Charley Says… That’s one more Quango gone!
News reaches us today that the Government is to close the Central Office of Information, the government marketing agency that has been making propaganda films since 1946.
As a Government Trading Fund, the CoI didn’t receive direct taxpayer funds; it made its money by selling services to other government departments and to local and regional authorities. However, this created an extra level of bureaucracy that was unnecessary and costly.
Frankly, I very much doubt that we need government to tell us not to play with teapots, that you can survive a 50 megatonne nuclear strike by turning off the gas and electricity or sitting under a bridge, and that you can lose your bird if you don’t know how to swim (bird, n. derogatory term used by Government for a women, usually portrayed as a ditzy girl who flits between partners depending on their ability to swim). An easy £525 million could be saved by cutting all government information films.
But if we really must make them, perphas we could turn to the private sector to make them more intesting.