“MEDIA coverage of Sir Michael Lyons’s interim report provided the clearest possible proof . . . that ‘there is a high degree of public confusion about local government funding’. The [biggest] difficulty facing . . . ministers in delivering a sensible reform of local government finance [is] the inability of the media to resist wild scare-mongering and their failure to give serious analysis to the . . . issues involved. Whatever proposal is mooted, however modest and well-researched, is likely to be blasted to pieces by frenzied hacks.”
Nick Raynsford, the former local government minister, in The MJ (Jan 12)