Just reflecting on the abolition of the Commission and will it be missed -- I think on balance yes but only in some areas. The Commission's work on value for money and other management\financial studies on efficiency\good governance and other practices was very useful indeed in helping authorities manage their resources much more efficiently and effectively. It is a shame that this independent guide\assistance function will now go and it seems we will need to rely on the big accoutning firms to help us in this context. Lets not kid ourselves, the big 4 firms are rubbing their hands in glee at the opportunities this will present to them. Prices for audits will rise and the more remote authorities will not benfit from cross subsidisation as they did previously and will pay even higher audit fees. The circa 50 million pounds savings claimed from abolishing the Commission have never been adequately quantified in my view and I wonder if they have been floated to justify an essentially political decision. Some downsides to the Commision's activiites included the far too bureaucratic CPA regime where points and later flags were given for all sorts of performance based issues, often this did not chime with people's experiences of authorities on the ground,when they dealt with them, which was a shame but called into question the validity and relevance of the whole CPA regime. The Commission did itself no favours on that one,similarly in my experience of them as external auditors they have been extremely pernickety and picky forcing me to do certain calcualtions\presentations which although pure in the accounting sense, did not help the punter on the street very much,better understand his authority's accounts. There is talk of a mutual organisation emerging from the ashes that will compete against the big 4 -- But how is it going to be funded? There has also been some talk of its major competitors probably,individually,wanting to stangle it at birth so that a form of audit oligopoly can be maintained,lets hope the rump of the Commission can successfully set up something that will provide more competiton to the people who are so keen to step into its shoes.
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| Will we really miss it? |
As for the NOTW, did we really expect anything else from this scandal sheet? It claims to have broken a number of very important public interest stories, but I do not recall that many of them. Illegal phone hacking,denial, links with politicians of all parties,illegal payments to police officers have given it exaggerated power. It did have 2.7m readers, presumably those interested in its scandal ridden pages. It is strange how in Western societies we really do go in for this type of nonensense in the press and pretend it is something else. There was so much fear of NOTW and the whole News International (NI) brand that politicians of all persuasions felt they had to indulge NI staff to ensure their own political positions. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all courted NI, this was clealry a mistake of huge proportions by all concerned. They felt they has to invite NI executives to their personal events like weddings, children's parties and even funerals. This was over the top for me.
Will I miss the NOTW ?-- Not really - However watch out for The Sun on Sunday -- TheURL has already been reserved. As for the Audit Commission, well perhaps a few tears will be shed, but not for some of their purist audit approaches. I'm not sure that a new version of the Commission will emerge,which is a pity.
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