And so we bid farewell to County Hall spin doctor Paul Masterman.

The £7,500-a-month PR guru left Leicestershire County Council last month.

Paul has long been a hot topic on this blog. His employers Westco had teamed-up with Leicestershire County Council in 2010 to find a candidate to head-up the slimmed-down communications and press team at county hall. No-one was ever interviewed for the job, which attracted 40 applications, and Westco were signed up for further £10,000-a-month stints to run the council communications team.

Opposition councillors say upwards of £100,000 has been wasted on the whole process at a time when the authority is making cuts to services.

Despite only meeting Paul once, he certainly left an impression. He once blocked me on Twitter after I mentioned a BBC report.

The report said that he was suspended during a disciplinary investigation at a previous council after it was discovered he’d attempted to influence a BBC online poll regarding a council merger.

You can’t keep a good man down, though. He’s now appeared, in the same role, up the road at Staffordshire County Council.

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