This is what your Council Tax was paying for this morning

Rest easy, loyal reader, if you are at all concerned that your Council Tax is not being spent to get the very best value. Because clearly, no efforts are being spared to make the borough a public laughing stock.

This morning, the hard-working council staff behind @YourCroydon, Croydon Council’s official Twitter feed, were busying themselves by running something they called a “Friday Poll”. They used a hashtag, too, as if it is a “thing”.

“If Croydon were a fruit, what would it be?” was the burning question that someone working in the bunker at Fisher’s Folly thought essential to inflict on the world.

We’re not making this up. Well you couldn’t. Make it up, that is.

This jolly council tweet was accompanied by a photograph of some gooseberries, and some meme text, “The butt of many jokes but you’d not be alone in wanting more…” they said, presumably attempting to draw some comparison between gooseberries and Croydon.

Prickly and sour, others might suggest.

Now, for once, this public gaffe was not the handiwork of the well-staffed council press office (annual budget: £500,000-plus).

Apparently, the tweet came from something called “External Comms”, a department within the council’s offices which has staff, and a manager.

We asked someone from “External Comms” to call us to discuss the concept of their Friday Poll. Perhaps they could reassure us that no council funds had been wasted on this bit of nonsense, and that it was all a spoof, or the council account had been hacked.

But they never did. Perhaps Croydon’s gooseberry fools were too busy.

So we thought we’d run a Friday (and Saturday, and Sunday) poll of our own:

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