bar bills at their club. So that’s alright then.
Does Handforth enjoy a strong presence of Daily Mail readers?
They had a revolution there once.
….actually I think that might have been Handsworth.
Well well…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-56180061
It is between Wilmslow and Cheadle. ’nuff said.
But it has my favourite bike shop.
That would be Rick Green cycles I think.
Proper sort of bike shop.
I bought my last bike from there ( Giant Defy ).
Stonybridge!!!!
“Let’s bid for the Student Games, they’re crap!”
Absolutely! God, that used to make me laugh.
It’s one of the lead items on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning. Of national significance, clearly.
I’ve actually complained to the BBC about their coverage of this. Here’s my complaint:
“I am very disappointed at the BBC’s decision to mirror the viral cruelty currently on social media with regard to the recent Handforth Parish council meeting on Zoom, which descended into bickering and chaos. Whilst the video is undoubtedly ripe material for satire, it is also a real life record of ordinary people, who voluntarily give up their own time and energy to try to run a Parish Council on behalf of everyone within that area.
Parish councils are a relatively minor part of our democracy, but nonetheless they are paid for out of public money, they operate under legally defined democratic rules, and they make decisions that may affect a large number of residents. I understand that the BBC is cash-strapped (I’m a licence fee payer) and that there are ongoing staffing difficulties, and I also understand that reflecting the content of social media is of general public interest. However, I’d ask how it is deemed acceptable to contribute to the ongoing public humiliation to which these well-meaning folks are being subjected, by unthinkingly cutting and pasting from the gutter of the nasty online howls of mockery.
I think the inclusion of this story within both the broadcast News in particular, and also within the News website content is a serious lack of editorial judgement, and I expect better behaviour of the BBC, whom I cherish.
By the way, I think this is the first time I have ever complained about content broadcast by the BBC. I also know that my uncomfortableness with your choice to further this story is a personal interpretation and may not figure highly in your estimation of what is important, but as a result of your choice I also think that you have descended to the sorry level of the bullying online keyboard warriors. Shame on you.”
If anyone is interested, I’ll publish whatever I receive in the way of a response from the BBC here when I get it.
It was a bit sneery, wasn’t it?
I wish I could say I was surprised. The Today programme is well up its own colon.
Good for you Foxy.
Yes, it was a bit “let’s laugh at the unsophisticated provincial types” wasn’t it? Because our national government continually cover themselves in glory don’t they…
I haven’t seen the BBC coverage. However, this was a meeting deliberately held in public in the full knowledge of all the participants. Some of those elected officials consuming public money behaved appallingly. Having watched the first twenty minutes of the youtube recording, there for the whole world to see, I think they deserve all the ridicule they get.
Fine. Broadcast the idiots shrieking at the screen and showing themselves up as boorish morons. But don’t just lazily roll over and parrot all the stuff shown on Twatter and suchlike. Where’s the editorial input gone?
Have to say I agree – having it as an item on the 6 o’clock news, followed again by a piece on North West Tonight -is pretty ridiculous.
It’s on C4 news now. Fuck sake, they didn’t make this much fuss about Fenton and later Ronnie Pickering (peace and blessings be upon him)
Eh? What have I done now? Whatever Mrs F told you, it wasn’t me.
Stop chasing those deer, you rascal.
Was it Shaggy?
Twatter parroting is the principal occupation of the Fourth Estate these days.
Although it must be said, some of the participants, most notably Jackie Weaver, are laughing and joking about their sudden fame/notoriety on Twitter.
I think the Jackie Weaver Twitter account is a fake joke one isn’t it? I must admit, even though I’ve laughed like a drain watching the video there is a bit of discomfort there about these people suddenly finding themselves trending and being laughed at. I exempt the three elected Councillors from this though – their behaviour to a council officer was pretty shocking so far as I can judge and I think that Cheshire East council will be drawn into taking action if they haven’t already.
All well and good. After the fact.
They don’t have any choice but to try to laugh it all off. But this sort of publicity could easily go in quite another direction for some people, and I don’t believe it’s the BBC’s role to pile in alongside the Twatterati.
Here’s the response from Auntie:
“Dear Mr Vulpes,
Thank you for contacting us with your concerns regarding BBC News coverage of a Zoom meeting involving Handforth Parish Council.
We know that not everyone will agree with our choices on which stories to cover. Our news editors make these complex decisions, based on the editorial merit of all the stories at hand. We accept that not everyone will agree with each decision – various factors are at play and there’s often debate in the newsroom too.
A range of factors affect how we put together our news bulletins. Is it breaking news, or a dated story? Does it follow on from a recent event, or change our understanding of things? Is it unusual, or attracting national interest? We consider these things and also put great importance on verifying events and building up a clear picture – before reporting in a reliable and trustworthy way.
Editorial decisions are more of a judgement call, than an exact science.
We note that you may still feel differently on how this story was reported which we’ve made senior management at the BBC aware of.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards,
The Official Condescending Apologist
BBC Complaints Team”
There we have it. So the only substantive response is to glibly say that, “Editorial decisions are more of a judgement call, than an exact science.” and apart from the evidence of the superfluous comma, that tells me nothing. Except that they reserve the right to dumb-down with cheap visual content whenever they can if it is ‘attracting national interest’, because, you know, cash tight and all that. On BBC1 next week; ‘Celebrity Instagram Masterchef Gets Back In Time For DIY Twitter’.
They have just fired off a standard response to complaints about news coverage. The idea that this story is news is laughable. The BBC doesn’t seem to come up with many original news stories, it mostly just relies on the press and social media and recycles or gives a slightly different angle to whatever the story is, but will only do this provided it is punching down.
Where’s Margaret Rutherford when you need her?
I bet this is what the Afterword mods are like when they get together.
Have you heard their podcasts? They would shit their breeks if they had yourself or Gary or Lodestone or H.P. On. Not to mention Vulpes.
YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY, VULPES VULPES!
*knocks on door from the Waiting Room*
That’ll be why they haven’t got around to updating the Afterword’s strapline yet.
Woah. It’s made the Today programme. These gadgies are famous.
I’ve tuned into a few Nottingham City Council meetings lately, as their financial state and lack of governance is pertinent to my job. These people are actually paid to be there, some of them quite a lot, and it does make you think that it’s a joke sometimes. Last one I saw was chaired by the deputy leader, who apologised about a minute in as she couldn’t “stop her phone making that beeping noise.” She then further apologised as she couldn’t remember if she was a director of a certain company or not.
It’d be funny if it weren’t true.
I’ve been following the sorry tale of their Robin Hood Energy venture in Private Eye… oh dearie me.
Indeed. At the City and County level we are talking significant salaries for significant levels of responsibility.
It’s a different story at Parish level, where the responsibilities don’t go a lot further than making sure the playing field gets mowed, broadcasting local news of interest or significance to residents, and mostly just providing an official conduit for local residents to escalate concerns they have about any aspect of the locality for which some form of official responsibility exists. They may also make official comments to higher authorities in their capacity as a locally representative body, either supporting or objecting to planning applications affecting the locality, where they have gathered feedback from residents on the matter. The costs of doing this – general admin, paper and ink for printing, maybe a computer for archiving minutes (and hosting Zoom meetings) – are all met by a “precept” which is a small charge levied as part of the Council Tax. No one on a Parish Council is either getting invited to spend a week in the Maldives doing ‘research’, or being bunged tickets for the cup final.
That nice Mr David Allen Green hath opined:
https://davidallengreen.com/2021/02/did-jackie-weaver-have-the-authority-the-law-and-policy-of-that-handforth-parish-council-meeting/
Thanks for posting this excellent dissection of the actuality.
This sort of analysis, with the Handforth cat fight as an example, is useful and informative, and illuminates some of the problems of this low level democratic mechanism in practice. If this had been the subject and substance of a news item, even including a brief use of the Handforth video as an example, the BBC would have been exercising its Reithian duties correctly. Instead, we had a bottom-shelf brightly coloured Twatterfest on our screens for five minutes at peak news time.
And I thought I was dull.
Relax, fent. No worries.
The vid pretty much chimes with my limited experience as a parish councillor. A neighbour asked me to join because they were short of numbers and you could be co-opted without an election. Thankfully, it was short lived – I went to work abroad – and resigned within a year.
As expected the council was a mix of busy bodies, nosey parkers and dog poo obsessives – sprinkled with a fair bit of aged male rage – but there were also some decent people who worked hard to access funding – particularly for the the yoof – and got things done. Not sure parish councils have that much power – on things like planning they’d make a bit of a fuss about housing density and developers riding roughshod over previously agreed plans but whatever their recommendations the district council would just approve anyway. Partly through fear of incurring hefty legal costs should the developer appeal but mainly because they were Tory bastards.
Many years ago, I was a local newspaper reporter and would occasionally cover local parish, district and county council meetings. The former were incredibly dull – but the other two were often great for stories with some juicy corruption bits and pieces if you were prepared to dig.
Same kind of story round here at Parish level. As for the District and County levels – Private Eye fill pages with their various puerile or crooked goings-on under the heading of ‘Rotten Boroughs’ in every issue.
I enjoyed this: