So, a nice chap has got the big job, which is, in fact, only a little job.
Al Aynsley-Green is to be England's Children's Commissioner at 100,000 a year. He is a child health specialist who has long been among the great and the good. Not well known among children's campaigners, but a good friend of the bureaucracy.
There is a certain shame attached to the position: it is cheap and disempowered. The English commissioner has more children under his wing and yet fewer resources and fewer powers than the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Commissioners. That in itself is a scandal. But the campaigners who wrought commitment to this job from the Government have also cautioned that not only is this post the weakest of the European Commissioners - the job spec doesn't actually meet European standards set out for commissioners, which specify autonomy from government as a bottom line.
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