BRADLEY ANNOUNCES DEATH OF THE QUANGO'S - BUT WHEN?

City council leader Warren Bradley has taken the brave and sensible step of announcing the scrapping of quango-land in Liverpool.
Bradley has called for the abolition of Liverpool Vision, the Liverpool Land Development Company and Business Liverpool. (Just those three then? ed)
No-one knows exactly what any of these three organisations have actually achieved for Liverpool.
Liverpool Vision is a well meaning regeneration quango which has excelled at colourful brochures and billboards but has been remarkably short of delivery on the ground. (It was behind the plans for the Fourth Grace, ed)
Liverpool Land Development Company is busily making a mess out of Edge Lane and some serious question marks are now being raised about the professed antecedents of some of its most senior officials.
And Business Liverpool has so far survived about three separate attempts to try and re-organise it into an effective job creation agency.
What all three have in common, of course, is that they lack any democratic accountability. No elected representatives have any control over these three organisations which together have the power to spend millions of pounds in public money. (Good enough reason for them to go then, ed)
So Bradley has laid down the gauntlet: "This spaghetti maze is getting in the way of the city building its future economy. My aim is to start off with encouraging the big three agencies to join forces, and that will consume a number of smaller agencies, such as the Strategic Investment Area bodies (SIAs). My biggest problem is that Liverpool's record on attracting inward investment is rubbish."
Good for you then Warren, whose views were also echoed by Labour Leader Joe Anderson.
But wait.
All these quangos employ armies of people on ludicrously fat salaries. They are not going to go quietly, are they? (You must be joking, ed)
So watch the opposition start to mount and the PR campaigns kick into overdrive as they all battle for survival.
Warren Bradley announced the abolition of the quangos on October 13, 2006.
Let's give him a year and then see what progress has been made....