I noted some problems with Bob Neill and Eric Pickles’s logic when they defended the closure of the Audit Commission and put public audit out to the market.
In particular, I observed that to criticise the Audit Commission for acting like a large corporate was an odd thing to do since auditors in the private sector act like, erm, large corporates.
Which is all a long way round of saying that we shouldn’t be at all surprised by the Guardian’s noting that
The government’s decision to close down the Audit Commission is likely to benefit a number of companies that have donated large amounts to the Conservative party. Accountancy giants such as KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and Grant Thornton have offered the party the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash and non-cash donations such as staff secondments and consultancy services.
arbitrary constant 