An idle thought about a game with what I predict would be limited but passionate devotees: Local Government Top Trumps.
(Talk about the Long Tail.)
It would be for upper-tier local authorities, and my first stab at the categories would be as follows:
- Gloriousness of town hall architecture – e.g. Manchester Council would do well whereas Buckinghamshire CC wouldn’t)
- Worst strapline (the worse the better) – tough category, as you can tell from this list
- Overall budget – from here (higher the better)
- Political stability – the fewer changes over the last 50 years the better
- Appetite for publicity (Barnet, Suffolk = high, Rutland, Bournemouth = low)
- Council with worst Ward on indices of deprivation (derived from here – we all know Councils like to boast that they have the poorest ward in the country)
- Distance from London (the greater the distance the better its score: literal localism)
What do you think? And what categories would you suggest? Leave a comment or tweet me (@rich_w) and we’ll see if we can come up with a definitive set of categories.
(If people are genuinely interested in this as an idea, and for a bit of fun, I’d be happy to bring together some sort of crowdsourcing campaign and get maybe 2-300 sets produced and circulate to people. It would be a revenue-neutral affair, but we’d all have something fun and lovely we can play with.)
arbitrary constant 
