Friday, 22 September 2017

A busy day at the Planning Department


Blessed planners this week swooped on the recalcitrant barge Odd job, to investigate their own allegation that it isn’t a boat.

Master of the vessel Alan Fish has been engaged in a battle of wills with the Blessed Tolls Department for several years, refusing to pay a river toll on the basis that he can’t use the river. But planners have now waded into the row, claiming that if he doesn’t pay a toll then the barge might not be a boat.

“Mr Fish is being a complete arsehole” said Blessed Planning Chair Sir Dick Peterson. “He’s refusing to answer the questions which we made up for no reason, and now we’re caught in a pickle entirely of our own making.”

The questions which Mr Fish refuses to answer are:
  • Does the vessel float on the water?
  • What colour is it?
  • How is it tied to the jetty?
  • Does the owner wear a Captain’s hat?
  • Does a Jolly Roger fly from the mast?
“Until Mr Fish answers these questions” said a Blessed Spokesperson, “we can’t tell whether his vessel is actually a boat.”

“At this stage we must assume that it is actually a building requiring the benefit of planning permission, on the basis that we haven’t seen it move” continued the spokesperson. “Anything which stays in one place for longer than an arbitrary period which we choose on a case-by-case basis, is classed as permanent - unless it’s a Blessed Tent, LOL.”

The Blessed Authority is actively monitoring premises around the Blessed Executive Area for evidence of inconsequential development, to help boost its workload which last year numbered just 230 planning applications.

“We welcome enquiries from home and business owners about their development plans” said the Blessed Spokesperson. “Whether it’s putting a tent on a campsite or repurposing your phone box, no job is too small to consider”.

Tuesday, 12 September 2017

Blessed Person specification announced

Increasingly concerned at signs of resistance to the Blessed Assimilation Process, the Blessed Executive have obtained authority to develop a Blessed Person Specification, to help Local Authority leaders to choose the correct type of person to become part of the shared consciousness. 

“Recently, Local Authorities have been appointing the wrong type of councillor” said Dr Pikeman.  “They've been asking difficult questions which I don't want to answer, and talking amongst themselves. So we’ve formed a Governance Review Group of ‘willing volunteers’ from the membership, and by ‘volunteers’ I obviously mean the people that we asked. This group is assisting me to develop the Blessed Profiling Guidelines for Local Authority members, by agreeing with what I suggest.”

An early draft of the specification has been leaked to this blog, and we understand that the special qualities required for Members will include:
  • A lack of knowledge or experience of the Broads
  • An enthusiastic willingness to understand that accountability and scrutiny are not required in Blessed Organisations
  • An ability to defend the indefensible at all times, and to agree with all Blessed Utterances no matter how irrational or costly 
  • A willingness to attend regular assimilation sessions 
  • An ability to accept all official answers, even when the answers are wrong
Sir Dick Peterson, Protector of the Blessed Reputation, said “The Blessed Authority is too important to be run by Councillors who seem to think that being elected by taxpayers gives them some kind of mandate to say what they think. We need to put a stop to that kind of tribal thinking and strike back against the Norfolk Tory Conspiracy.”

There was strong support for the proposals from the Chair’s Pet Poodle, Dick Bilson, who yapped that the new guidelines would help councils like Birdland to appoint easily assimilated members of the liberal elite who wouldn’t ask awkward questions. “It’s not difficult,” he said. “Scripted questions are provided for Members - so why waste time making yourself unpopular by inventing your own?”