Glasgow wins British Capital of Curry competition, sees off Bradford

I’d heard people in the pub mention this: Glasgow is, officially, the UK’s Curry capital, in front of Edinburgh (never mind whether they were contenders; it’s always good to be in front of Edinburgh), but also Bradford, Birmingham and other cities you’d expect to be full of curry restaurants. There’s a website about this, but it hasn’t been updated since Glasgow won. Glasgow City Council’s website has more information, and I’m pleased to see that our local takeaway was one of the chosen (I’ve gone to Creme de la Creme on a work freebie, and believe me I’d go there again).

What they didn’t tell me, and I’m grateful for the Guardian for mentioning this, is that Bradford was in second place purely on the basis of 50% of the application form.

It seems that, despite 6 reminders from the organisers of the competition, Bradford City Council didn’t fill in the two pages it had been allocated. Apparently there was some confusion over who should fill them in.

I notice with interest that Bradford’s website is pretty much a wishy-washy boilerplate job with added whimsy such as street maps (which you can get from Multimap anyway) that don’t say where the Council’s offices are. Whereas Glasgow’s is a combination of meat (election results), gloss (multi-cultural animations) and slight menace (the “Council payments” link isn’t bright and flashing, but is there on the front page, lurking, reminding you that, maybe, you should get our your credit card). I don’t know whether Bradford’s web site is representative of the city - I doubt it, somehow - but Glasgow’s appears to have hit the nail at least close to the head.