THEWEEKLY WALLY
theweeklywally.co.ukThursday 27 August 2026Issue 13PRICE: SUBJECT TO REVIEW

FORMER TOOTING REVOLUTIONARY NOW WORKS IN COMPLAINTS

Wolfie Smith once complained about everything the system did. Weekly Wally asks whether the system has since had its revenge.

An elderly man in a black beret gestures beside a thick binder labelled AI-Generated Complaint at a Tooting council hearing. Councillor Shirley sits opposite taking notes, while Tac, a black cat with a small white chest patch, looks down at a discarded Tooting Popular Front poster reading Power to the People.

By Mr Assumption
Speculation Correspondent

Wolfie Smith spent the 1970s leading the Tooting Popular Front, a movement dedicated to giving power to the people and freedom to Tooting, and to complaining, at length, about everything the system did to stop him.

He is now the council's Complaints Officer.

This week's complaint arrived as a single, artificial-intelligence-generated document several hundred pages long, presented to Councillor Shirley, Chair of Scrutiny Panel, who noted only that Mr Smith used to be in favour of exactly this sort of thing. Mr Smith did not dispute this.

Whether the system ground him down, or whether he simply found a stable position within it, is not something this newspaper is in a position to resolve. We asked. Nobody involved seemed especially keen to answer, including Mr Smith.

The Tooting Popular Front's original poster, reading POWER TO THE PEOPLE, was last seen on the floor of the council chamber, face down, near the door.

DAILY MAIL SUSPENDED IN TOOTING OVER PUBLIC SAFETY CONCERNS

A newspaper has been formally reclassified as a statutory nuisance, and a detector van is now patrolling the borough to enforce it.

A man hides behind a Daily Mail beside a window as a white van marked Daily Mail Reader Detector Van, Public Safety Monitoring, sits outside. Indoors, Tac sits beside a public protection notice stating the Daily Mail has been suspended after a reading of 47 panics per square inch, with a gauge also showing 47.

By Mr Sleeper
Politics Correspondent

The Daily Mail has been formally suspended in the London Borough of Tooting, under a notice citing the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, following an outrage density reading of 47 panics per square inch, 312 per cent above the permitted tolerance.

A detector van marked Public Safety Monitoring has since been patrolling the borough, though residents report it moves slowly enough to be avoided by anyone willing to stand slightly further back from their own front window.

One resident, discovered mid-read with the newspaper held close to his chest, said he had no comment, then continued reading it anyway.

This newspaper notes that the notice was issued in Tooting specifically, without explanation, making this the third unrelated story on this page to involve the borough by name.

At the time of going to press, the reading had not gone down.

LOCAL PAPER SPOTS ONE OMISSION, MISSES ANOTHER IN ITS OWN PHOTOGRAPH

The Tooting Bugle's investigation into a national devolution announcement turned up three crates its own photographer had already captured, and none of them were the omission it was looking for.

Workers handle wooden crates marked with English regions in a Whitehall power-distribution centre. Three smaller crates in the foreground are labelled W12 8QT, Timperley, and The Girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk, while Tac sits beside them.

By Staff Reporter

The Tooting Bugle ran a front-page investigation this week into this month's national power-distribution announcement, which named Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, the West Midlands and eight other regions, but not Tooting.

The investigation ran to four paragraphs, a photograph of the loading bay where the crates were pictured, and a quote from a resident who said he had always suspected the borough was being overlooked.

What the Bugle's own report did not mention, despite its own photograph showing them clearly, was a set of three further crates sitting together in the same loading bay: TIMPERLEY, W12 8QT, and THE GIRL ON THE MANCHESTER VIRGIN MEGASTORE CHECKOUT DESK.

Taken together, the three tell a complete story the Bugle's photographer captured without apparently reading any of it. Timperley is best known as the home of Frank Sidebottom, the character created by Chris Sievey, who was also a member of the Freshies. Their song about the girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore checkout desk reached number 54 in the charts and earned the band a booking on Top of the Pops. W12 8QT is the BBC's own address, the same address at which a technicians' strike cancelled that week's programme before the Freshies ever got to perform it.

This newspaper does not know how a local paper can run a photograph containing all three crates without asking a single question about any of them, though it notes that Tooting was mentioned nowhere in the original announcement either, which may explain why nobody there was looking closely enough to notice either detail.

At the time of going to press, the Bugle had not responded to a request for comment on any of the crates in its own photograph.

RECORD OF THE WEEK

CLACTON MAN — The Starmeroids

A song about a man everyone in Clacton has heard of but nobody has actually seen. Doesn't mention Tooting either, which this newspaper considers increasingly suspicious. Available on all major platforms.