Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006

Subject: Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006
From: Flash Company
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 10:23 AM

Firstly, a little story of Local Government UK style.
The Planning Committee of Havering District Council met to consider an application from Kenneth & Jenny Salter to site a caravan on their Rare Breeds farm to enable them to sleep on site to protect their animals.
During the debate, Denis O'Flynn, the Deputy Mayor, remarked that a sheep was helpless if turned on it's back. Another councillor said 'How do you know that?' which, as he later said, seemed a reasonable question, as councillor O'Flynn did not come from a farming background.
However, at this point someone chose to go 'Baaaaaaa', which added nothing to the seriousness of the debate, but which was taken up in chorus.
The final outcome was that the application was turned down, and a councillor Jeffrey Tucker who represented the Salters was, alledgedly heard to mutter 'I'll fix you lot!'
He reported them all to the Standards Board for 'Unseemly behaviour',
and the Standards board have spent approximately 12 months and £10000 on producing a reprt on the incident! Cue for a song......

Past the stables down at Havering.
Past the place where Jenny dwells,
Past the little old Town Hall we love so well,
See the Standards Board assembled with their pencils raised on high,
To investigate the tale that Tucker tells.

Independent Councillor Tucker, a planning man by trade,
Has complained of lewd behaviour in the Hall,
And we will investigate it, we will leave no stone unturned,
Till we get down to the bottom of it all

There's a Councillor here who dared to say
Baa-baa-baa
It was said in a most suggestive way
Baa-baa-baa
We will report in a year or two,
Three hundred pages of bumf should do,
All of it paid for by the likes of you,
Baa-baa-Hahaha-baaaaaaaaa!

FC

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 11:03 AM

Brilliant, FC, simply brilliant! (I refer to your song, not to the councillors.)

I envy people who can get their thoughts to rhyme and scan and so produce something singable.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:30 PM

Very good! Change the names and it could apply to investigatory boards anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Whenever such a report is finished it receives its verdict of 'we are appalled' in the press and TV and then is forgotten and consigned to archives to slowly moulder away.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 11:42 PM

It seems that with English farms is is not uncommon for the fields and houses to be separate?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006
From: Flash Company
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 07:52 AM

I don't know the area involved, Foolestroupe, but guess that what we have here is some kind of Rare Breeds scheme on a couple of fields which have been bought or possibly rented from a larger farm. What the 'farmer' is trying to do is site a residential caravan on the fields.
We have had a similar situation locally with a small plant nursery sited on someone else's land, The lady who owns the field is a widow, and the two young guys who are prepared to work it live some distance away. I'm not sure what our local planners made of the application.

By the way, the punchline to the original story is that the chief suspect, as the result of a years delay, is no longer a councillor anyway, so there is nothing that the Standards Board can do to him!
Baaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

FC

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: A Wiffenpoof Song for 2006
From: eddie1
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 08:29 AM

Incidentally, in the Scots dialect (see another thread for this), the word "haver" means to talk a load of rubbish.
"Havering" seems an appropriate description of the District Council!

Eddie