Covering the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 from a small Devon village I was asked to describe the pyres of cremated cows in great detail. The FT’s then news editor had issued the orders: “I want our readers to smell their burning flesh.”

There was no similar sense of glee from Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, as he described his own bonfire of the quangos this morning. Instead he was careful to argue that the scrapping of up to 200 such bodies was all about accountability rather than saving money. It’s a curious argument and one that doesn’t exactly make sense; as Alex pointed out yesterday, quangos surely need to endure the same depth of cuts as the rest of Whitehall.

Here is a link to the announcement, which came out just after 10am. And here is the ft.com news story by Nick Timmins.

In total 480 quangos face reforms.

* Of these 192 will be abolished: a handful of which could become charities, such as the Design Council, British Waterways and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

* Another 118 will be merged, to create 57 larger quangos.

* A further 171 will be “reformed”. These include the Homes and Communities Agency and the Environment Agency.

* Just 380 will be retained in their existing form. Those which had been on the “amber” list and are now saved include the BBC World Service and the British Council.

Meanwhile I’m told that on Friday Mr Maude is set to produce a latterday Domesday Book of Whitehall spending, with organograms showing how many people work at the highest echelons of each department and quango. Read more