Inspired by Corbo's joy at some recent parish council success, I've been thinking about parish councils. Some thoughts:

1. If you search for stuff around parish councils, you often see mentions to the Vicar of Dibley as a hilarious comic skewing of the petty squabbling of councils. However, I’m fairly sure that the council in the VoD was a parochial parish council, ie, a committee focussed on the running of an individual Anglican church, which should not be confused with an actual parish council, which is the lowest tier of government. While I don’t believe there is any reason a member of the clergy could not sit on a parish council, I don’t think it is common. Can anyone confirm what kind of council was actually portrayed in the VoD?

2. Parish councils are the most hilariously corrupt of all councils. The general lack of electoral interest, which means many if not most of councillors are co-opted rather than elected makes for rife anti-democracy. I’ve seen parish councils where the biggest landowner and employer in the village (which we’ll call Bumbleton) actually lived in Bumbleton Hall, and was the chair of the council, with her brother also on the council. In another one, there was a mother and her two adult sons on the council. And one I know of at the moment has been a victim of entryism, with several longstanding members resigning in disgust, and a particular faction co-opting their own members, with a single issue of how the village sports facilities are run.

3. AOB?