Council accidentally directs thousands of residents to gay support site

A council in Ireland accidentally directed thousands of residents to a gay support site instead of the official county council website.

Wexford County Council had recently added a QR code to its contact details, allowing smartphone users to scan it to (in theory) access the council’s website.

The design, which is said to have cost £20,000, had been set to be “rolled out in the coming weeks and appear on all Wexford Council stationery, council vehicles, corporate signage and promotional materials”.

However, in a strange blunder, the QR code printed next to the council’s logo didn’t actually direct to its website wexford.ie, but to LGBT support site gaywexford.ie.

The website, far from being a place where you can pay your council tax and check library hours, advertises a local LGBT support group for young people and other local LGBT services.

Here’s the code they probably intended to use (we await our £20,000 cheque), versus the one they did.

The Journal noted: “While it may be a great resource for the LGBT community across the county, it is probably not what County Manager Tom Enright had in mind when he stated that the new corporate logo would be ‘helping to project the image of Wexford County Council as a forward-thinking, modern and progressive organisation’.”

The Council says the new branding will “improve public awareness” of its services. It’s definitely done that for us…

• Drag
• Jan 03

Start your engines! All 16 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race US ranked from worst to best