by Ron Green, freelance journalist and former Kent Messenger editor

As someone who felt that Kent TV was a gross waste of public money I couldn't help but see a delicious irony in one of the controversial site's latest films.

Just a few days after the county council announced the TV "experiment" would disappear down the pan the business section began showing a new film. It was about Thomas Crapper, the inventor of the flush toilet!

I almost laughed out loud. But only almost. About £1.8 million has been spent by the county council on this luxurious piece of unnecessary self-indulgence and that's no laughing matter.

On the scale of a £1 billion plus budget it may be that our elected members regard it as small change. But what a public relations disaster it was to persist with the project when the public rightly expect every last penny to be poured into frontline services.

As it is, I suspect most readers of Kent Business will have missed the fascinating Crapper film (and the one about how to draw a picture of Rupert Bear, also on the business section!). For one of several failings of Kent TV was that, despite having some polished content, it didn't find a niche in people's busy lives.

I was outraged at so much public money being used to ice the council's communications cake at a time of spending scrutiny. But the concept, launched by the Tory-dominated council, seemed to be out of step with thinking at Conservative HQ.

If the Tories win the general election they will toughen the rules governing the money that town halls (and county halls) can spend on their expensive publicity machines. At the same time they will be warned off competing with local media, which is going through its own difficult times.

A recent commission into the future of community news was told by Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Secretary for Local Government and Communities, that some local media was being driven out of business because they couldn't compete with council publications.

She inadvertently touched another Kent TV issue by saying local papers deserve to compete on equal terms as we are in an age "where the appetite for independent political scrutiny is greater than ever".

It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction on the internet, where website conjecture and blog gossip can be presented as fact.

Readers need to know that a publisher is independent and that the content - in newspapers, on websites, radio stations or local TV - is relevant, accurate and reliable.

Advertisers and sponsors, before they invest their money, rightly demand properly validated data on audiences - things like readership figures, unique visitor numbers and circulation statistics.

Local government's expensive flirtation with media fails on these - and other - counts and was doomed a long time before councillors decided to pull the plug.