Informational Efficientisation, Reductivity Coordinatification

The Government has confirmed that the Central Office of Information is to be scrapped and replaced by a team of about twenty staff, under the leadership of the brilliant Francis Maude, who will "complement existing communications teams". Possibly Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition believes the maladroitness evident in the prison-sentencing puerility, the forest-flogging fiasco and the Twizzler Lansley train crash has all been the fault of the four hundred civil servants who are to be sacked; but, being Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition, it is just as likely that they believe sacking people is a good and virtuous activity in itself, provided it is done with sufficient pointlessness and brutality.

The idea of dispensing with the COI was originally proposed in March, but the proposer made the unfortunate gaffe of recommending that something else be put in its place. Since the COI's function is "government marketing and advertising activity", or public information as it was known before we were de-Stalinised, one might have thought that it would not be entirely inimical to the Weltanschauung of a Blairite public-relations mannequin like Daveybloke; but it seems that a more pragmatic view has prevailed. Doubtless Jeremy C Hunt, the Secretary for Sky Gold, Fox News and Sky Sport, was on hand to remind the waverers that the Government already has a dedicated marketing and advertising facility, at least for its loonier policies, in the shape of about nine-tenths of the British press.