On Saturday Read the standing orders, I’ll cry out

TIME-WASTERS and troublemakers. You might add: tinpotdictators, martinets and mountebanks.

Point to any organisation – anything from a local club run by volunteers to a national government supported by vast armies of professionals – and you’ll find at least one of the above making life difficult for everyone else.

And, I hate to say this, but they’ll probably be male rather than female – if you’re allowed to say such a thing anymore without one of the above jumping up and down to protest about gender politics.

God give me strength. That was what I was muttering to myself this week as I sat at my computer gawping with disbelief as a Zoom meeting I was attending stretched beyond its two hour time limit. I won’t go into details but it was a special meeting staged by a professional organisation which, in a moment of apparent madness, recently invited me to become a member.

Why a special meeting? So that a small group could mouth their grievances. As I say, I am a relative newcomer, so I’m not sure if these people had an authentic axe to grind or not. Even if they did, it struck me that the whole thing could have been resolved over a cup of tea without lawyers getting involved.

Because that is the first and last refuge of the troublemaker in these days of rapid litigation. “You’re going to get a writ!” growled one little man, shaking with rage as he spoke into his computer’s camera. “I’m looking at an affidavit right here!” he added, waving a piece of paper.

The threat meant the organisation had to hire a barrister who was sitting there throughout this meeting, at goodness knows what cost. Certainly at a price which could have paid for much better and more useful things.

It was slightly reminiscent of that virtual parish council meeting which hit the headlines during the Covid lockdowns.

You may remember: “Jackie Weaver, you have no authority here!”

The immortal line had the nation in stitches as the now infamous meeting on Zoom soared to become one of the funniest Youtube hits in the short history of virtual gettogethers. Another line was: “Read the standing orders. Read them and understand them!”

I’ve just watched it again and it still has me laughing out loud – maybe because I spent 21 long years serving as a parish councillor. Our meetings were held just once a month and they were often long and boring – but sometimes they’d take a turn which would have me giggling in the back row. Indeed, as a young reporter I was once kicked out of a parish council meeting for bursting into gales of laughter.

I learned all those years ago that there are people who join things like councils or club committees or whatever because they want to do their best for a community, or sport, or profession – and there are those who do it because it makes them feel important. They are the ones who cause most trouble and friction – they’re the ones who can be so terribly boring – and they’re the ones who never seem to realise they are occasionally being hilarious.

Right now I’d love to scream “Read the standing orders!” at the top of my voice. Maybe I’ll climb the windswept hill opposite my house and give it a go up on the 1,000 foot summit. Because, after spending more than two hours in the most boring and meaningless Zoom meeting ever, that is what I feel like doing. Screaming.

“Read the standing orders!” I shall bellow at an unsuspecting world as the wind whips my cry off to Hell in its very own mad handcart. “Read them and understand them!”

A sheep or two and a wheeling buzzard might give me a look, as if to say: “Who’s this nutter?”

But thankfully the whole of vast humanity will be ignorant of this one-man protest. Which is actually the best thing you can do when it comes to time-wasters and troublemakers like the ones I’ve just been having to endure at my overly long virtual meeting. Ignore the blighters.

The world, of course, has much bigger problems on its plate right now. But I bet somewhere, right in the middle of things, there’ll be some trouble-maker stirring things up for the simple reason that he feels empowered by the sound of his own voice. Self-importance and pomposity might be laughable and seemingly insignificant, but they are negative and corrosive elements which stymy inventiveness, creativity and freethought.

The guy who hasn’t laughed for years but who loves the idea of litigation can be a blight on society. He might not be a dictator, but he can provide such people with the foundations upon which they build their totalitarian ideals.

He’s the man who kills new ideas. He is the guy who squeezes the life out of fun and enthusiasm. He’s the tinpot judge who cannot see the light of fairness because of the shadow of his unforgiving rule book. He is the martinet who crushes humanity.

There must be some extra chromosome in the gene which creates such people. Society will never be rid of them, but it would be better off if it could learn to ignore them.

A sheep or two and a wheeling buzzard might give me a look, as if to say: “Who’s this nutter?”