If you woke up this morning, saw Jackie Weaver was trending, wondered who on earth she was, found this video and promptly decided she’s the icon 2021 needs, then ditto - welcome to the Jackie Weaver fan club my friend.
The meeting clerk from the Cheshire Association of Local Councils went from the depths of obscurity to legendary in 24 hours after footage of a parish council meeting from December went viral this week - putting Parish council meetings back on the map (were they ever on it?)
Male members shouted at her and belittled her during a Zoom meeting with the Handforth Parish Council. But the way she dealt with it won praise and hearts across the nation and turned her into an overnight sensation.
After chair Brian Tolver was removed from an earlier meeting, a later meeting appears to start badly, with Brian telling Jackie to ‘stop talking’. He shouts that she has no authority, until Jackie pulls the killer move of removing him.
Vice-chair Aled Brewerton, along with an unnamed man, then started shouting at her to ‘read the standing orders’. Councillor Susan Moore called for quiet but the meeting erupted into laughter and two more councillors were removed.
Then, there was confusion over Brian’s Zoom username, in which he had labelled himself the 'clerk'. Jackie said: ‘The chairman simply declared himself “clerk” and notified everybody of the case. There is no way of stopping him from calling himself clerk. Please refer to me as Britney Spears from now on.’ Drop mic.
She was quickly hailed a hero for her non-nonsense approach and sense of humour and was whisked onto Women’s Hour quicker than you can say ‘It’s Britney, Bitch’.
She was whisked onto Women’s Hour quicker than you can say ‘It’s Britney, Bitch’.
‘99.99% of council meetings are just not like that, they are often less exciting than we might hope they were,’ she told BBC Radio 4 this morning.
‘I’m afraid that when you are being bullied, if you can see that the other person has lost it, there’s a sense of “I did okay there and held it together”. ‘Who was in charge? Of that meeting, I’m not actually sure who was in charge,’ she added today.
The internet is obsessed, so here are some of the best reactions and memes.
A stan/impersonator account quickly appeared, jokily announcing that British chef and TV presenter Rosemary Shrager will play her in the biopic.
However, some questioned how funny it was when so many women will have experienced this kind of male rage. To survivors of domestic abuse, it will be hard to see the funny side when it comes to men screaming in a woman’s face.
What's clear is that Jackie Weavers is the lockdown 3 gift we all deserve. If only we had a few more Jackie's running things.
What is a Parish Council?
A parish council is a civil local authority found in England and is the lowest tier of local government. They’re responsible for areas known as civil parishes, serving a total of 16 million people and are often known to be duller than staring at a blank wall.
Former local reporter Rhiannon describes sitting through some of them as like ‘waiting for death I was so bored (a conversation about what kind of tablecloths to use for 25mins was a memorable low) and then out of nowhere, some ancient feud would bubble under the surface and there'd be rows,’ she says.
‘I was once ordered (illegally) to leave the room after they started fighting about whether they could reuse last year's Remembrance Sunday wreaths, only to remember there was a reporter there. It was annoying because you could never quite rule out whether it was worth going to an 8pm meeting in a freezing village hall on a Tuesday in February.'
That's not to say these meetings don't serve an important role for communities.
'I will say though, it's very easy to mock parish councils. And nowadays it feels like some people think they've invented grassroots campaigns and activism in recent years. But there are people all over the country, turning up hours a week to try and do things for their community instead of sitting and watching Netflix, so fair play to them.’
And to find fame like Jackie has after a meeting shows nothing’s impossible on the Parish council.
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