Why is the Spending Challenge like Gillian McKeith?

(these are my opinions and not those of my employer)

No, not because it involves unqualified people sifting through a load of poo from a wide range of people with no defensible methodology.

In my last post I reported on a twitter conversation with whoever runs @HMTreasury , the upshot being that the spending challenge “consultation” was not being run within the rules set out in the usual government code of practice for consultation. So today I wondered if they were still calling it a consultation. I headed for google:

Yes, result two. But on going to the site I couldn’t fine the word consultation anywhere on the front page. How odd.

So I checked the source code:

Wow. Just wow. It’s on the page okay, but it’s hidden in the source code. Using a CSS class charmingly called “hide”. Suggesting that it wasn’t there, and was removed, but not properly.

So the government wants Google (and thus, us) to think it is a consultation, but doesn’t want to be tied to all that tedious fair, transparent co-ordination stuff – which would get in the way of taking some overwrought Mail reader’s suggestion to “BAN ALL FORRINS AND QUANGOE’S” and say that it is what the public wants.

Charming.

More to follow.