Eric Pickles is busy explaining the practical business reasons why the Audit Commission is being killed off. Undoubtedly the organisation had, under New Labour, long ago moved on from being austere bean counters to doing politicallycorrect box ticking exercises, costing unnecessary millions. That is when they weren’t treating themselves to massages or a day at the races at our expense…

Guido suspects that the decisive moment when the fate of the Audit Commission was sealed was before the election when it became public that £56,000 had been paid to spin-merchants Connect Public Affairs to advise them on how to save their overpaid jobs. Connect recommended an expensive

“strong local lobbying response in order to mitigate and combat the activities of Eric Pickles”

Suicide by spin…

Looking down Connect’s list of mainly public sector and trade union clients it provides a handy guide to organisations that are clearly finding it difficult to justify themselves on their own merits, so instead they throw thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money at spin merchants to do it for them. Quite a few more targets on that list merit defunding by the taxpayer…