Rowland Taylor's Ghost: on Hadleigh council lacking competence and avoiding future pratfalls

There is a verse in the New Testament that observes how knowledge puffs up, whilst love builds up.

In which case, Hadleigh Town Council must be the humblest, but least loveable, institution on the planet.

For verily, Jilted John Mcleod's campy mayoral reign under the tyrannical gaze of the knowingly under-qualified (more on that in a mo') town clerk, aka the Pirate Queen Wendy Brame, has reduced an institution already borderline dysfunctional to the status of beyond a basket case.

McLeod leader of EMU doesn't appear to know what is going on

Revelations this week from the penship of Father Derek have revealed an entity of not only local, but national embarrassment. How a town of 10,000 souls can countenance such a woeful carry on is as perplexing a question as whither Love Island and Rishi Sunak: out-of-touch rich boy or, er, out-of-touch rich boy?

If the Town Council was a bird, it would be an EMU: England's Most Useless.

Like most emus, the Council cannot add up, makes a terrible mess and, on the whole, is a bit of a handful.

Thanks to the forensic investigations of citizen-activist Roger Young, we have learnt that councillors blithely accepted an audit report that exaggerated the authority's reserves ten-fold. In other words, from the vaguely accurate half a million to a Baron O'Leary petty cash level of over five and a half stonkingly big ones!

Not an eyelid was batted, not a brow was furrowed, not a single hand was raised in querying this rookie error.

Formidable

Mr Young is a formidable character. In my earthly life, he would have been that fellow in the Archbishop's office querying every single one of my expenses. Why did you go for the swan and not the chicken option over lunch? Just how many bottles from Baron O'Leary tax-break vineyards did you neck?

But in the case of this EMU council, he speaks for us all. He has shown from the mysterious case of the extremely pricey cemetery extension to the failure of the elected, or co-opted, numbskulls to add up properly, that our tax money is not safe with Brame's piratical crew.

But then, nothing appears to be safe in their hands, does it? I think I might owe an apology to the developers of Babergh's old offices at Corks Lane for associating them with the Battle of Paschendale-levels of mess and chaos at the site.

It's as if deciding to hire a loveable rogue that Jilted John met in The Cock to cut back some riverside trees who in turn sub-let the contract to his hyper-active teenage son and his White Lightning-fuelled mates, was never going to end well, was it?

Even if the resulting carnage was inevitable, the failure of the Town Council to admit responsibility and clear up after their own mess suggests an Andrew Tate culture of denial, immaturity and plain meaness.

And now we learn that EMU is officially incompetent and furthermore has a certificate to prove it.

EMU has lost its General Power of Competence both because it is stuffed full of unelected councillors and because the Pirate Queen hasn't passed the necessary exams, or really even bothered to sit them.

Yet this designation might be a blessing in disguise. Being officially labelled incompetent means that the EMU is now restricted as to what it can do. Which means it has less opportunity to deliver further costly pratfalls and more time to focus on its core functions. Such as opening up about the Golden Handshake payments some councillors made to a previous town clerk, perhaps?

Hadleigh EMU

In the meantime, Jilted John and the Pirate Queen hide away in the late medieval panic room they've installed at the Guildhall, spurning all media requests for comment.

So the next chapter in this tiresome tale has to be written by you, dear reader.

May I respectfully ask when you next espy Jilted John and his councillor pals, you ask the following three questions of them. Please make sure, as I know you will, to do so politely and without menace, as although we have to deal with them, we don't need to be like them.

* Is our money safe in your hands? If yes, prove your financial competence by making the Golden Handshake package for a previous clerk public, including by whom it was approved and under what authority

* What are your plans to be less incompetent? How will the people of Hadleigh evaluate your progress?

* By when do you expect the Pirate Queen to pass the necessary exams such that the EMU has its General Powers of Competence returned to it?