Why they started doubting Thomas

IF politicians and journalists are regarded as pond life by the public at large, then spin doctors are the bette noire of scribes who have to suffer the arrogance and bullying of those paid to divert attention away from an often uncomfortable truth.

Most government and local government public relations officers are former journalists, who have gone on to highly paid jobs in the lucrative public sector, with gold plated pensions underwritten by tax payers. Others are graduates who have never been at the sharp end of journalism and thus have no concept of newspaper deadlines and what ingredients make a first class story.

When a spin dctor becomes the news, then you know that person has been a failure. Jo Moore, who infamously e-mailed colleagues in the Department of Transport, as the terrible images of the World Trade Centre outrages of September 11 2001 were being beamed around the world, that it was a good day to bury bad news announcements, epitomised the cynisism of the information - some would argue, the disinformation -profession.

Alastair Campbell was a larger than life figure whose role was to protect Tony Blair from the slings and arrows of outrageous journalists who had the temerity to question the blessed one's integrity and policies.

In Suffolk, Francis Thomas headed a burgeoning empire. Like Topsy, it growded. He was appointed by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties in 2004 but within a year found himself at the beck and call of the Conservatives a year later when they won control of the authority.

If Thomas was a Campbell-style bully, he never tried it on with me. How how he handled his staff and the relations with his political masters were not matters for media speculation. But when media attempts were made to contact him, he was invariably in meetings on internal communications, as if the council leadership believed that internal relations with the staff were a higher priority than keeping council tax payers fully involved.

This year, Thomas was pitched into the forefront of the strategy to deal with the appointment of the council's new chief executive Andrea Hill on a pay hike from £150,000 to £220,000. It didn't help that Hill's pay package was heavily criticised by the media and council tax payers and that Thomas was on a Caribbean cruise when she took up her appointment earlier than anticipated.

Could matters have been handled differently in regard to the Hill appointment? Yes, but what advice Thomas gave to the ruling politicians has not been revealed. At the end of the day, it was the Tories in Suffolk who appointed her, and decided the salary. That they were left struggling for credibility cannot be laid at Thomas's door - a vigilant, local press exposed what the council didn't want revealed.

However, other decisions such as the abolition of Suffolk's 40 middle schools, which angered parents, and the controversial incinerator - dubbed in true spin as "energy from waste" - have landed the council in the deep smelly stuff which with the right tactics could have been avoided. 

Thomas has left the scene and now Suffolk, which was once a genteel county presided over by a pragmatic squirearchy, is engulfed in a second managerial disaster. The county council probably won't exist in two years' time, but the manner of its passing has been turbulent - and has left a Tory administration which prided itself on good housekeeping to be buffeted about in the wake of a human resources nightmare.