CANCELLED schools, free swimming schemes sunk, VAT up to 20%, councils being told they’re going to be a bit strapped for cash - almost every week at the moment The Champion is covering how the latest in a series of cuts by the Coalition Government is going to affect you.

Yet measures announced by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, I reckon, will actually win the support of us in the world of local newspapers, because what he’s proposing is to clamp down on the amount of council newspapers paid for not by readers or advertisers, but by you, as a taxpayer.

I’ve already covered Paul Cotterill’s well-put argument against the proposals for this week’s Champion, after he argued it would unfairly affect the likes of Bickerstaffe Parish Council in putting out newsletters for their constituents, but the beef the local press has with what Mr Pickles dubs “town hall Pravdas” is that they’re risking putting the real media out of business by competing with them for the same readers and advertising.

“The previous Government's weakening of the rules on town hall publicity not only wasted taxpayers' money and added to the wave of junk mail, but has undermined a free press,” Mr Pickles said of the local authority newspapers.

"Councils should spend less time and money on weekly town hall Pravdas that end up in the bin, and focus more on frontline services like providing regular rubbish collections. In an internet age, commercial newspapers should expect over time less state advertising as more information is syndicated online for free. The flipside is our free press should not face state competition from propaganda on the rates dressed up as local reporting."

West Lancashire Borough Council, to be fair, stopped printing its own newsletters last year, but a host of other councils across the country still put out their own newspapers, praising and promoting their own services and neglecting to mention a host of other things that might be going on.

Reckon the local authorities would support independent news with their own funds, given the chance? Then I’ll point you in the direction of the community-run Salford Star, who are currently embroiled in a battle to get back into print because Salford City Council declined to reissue the grant used to fund it.

Genuine community news is something communities need and deserve - whether it’s covered by us or Bickerstaffe Parish Council - but in terms of local authorities using taxpayers’ money to play at being newspaper publishers someone has got to draw a line somewhere.

And I don’t care which political party does it.

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