WHAT’S your favourite romantic spot in Oxford? Actually I’m not asking.

This inane question was recently the lead post on the Facebook page of Oxford City Council. There was tellingly, very little response from the public.

Addressing the public in this mildly sickening manner is part of what is dubbed a “social media” campaign. The idea is to distract attention from the fact that you’re cutting services and squeezing the lifeblood out of communities, by popping unexpected conundrums. Oh! You might leap up out of your wheelchair and exclaim, so the council do care about us after all!

My favourite romantic spot – the cheek of it! It could only happen online. Had the request arrived by post it would have sparked mass confusion over which colour bin to put it in.

I imagine an overpaid consultant has Googled the results of a social media campaign and advised them to follow suit. But it’s not as easy as that. The big brands such as Coca-Cola and Adidas who yield high returns through their social media activity begin by investing millions. They employ innovative marketing directors who would never even contemplate asking such daft question.

I wouldn’t knock anyone for sending in a response. There were prizes most could ill afford. But I couldn’t do it. I could never visit my favourite bench again for fear that Bob Price might leap out at me from the bushes.

Needless to say however, this campaign is practically an award winner compared to the comparative efforts of the county council. Instead of engaging with the public through a question, they use an exclamation mark.

Here’s one example: “To celebrate Young Carer’s Aware Day, we asked young carers what they wanted on our Facebook page for the day!” The idea seems to be to celebrate young carers, and promote the county council in a positive light as fluffy jumper-knitting left-wing types, who like to spend their free hours cuddling Syrian refugees and growing broccoli. But people of course, see straight through the manure.

Someone responded: “They probably want you to not cut the funding that supports carers and provides respite.”

Someone else wisely added that the carers probably want “genuine help”, instead of a Facebook page. So it seems that engaging with the public isn’t quite as easy as it seems.

If you were trying really, really hard you could perhaps come up with some more interesting content. For instance, updates on the series of visits that are currently taking place to day care centres around the county. Such as the one paid earlier this week when a top brass from the county council visited the day centre my dad goes to, mumbled that he was looking into things, and then unflinching, proceeded to reel off statistics.

Mind you, I bet no-one asked him what he was planning to do for Valentine’s Day.