The council pie

The speech David Cameron gave on Monday should leave no one in any doubt that we're being softened up for the significant cuts that will be coming. The thing everyone's wondering is who is gong to suffer most.

The biggest slices of government expenditure are threefold: education, Health and Social security and - perhaps surprisingly - Local Government.

Last Friday, the government released its detailed spending figures and the fact that the 24,000,000 items of expenditure remain largely impenetrable to the average (or even, so far, the expert) should come as no surprise to anyone, given the ministerial obsession with secrecy.

It'll be interesting to see what gets cut, although Tory administrations traditionally favour jobs.  But given that Local Government represents a very large slice of the pie, perhaps stopping salaried cabinet positions might be a good way forward? Expenses - yes, they're fair enough, but what do we really get from the paid councillors around here?  Little, it seems, other than more and more secrecy.  Perhaps we need to devise some criteria for failure for their roles.