links for 2010-01-22

I am not defending the decision by local councils to publish their own newspapers. I think there are dangers in this, but only if they take over from local newspapers as a main source of local information – which they won’t do, of course. However, I fully understand why exasperated local councils might want to tell their own story in the face of the aggressively negative slant given by many local newspapers.

If the Tories win the General Election, Hunt made clear they would scrap the current plans for eight consortia to run pilot schemes for Scotland, Wales and England, using money from the government.