A tale of two cities
11:02am Thursday, 14th February 2008
From Whitehall incompetence to bucolic English tweeness, this local government story from today's Guardian basically contains all my favourite things.
It turns out that officials at the Department for Communities gave £2.7m to the wrong town after getting their Newcastles muddled up. The cash went to the little borough of Newcastle Under Lyme rather than the somewhat larger Newcastle upon Tyne.
Ooops.
Now the leader of one Newcastle is demanding more money, and the leader of the other is strikingly unhappy about the idea of paying his unexpected windfall back.
Apparently something similar happened a few years ago when Newcastle under Lyme was talking about holding a referendum for a directly elected mayor. The way I heard it, the CLG officials got pretty excited for a little while thinking that a big city had finally succumbed to their new policy wheeze, only to discover that the referendum was actually being held in Staffordshire.
As the wikipedia entry for Newcastle Under Lyme puts it: "the town is not to be confused with the larger city of Newcastle upon Tyne".
It turns out that officials at the Department for Communities gave £2.7m to the wrong town after getting their Newcastles muddled up. The cash went to the little borough of Newcastle Under Lyme rather than the somewhat larger Newcastle upon Tyne.
Ooops.
Now the leader of one Newcastle is demanding more money, and the leader of the other is strikingly unhappy about the idea of paying his unexpected windfall back.
Apparently something similar happened a few years ago when Newcastle under Lyme was talking about holding a referendum for a directly elected mayor. The way I heard it, the CLG officials got pretty excited for a little while thinking that a big city had finally succumbed to their new policy wheeze, only to discover that the referendum was actually being held in Staffordshire.
As the wikipedia entry for Newcastle Under Lyme puts it: "the town is not to be confused with the larger city of Newcastle upon Tyne".
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