Granny Wields The Knife

The Blessed Forum is set to become the latest victim of the post-Peer Review clampdown on stakeholder engagement - known as Granny’s Guillotine.

Back in November, Granny challenged the Forum on its value and effectiveness, as there seemed to be a lot of people saying things that she didn’t agree with. “The Forum was fine when they said what we wanted them to say” said Granny. “Recently though, reactionary forces have started to talk about things which are not reflective of the views which I hear from my small group of what I call ‘friends’. Frankly I’m bored with hearing about governance and accountability, whatever they may be. I’d rather they had lectures on climate change and the effect of Brexit on farming, that should keep them quiet.”

Members reminded her that their official role is to offer advice and comment on the Blessed aims and objectives, and said that it’s hard to be effective when nobody is listening and members have to endure Death by PowerPoint instead.

But such dissent is obviously in breach of the Blessed Purpose and so, faced with the prospect of Forum members discussing the outcome of the Peer Review, Chairman Keith Sausage was bullied into cancelling February’s meeting at the last minute on the basis that there was nothing to talk about.

Determined to know how the recommendations of the Peer Review were to be addressed, one brave member put forward an agenda item for last week’s meeting. But the Authority cleverly deployed the Pikeman Pretence, by pretending not to receive the email and instead issued a one item agenda intended to disband the Forum altogether.

Honey Trap

To make things worse, when members arrived for the meeting they found that it had been hijacked by Granny and her ever-loyal poodle Dick Bilson, who took the chair which had been suddenly and mysteriously vacated by Sausage. Quickly realising that he wasn’t a member of the Forum and therefore couldn’t chair it, the former Ambassador to Magnolia decided to cancel the meeting and convene a different one instead - to discuss the future of the Blessed Forum which was, in summary, that it didn’t have one.

“There are far too many organisations involved, and disregarding all of them consumes a lot of resources” he said. “So we’re going to let them have 2 workshop things each year instead, discussing one subject which we’ll plan for them a year in advance to make sure that there’s no chance of it being relevant.”

“We’ll replace the more regular meetings with discussion by email - which is much, much easier to ignore” he added, as Granny tossed him a treat.

The early-retired ex-diplomat is being positioned as Granny’s heir apparent, as nobody else is foolish enough to take on the poisoned chalice. “They’ll be begging for Granny to come back before the year is out” said Dr Pikeman, shaking his head in disbelief.