1 august 2010, you’ve been quango’d

Like most oppositions, the current british government had great "bonfire of the quangos" intentions. Unusually though, it has followed through. Within days of taking office the order went out to line up bodies for rationalisation and abolition - and this has now taken wing as those much satirised quasi autonomous non-governmental organisations are being rapidly brought to the executioner's bloc. In health, the environment and education, alphabet soups are being poured down the drain. On the economic development side, the regional development agencies and government offices (all being totally abolished) have got the most headlines, but the end of the film council last week is typical of a flood of smaller agencies going the same way. Our friends in the north should perhaps not be too despondent: despite common presumptions that such bodies help levy funding, influence and attention from the richer south to the poorer north, a recentish report shows that quango boards come overwhelmingly from london and the south east. Just four of london's 33 local authorities have more board members than the entire north of england. This all comes hot on the heels of smaller scale european slimming, with the news of the closure of the western european union. Politics students of the 1970s might be forgiven for thinking this intergovernmental cold-war european defence outfit became rather redundant with the onset of nato and the eu's move into defence, but it actually took the lisbon treaty to finally wipe it out. Next perhaps the united nation's economic commission for europe, set up in 1947 but still going strong with 220 staff and a 50 million dollar budget, despite the fact that there are now one or two other bodies filling the "establishing economic norms and standards" space in europe...