The Brent Magazine and the Government Code

Roy Greenslade has some good points on Council papers here, but he doesn't cover the political angle.  Certainly in the case of the Brent Magazine changing it from a monthly to a quarterly publication does not save money.  It may actually cost us more.

This is because quarterly publications are less attractive to advertisers (which cover most of the cost of the Brent Magazine), and the Council has to publish a number of notices regarding planning etc. by law.  Some of these may have to be diverted to commercial papers, making the whole exercise more expensive.  Given the popularity of the Brent Magazine as a source of news, cutting it back may not even be popular with local people. 

Nor does it fit in with the goivernment's supposed committment to localism for it to insist on the number of times a Council publishes a newsletter.

I suspect the real reason for this attempt to reduce Council's freedom over publicity is that the government is afraid of Council's telling people that the cuts come from central government.  Councils can't do this in a political way, of course, because of long standing restrictions on local government communications with regard to party politics.  However, they can giive a factual description.  Such a factual description wopuld have to say something like "Your Council gets most of its money from central government.  Central government is cutting back this money on a massive scale.  That is why there are cuts to local services."  That reads like a condemnation of the government to any reasonable person, and that is why Eric Pickles is trying to stop straightforward factual information from bneing circulated.