West Dorset: Village Idiot Preservation Society launched
THE PLIGHT of the villages of West Dorset is fast becoming dire. The shops, Post Offices and pubs are closing like the rat traps in Hamelin before the arrival of the Pied Piper. Yet that is only the tip of a very worrying iceberg.
As well as these important ingredients of rural life an historical tradition that dates back to the centuries before any of these other facilities were even imagined is also being lost. I write, of course, of the lamentable dearth of idiots in our villages.
There are a few, I will grant you, but they are nothing like of the standards that our grandparents would have expected and, even, demanded. Action must be taken and it must taken now before this vital ingredient of village life is finally and irretrievably lost forever.
To that end I am, today, announcing the formation of the Village Idiot Preservation Society (VIPS). Unless immediate action is taken the management consultancies, the major political parties and the merchant banks will have removed all of our local half-wits from their natural environment and grabbed them for themselves. Why should the big cities have them all?
Our first action must be to press this government for speedy legislation. A legal obligation must be placed on each and every parish, town district and county councillor to ensure the comfort, well being and comfort of any idiot in the area which they represent.
This will often require little action from our duly elected representatives beyond tucking themselves up warmly at night, eating three square meals a day and not randomly casting clouts until May is out. The idiots must become a protected species. Blow the newts, the bats and the hedgehogs. What about putting out own native dolts first?
This must become a rallying call for mass action. There must be petitions, marches and even sit-ins, on nights when there’s not much on television, of course.
Let the clarion call ring out “Hand off our idiots”.
In this, as in so much else where West Dorset leads, the rest of the country will follow.
Please join with me and help restore the village idiot to his rightful place in our society. Join with The Red Bladder and do this, if not for yourself, for future generations and for England.
2 Responses to “West Dorset: Village Idiot Preservation Society launched”
Re your VIPS note: It reminds me, when I was first married, we lived in a remote Derbyshire village (Somersal Herbert) and it was so small we even didn’t have a village idiot. We all had to take turns.
Ralph Jerram
7 years now well established in Dorset and Bonnie Sartin’s scriptwriter
A bit like the parsons you mean? Matins here, evensong there, with a bit of Sung Eucharist slung in the middle for good measure. I think that you must have forgotten that, just like the rest of us, village idiots have their Human Rights. Can you honestly expect some poor chap to spend his mornings drooling and burbling in one village only to be carted off miles up the road to a totally alien environment to spend his afternoons having a little lie-down beside the pump of some other parish? If that is the case, I can only conclude that you must be a pretty hard-hearted bunch up in Derbyshire. Village idiots have their pride, they have their own code of honour and they have, above all, an innate sense of loyalty and that lies with the village where they doss down each night. It might well work with libraries, coppers and lamp lighters but village idiocy is, by its very nature, a sedentary occupation and does not lend itself to ‘sharing’. The authorities must not be let off the hook on this one. I have heard enough of volunteers taking over the work of proper idiots, of us all bearing our share of the burden and spreading the pain equally. We deserve, we need and we want, nay demand, every village to have its own, rightful, idiot and VIPS will not rest until that is recognised by the government of the day.
Thank you for your interest in VIPS, all cheques should be made payable to The Red Bladder (Saloon Bar Tab Account)
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