FADING STANDARDS AT FAIR?

CRUMBRIA: 16/07/2025

By Smellboy N. Rodney

TRADING Standards officers for Wokemoreland & Farcical Council didn’t claim many scalps at this year’s Appleby Horse Farce.

A Freedom of Information request shows that over the course of the six-day event just nine market stalls caught the eye of officers as selling “potentially” counterfeit products.

But there’s been no prosecutions so far with enforcement action pending against just ONE stall.

The Council said, vaguely: “Due to operational reasons, Trading Standards was only able to inspect one stall.”

For a six-day event, it’s a “piss poor” return by anybody’s book, given that there were 230 stalls taking part.

Was it because Police weren’t on hand to provide a bit of “muscle” to assist Council officers in the execution of their duties?

No one has said.

Critics of the fair have long argued that things the authorities tolerate at Appleby wouldn’t be tolerated at other events.

However, one team rushed off its feet during the Fair was the Council’s public relations spinners who help keep your local newspapers groaning with positive news about your superb Council.

They sent out a press release (right) bragging that officers had “seized £38,000 worth of goods” (cleverly omitting to say that this was from just a single trader!)

The press release led to the usual rash of good publicity from Crumbria’s gullible local media who rarely question this drivel because they blindly print everything their Council tells them.

At last year’s fair, officers seized half a million quid’s worth of loot, which, by the Chronic’s reckoning, means the Council’s haul this year was down, er, circa 92%.

Despite nabbing just £38,000 in gear this time, the Council managed to trumpet this as a triumph — proof that last year’s “strong zero tolerance message” had scared traders straight!

The perfume’s not the only thing that smells dodgy.

Perhaps next year, Fading Standards might stretch themselves and inspect one and a half stalls?

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