According to The Times this morning (£) Sir Eric Pickles is a step closer to victory in his war on “apparatchik printing presses powered by taxpayer pennies” after the last council weekly newspaper announced its closure.
Greenwich Time’s last weekly edition will run in June, while Tower Hamlets’ East End Life, which moved from being a weekly to fortnightly newspaper in January, will go quarterly from May.
With that battle won…
…the government is now shifting its attention to the remaining nine councils flouting rules on local authority newspapers. Enfield, Hackney, Hillingdon, Lambeth, Luton, Medway, Newham, North Somerset and Waltham Forest are still publishing fortnightly or monthly freesheets, despite rules telling town halls to restrict the publication of council newspapers to no more than four a year.
All these councils have been served written notices by the government.
We’ve been here before. The Newham Mag briefly shifted from its fortnightly schedule after being being issued a formal notice from government, but quickly went back once the heat was off. The council hilariously attempted to argue that residents’ human rights would be affected if they weren’t able to see dozens of pictures of Sir Robin every fortnight.
Closing the Mag, or reducing it to four issues a year, will save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and an untold number of trees. The sooner Sir Eric prevails, the better.
forestgatedotnet 
It is amazing that those of us on the left have had to rely on the Tories to stop the propaganda sheets. The Newham Mag is one of the worst examples I have come across but it does also contain helpful and needed news and articles. By using it as a vehicle for the promotion of SRW and his overpaid cronies, Newham will have to find other ways of keeping residents informed as it certainly can’t rely on the Newham Recorder to print news. It can of course, rely on It to agree with SRW and print his picture every week.
This is a propaganda mag for SRW who loves himself, another waste of tax payers money. dont mention LOBOs
i think sir robin has been very clever at getting his name out in london ,other mayors in other boroughs are not as well known because they dont get the same exposure leading up to and after elections .who knows what steve bullock looks like ? how many times have you seen him on the tv ?,wales has utilised the newham mag and used the borough communications team to get him out there for his personal electioneering at tax payers expense i bet the labour party wished they had that level of advertising ,i would also wager he has never given a brass farthing towards the mag .you got to hand it to him thats clever .as for lobo loans does anyone give a fig or even know what interest is being paid yearly for them ,seven percent was what i saw on the tv last year ,that equates to about forty something million per annum of tax payers money ,pickles has missed out on that one he wanted to do away with national audit because it is a white elephant so i reckon they do not give a monkeys either .
Whilst much of the above are true, is it correct that national government should be able to decide what local government does here? Is there really local government if it can’t even decide about minor stuff – like its own publications?
I dont think its minor stuff when it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds of money that could be spent on many more things , there is always mention of cuts to local council funding by the government but the paper continues to run no matter what , when no notice is taken by the people regarding the paper then the government need to step in .