What's On? - Who knows?

Last year I used the Wyre Forest District Council site to find out about forthcoming events and still managed to miss one and recently in a response to a WFA article I attempted to locate a list of council meetings (with some, but not total success). This search attempt jogged my memory as to the events list.

So here we go - start at the front page here and the obvious place to start is "Whats On" this leads you to a choice of three options "General Events", "What's on - [Month]" and "Wyre Forest Civic Halls". The first appears to cover the whole year, the second just a month and the third only what's happening in the civic halls.

So what's happening on say today the 16th January - according to "General Events" there's a Royal Air Force Presentation and a slide show – "A Journey from the Broadwaters Inn to the Peacock by Goff Jones." According to the "What's on - January" there's nothing happening today. The civic halls leaflet shows the RAF Presentation, but has it start at 6.45pm and not 7pm. But there's more - head back to the home page and select "Community Information Database" and you'll find there's a talk by Christine Patterson at the Trinity Methodist Church Centre.

So one information search type spread over four different areas - neat. Now before anyone accuses me of being cruel I fully acknowledge that many of these events are not being held by the WFDC and thus they are reliant on information provided by third-parties, but still what's the back-end running this system that doesn't allow this information to be categorised into one place?

Can you imagine if a business company set it's wares out in a similar fashion "These are the shoes we're releasing this year, these are the ones for this month and these are the special designer ones." and then you found that one shoe shown as being released this month in the main list didn't feature in the monthly listings; but did show up in the designer lists, but with a slightly different sole pattern. Oh and by the way there's a whole different set of shoes you haven't seen yet because they're listed in a completely different section of the site. Would you buy anything off them?

Now if it was just events that were a bit screwy I'd be lenient, but it's not. So here's a task for all readers - go to the homepage and view the planning applications for everything to do with the "Lichfield Basin" site (and just that site). Shortest route I've found requires 5 clicks. Remember you can only use links available from the site, but I will obviously allow typing where necessary; good hunting.