Yesterday's Sunday Telegraph had an interesting piece of investigative journalism that revealed that the Government has spent £2 million funding commerical television "documentaries" to promote their own policies.
Seemingly independent programmes on everything from PCSOs to immigration officials are in fact paid for using our money on the basis that
it allows the Government to have more air time and get its message across to people.
This is not what our money is for, and is a disgraceful twisting of the concept of informing people to actually mean promoting the Government. The fact that the Government's funding and indeed direct involvement with the making of the shows were kept covert is particularly shocking and underhand. There are serious questions about the efficacy of PCSOs, for example, that the Government should engage with, not try to extinguish with propaganda.