This morning I have mostly been ploughing through Audit Commission info and the DirectGov website in an attempt to get my head around the commission's controversial conclusions about local council newspapers.

Its report found that council publications of this type are not a waste of public money. The problem is, some of them clearly are. I never thought I'd say this, having been driven into a fury by one of its previous publications, but Hounslow Council's monthly "magazine" looks positively parsimonious compared with some of the stuff other councils are putting out. I was amazed to discover that Hammersmith & Fulham, home to PrintWeek Towers, produces an 80pp, fortnightly paper of its own. To what end? How can this be justified?

According to the Audit Commission's findings, 91% of English councils publish some sort of periodical. Of those, just under 40% do so quarterly, which seems reasonable enough for a bit of council puff. Thankfully only 5% of councils see fit to publish more frequently than once a month, but that's still 5% too many. I'd love to know whether the frequency of council publications bears any correlation to the frequency of their appearances in Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs column.

However, the Audit Commission's research was restricted to England, where there exist some 353 councils, and the commission assessed publications from 120 of them. There are 433 councils in the UK overall. A more comprehensive survey would be welcome.

In the meantime, surely the sensible conclusion would be for big government to issue some sort of best practice guideline to councils, stipulating that they should stick to their knitting, and communiqués should be restricted to monthly or quarterly frequency. Assuming it can actually do such a thing, that is.

No wonder the regional newspaper publishers are raging.