The Improvement Man

A comic tale of bad plans, good people, and a town that thrives by mistake

Sometimes the problem is the solution.

There is a German word for making something worse while trying to improve it, though I have never been entirely convinced the Germans deserve sole custody of the idea. They may have named it, yes, but the rest of us have been practising it for centuries, usually through committees.

The word is Verschlimmbessern.

Felix Brunner introduced it to Bellwether at a council meeting on a Tuesday evening, standing beneath a ceiling stained the colour of weak tea. He had included the word on the fourth slide of a presentation called BELLWETHER 2035: A TOWN REIMAGINED, and when he pronounced it, slowly and with care, several councillors nodded as if recognising a medical condition they had long suspected in one another.

“To worsen through improvement,” Felix explained. “Or, more precisely, to make a thing worse during an attempt to make it better.”

Someone at the back laughed.

Felix smiled because consultants are trained to receive laughter as engagement.

He had co…