ODPM spends *£6,200* setting up a blog!

Chris Armstrong's blog brought this one to my attention. David Miliband, Minister of Communities and Local Government, has set up a blog (yay).

Less yay is the fact that the "design, configuration and integration went through ODPM's web development contract at around £6,000", which is a ridiculous, crazy, rip off amount for someone to have had to spend in setting up a blog.

Obviously I'm not the first person to make that point, and several (including Chris Armstrong) have made the point in the blog's comments. What really gets my goat (and I know one should *never* read blog comments, because they will invariably cause Stressed Eric levels of frustration) are the people then counter-commenting to defend this amount of *public cash* being blown dressing up a blog, viz.

"The same people who complain about politicians being out of touch also complain about the cost of keeping in touch. Do they expect politicians to communicate via telepathy?"
No, that would be very scary (imagine suddenly hearing William Hague's voice in your head). But how about Blogger? Or some other *free* service to which you can apply your own branding.

"To get it integrated correctly and to make sure it doesn't fall over does actually cost money. I think £6k is reasonable."
In which case, the joke's on you, dude.