The stock photos one is interesting.

For the web you don’t actually need especially high quality photos of course, so they could actually used crowdsourced local photos, but another issue is that the freelance photogs profession is bleeding to death along with writers. They are an easy target for cost cutting. A difficult one to balance.

One reason I never submit photos for local authority (or BBC) competitions is that a free license is usually a condition of submission.

Having done work on several council websites, and sat in rooms next to people who have to maintain them while managing other projects, navigation is always the biggest challenge due to the sheer variety of services and data requiring to be presented.

Hang on though, if I was on holiday and wanted to know what time it was in Sutton, or if I was an ex-resident living in Hong Kong then surely that’d be a nice thing, see the time back in the smoke?

But hang on, no! the clock is a Javascript clock and shows me the time on MY machine ( in the wrong time zone, and 7 minutes out – as it happens ).

One of many pointless bells which have clearly impressed the inept and unqualified.