Keeping up appearances?

The government, and especially the tories, are going to have to do a lot better in the practice what you preach department.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail reported how David Cameron has handed out 26 civil service jobs without publicly advertising them. The paper stated his appointments include a web guru, filmmaker, policy adviser and a personal photographer. They have all been given key government posts on short-term contracts, allowing the coalition to bypass strict rules that recruitment should be opened up to external candidates.

 

Informed opinion is that the leak about appointing party cronies is Whitehall payback for the “we-are-watching you” reforms regarding civil service performance monitoring announced by the PM on Monday.

Meanwhile the spectre of the trouser press still haunts Welsh tory counterparts with a slightly unbalanced account in the Western Mail of a tory birthday binge in Aberystwyth held at public expense.

Last year the Conservative group came in for criticism after nine AMs spent more than £6,500 of taxpayers’ money on a “fact-finding” trip to Brussels, staying in the dead posh Hotel Amigo, which bills itself as the city’s best luxury venue.