The Local e-Government Standards Body needs to be mentioned in passing, as it ends today. Rather a shame in my opinion, as there is so much more *real* work to be done in terms of standards, information governance and a whole host of other things.

And I mean real work; you know technical development and such like as opposed to the ideologically driven stuff like ‘Gershon’ ‘Best Value’ (which Blair himself has admitted is tosh - what a hypocrite).

I can’t help thinking that the ODPM has always been a bad place for standards type of work to sit. And I’ve also felt they are not very good at really listening to what the local authorities actually want and need.

My other thought for the day, having been quoted £136.00 for a rail fare (’it’s because it’s between 4pm and 7pm’ - er, what sort of logic is that?). That so long as the motive is profit, we will never get proper public sector infrastructe. Everyone I talk to says that GNER should be ashamed of charging so much (it’s a 30% price rise since last year). But are they ashamed? No. No. Quite clearly no. It’s not shame that motivates them, its greed. That’s what I meant to say. If the underlying driver for public service provision is private greed then it ain’t gonna deliver.

Mr Blair can spout like a doomed whale all he likes, but his ‘public sector reforms’ are about increasing private greed.

It would be worth spending some time working out the key companies involved in some of the PFIs and all the rest of it and calculating the amount of profit they’re making. I hope George Monbiot has already done it. Some one should, because unless its challenged, it will be to our shame that public services get worse - and more expensive. Is that a possibility?