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I’m writing the links from my in-laws’ place in Northumberland this week. There are many joys of being out here: having a woods just behind the house to take my son for a walk in, good food and beaches and most of all, the wildlife. Previous visits have been enlivened by pine martens, weasels and hedgehogs; the highlight of this trip has been an absolutely enormous starling murmuration a few minutes down the road from us. My wife and I just stood by a highway watching them ebb and flow for 30 minutes, until neither of us could feel our fingers anymore.

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While the axe falls on vital services across the country, a dependent Whitehall is giving private consultants a blank cheque, say Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, authors of The Big Con

Productivity is much lower than in comparable countries, yet bosses just award themselves millions – and hire consultants

They have become the outsourcing mandarins, consultancy companies which have served to degrade expertise in the public sector while diminishing the quality of services. Along the way, they have charged astronomical fees in giving repeatedly flawed advice. Consultants, packaged as all wise gurus, have become the great confidence tricksters. Embracing the inner voodoo of consultancy