Tuesday 12 March 2019

Wheels Fall Off Pikeman’s Folly


Blessed Members are this week putting the finishing touches to a code of conduct complaint against the Chief Executive, citing a number of “activities likely to cause reputational and financial harm to the Authority”, following a string of recent PR disasters.

Last week it was revealed that local authority leaders had written to the Government to complain about the Blessed Authority’s detachment from reality and refusal to play nicely with others. The leaders’ patience finally snapped when Dr Pikeman announced his fiendish plan to absorb half the county into his personal fiefdom and abolish elected members into the bargain.

Members are now reeling from the totally unexpected shock news that the Broads National Pike Visitor Centre at Axlebridge will cost twice as much as Dr Pikeman’s random guesses, due to the architects ignoring the design brief as well as national & local planning policies - and using the wrong side of the scale rule.

“In fairness, we never said that the building had to fit on the site” said Dr Pikeman from his bunker, “and I applaud the winning architects for being bold enough to look beyond traditional spatial constraints, and instead design something which ignores practical considerations and planning policies, in favour of playing to my vanity.”

“I told members last year that the costs had doubled, but since they’d never signed off the budget in the first place, they didn’t need to agree a new one” he went on.

Henna Larson, Blessed member for Birdland, pointed out that members had never actually asked for a visitor centre, or agreed to go ahead with it. But Dr Pikeman dismissed her view as “the kind of populist nonsense we’ve come to expect from these so-called elected councillors, which is why they need to go.”

“Members are kept fully informed of my increasingly narcissistic ego-trips and it’s their job to be ambassadors for them, not to ask awkward questions. Both Larson and Uncle Paul will be having their collars felt by PC Turtle for embarrassing the Blessed Authority through their failure to observe collective responsibility for decisions that haven’t been made yet.”

Dr Pikeman confirmed that the project was going ahead, despite the lack of a coherent business case or funding proposal, the escalating cost, the breach of planning policies, the practical challenges of scaffolding across the river, the loss of moorings, the navigation hazard presented by a wall of plate glass beside tacking yachts, the dangerous road junction, the lack of parking, the reluctance of the adjacent farmer to sell his land for a pittance and the complete absence of any stakeholder support whatsoever.

He did, however, acknowledge the importance of transparency in the planning process, confirming that “the Authority will follow its normal practice in determining its own planning applications, by paying a consultant to make the application on our behalf.”

“By getting someone else to make the application, our planning committee can pretend it’s nothing to do with them. I’ve already paved the way, by making sure they don’t know anything about it.” he said.