What can a council do to make itself as unpopular as practically possible? The bright sparks down the road at West Berks have hit on the perfect formula. It turns out that there are four key factors to ensure universal discontent:
- Mess something up related to household waste – for many the bins are the showpiece local council responsibility – “it’s your one job!”, cries Joe Public
- Waste public money – always key to maximising disgruntlement
- Bicker amongst yourselves or your neighbours – nothing riles more than seeing elected representatives turning toddler-esque tantrums or taking their toys and sulking in the corner.
- Unfairness – if you screw everyone over you’ll only ever achieve a mild grumble. To truly enrage you have to arbitrarily target one subset of your electorate for your punishment.
Having identified the right recipe, the Newbury authority has validated its accuracy with devastating effect, combining lashings of each ingredient to produce what can only be described as “the mother of all unpopular policies”.
Reading-on-Thames 