"Open Budgets" should be more than token gestures

Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): Excellent news from Hazel Blears, who told the BBC that she will expand the local government "Open Budget" experiments, in which local direct democracy processes are used to allocate local government funds ... except ... that this applies to "up to £23m of spending per council". At less than 10% of an average council's running costs, and much less of a large council's, this starts to feel like a dangerous token. "So much fuss for so little impact" is the perception that scuppered the North East devolution. Don't let "too little" tarnish the move to "better".