The Irish Times reports that the European Commission has rejected claims from No campaigners that it broke Irish rules on referendum spending after paying €150,000 to insert a guide to the Lisbon Treaty into all Sunday newspapers in Ireland. The €150,000 was paid out of the Commission’s Dublin office’s media budget, and was in addition to a €1.

The European Commission spent €100,000 on 20 luxury coffee machines to equip the Berlaymont building in Brussels. The machines have now been switched off, following a complaint from an employee. A spokesperson attempted to justify the expense by saying that they didn’t want the Commisioners to waste time waiting for coffee. Taken from the Libertas Daily Update My comment: €5,000 for a coff...

'Valueformoney' quangos like the Audit Commission and the National Audit Office should be scrapped and replaced by a single body which just measures public service performance a report says today.

Westminster City Council's benefit service is failing vulnerable people who need its help, according to the independent Audit Commission which gave the service only one star (on a range of none to three) and told the council to make improvements. The service is run by Capita. Inspection of the service in March this year discovered that people making new claims have to wait over a month, on av...

The Royal British Legion canvassed more than 6218 people including 1,200 adults in the ex-Service community, 2500 of its own beneficiaries and 160 case workers along with other ex-Service charities to make the first accurate estimation of the size, personal circumstance and welfare needs of the ex-Service community. 46% report living on net income of less than £10,000 per annum with half of adults...

The National Audit Office has a new report out which finds that: While 52% of Service families feel their accommodation is in a good condition, 31% are dissatisfied with the condition of their property. The MoD is currently undertaking a programme to upgrade Service family accommodation. In the last two years it has upgraded some 1,700 properties

A row about the independence of the World Service has flared up after the BBC pulled an episode of From Our Own Correspondent at the Foreign Office's request. By Leigh Holmwood

As we all know and have sniggered about the Parliament's Strasbourg HQ has had a few troubles of late. But I can hereby reveal the reason behind the mystery of the new wing of the Brussels building and why it is over a year behind. The new building, currently called BD5 is a 39,000 sq metre extension full of offices and large conference rooms. And was supposed to have been open over a year ag...

When we wrote about the Brussels I Regulation, we were unable to locate the report and the green paper referred to in the Commission’s press releases. They have now been posted on the Eur-Lex pages dedicated to preparatory acts, among COM documents: Brussels I Regulation report Brussels, 21.4.2009 COM(2009) 174 final REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL AND THE ...

The Cabinet office weighs in as one of the cheapest departments. Its total spend for 2009-10 is an apparently modest £7,500,000,000. £361,000,000 of this is the administrative cost of the place, whilst the bulk, £7,140,000,000, is the civil service pensions bill.