Public service oddities: local government edition

First, I love some of the front-covers that councils put on their accounts. Now, I've got family from Leicester and have quite an attachment to the place but this (PDF) seems a little... optimistic:


Lichfield's (PDF) is a masterpiece of political correctness. Look children, all the peas of different colours are in the same pod!
Next, Limavady have a web tool I've seen on a few council sites. Basically it reads whatever you mouseover. Who is that catering for? If you're a blind person surely you aren't able to mouseover things so that they are read to you. The only people I can think of who could use such a tool are the extremely dyslexic and illiterate. If anyone knows I'd love to know who it is targetted at.

In the meantime all manner of fun can be had pushing the button in the bottom left of the page and then mousing over various items (although it doesn't appear to work on this computer - consider it a kind of lottery). They're all quite upbeat apart from "Payments" which sounds a little bored.

Finally, Maidstone County Council have a web game that allows you to alter items in the budget to see if you can avoid having to raise council tax. Unfortunately they haven't included "Chief Executive's salary" or "the budget that was tapped to pay for this bloody game" which would, I believe, be most people's preferred targets for reductions.

One final thought: You see these budget games a lot. Sky had one recently where Adam Boulton delivered a news report summarising your achievements, one enterprising soul or another will usually set them up around the time of the Budget and I even remember being given such a game to play with at school. Don't they serve to indoctrinate people with a static view of the economy?

We need a supply-side game where you play new rounds set in five and ten years time and have pots more money to spend if you've put the right tax cutting package in place.