A council has written a nice letter to an abandoned toilet asking for permission for a local shop to sell alcohol. Norwich City Council bafflingly addressed the loo letter ‘To The Occupier of the public convenience next to 150/152 Magdelen Street.’

It then went on to ask the toilet to fill in a form in case it had any objections to local store E and J Euro becoming an off licence. The author of the letter, Ian Streeter, went on to say that he wanted the toilet to be fully aware of any applications that the council had received.

The toilet has been abandoned for 10 years – and perhaps most embarrassingly – Norwich City Council ACTUALLY OWN IT. There isn’t even a letterbox, and it has been boarded up and covered in grafitti. How the letter was discovered, nobody knows, but it was delivered to a local paper by an anonymous wag with the note: ‘Through the keyhole – who lives in a house like this?’

The council blamed a computer for the mistake, and said: ‘On this occasion, we've clearly been over enthusiastic. We'll be having a stern word with the computer in question that issued this particular letter.’

(Yes, because computers are sentient beings and it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with you).

Another example of local authorities going down the pan.

*sound of flushing*