What should be made of the government's publication of the COINS data? For starters, it is obviously the spending of the last government that is under scrutiny. I wonder whether they will be so keen to release this data next year. I think it also risks another step towards government by tabloid media. This was pretty bad under Labour. With everything open to view, this will provide the cover for the government to cut lots of worthy projects under cover of the Mail's righteous indignation. it's going to make some programmes very difficult to fund indeed. I fear that what we may end up with is not open democracy but demagoguery. I hope I'm proven wrong (and I may have a go at getting it into a usable database myself - sounds like a fun project).