One must wish that sometimes the government shouldn’t launch yet more initiatives in order to tell the public “they are doing something”. Unfortunately, since Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister, he has called for more of the same.

The government was criticised yet again, for launching yet another of these “wheezes” to improve the UK’s poorly- trained workforce. As in previous schemes, those who are long-term unemployed or are on welfare must take up regular training courses or lose any benefit entitlements. Private firms will also be allowed to bid to train and award skills qualifications where appropriate.

The plans have been widely ridiculed, which must have been an inspiration for this cartoon from the Guardian. Sadly, all this gives an impression that this government is beyond parody.

Just when you thought politics was getting back to normal (?), up pops Tony Blair’s former spin-doctor Alistair Campbell. The former Daily Mirror hack let rip at the media with all guns blazing last night.

He gave a highly critical speech about the media today and claims that the increase of new forms of news reporting through the spread of 24-hour channels and the internet hasn’t led to any improvement in journalism standards, particularly when they report about what is happening in government.

I’ve read the full transcript, and it made me want to throw up. Here is a man who constantly bleats about the role of the media when for nearly seven years he thought of his role was to hijack the daily news agenda…. but he regularly came unstuck when journalists investigated and found out the truth about what the government… and he … were up to. The now-infamous Iraq war dossier, and the burying of bad news on 9/11 were two examples of this.

Campbell should be hitting the real target for this anger, which should be the current government for repeatedly lying to the public on a regular basis. Day after day, newspapers are finding out that after ten years of a Labour government, UK society as a whole seems more worse off. Maybe he should repent for his sins, and join the demands for Gordon Brown and his cohorts to be kicked out of office.

Council tax bills in the UK will rise an average four per cent for the coming year from April. According to the Local Government Association, the average amount each household will pay is around £1400.

Not surprisingly, this announcement has brought howls of protest from many people who feel they already pay enough for their local services. Why should we be paying so much anyway? In my area, my local council is planning to CUT services, and planned to RAISE the average bill by around SEVEN per cent. Our streets are seldom swept and my rubbish is often collected late. It has a poor reputation locally and is at the bottom in service performance… so says the government.

That’s only part of the story. In the UK, may responsibilities that councils once had were handed over to quangoes (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations) and other bodies which are accountable only to the government. These organisations have people appointed to them and get to spend billions of pounds in public money at the LOCAL level. They do not get the sort of public scrutiny that councils do.

There’s also the financial regime that councils are forced to operate under. Since the mid 1980s, budgets for each council in the country has been controlled by the centre. They spending and even and council tax levels are tightly examined on a need-to-spend basis every year. If councils are seen to be either overspending or have a higher level of tax, they’re told to bring them down or face financial sanctions. If they want to get extra money for environmental improvements, they have to bid for funding from the government, which often sets …. and often changes the criteria, often at short notice, so bidders often lose out.

Unless councils are freed from many of these restrictions, there will be more of the same problems when people see their increasing council tax bills fall through their letterboxes every year.

Peter Hain was forced to resign from his double post of Work and Pensions and Wales Secretaries after failing to declare financial donations from his failed campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour party.

The police are will soon be looking into claims that he failed to declare around £100,000 in donations. Hain decided to wait until the investigation was started before he jumped ship. This is yet another scandal that had been brewing for weeks. If he had stayed, then the allegations would have dogged him for weeks up to a point that Prime Minister Gordon Brown would have no alternative but to sack him.

It’s not just Hain who is in a spot of bother over donations. Several high-ranking Labour ministers have been caught repeatedly breaking their own rules. There is a desperate need to reform the way that political parties are funded, but there is a question over where to start. Negotiations over a simple policy have often collapsed with all the parties blaming each other. Surely something must be done to stop the rot before it gets terminal.