Pickles goes quiet on launch of Cabinet rag
NOTHING like a bit of hypocrisy from Whitehall, just as Parliament wraps up for the summer.
Scribes over in the Cabinet Office launched a new magazine on Tuesday – the glossy Civil Service Quarterly. But the timing of the launch, which employs a team of six on editorial and design, could not be worse.
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles led a high profile campaign against councils running what he has nicknamed “town hall pravdas” earlier this year: “These glossy magazines have been designed for the sole purpose of telling people how great the council is.”
Sadly the mag seems to be full of just the kind of PR propaganda that Pickles has been campaigning against. The opening gambit promises to “showcase excellence” and half of the Twitter hashtags (#CSQuarterly) referencing the new title are from the Cabinet Office itself.
So what did Pickles think about the launch? “We won’t be commenting on this” a representative told The Capitalist yesterday. So much for openness and transparency then.