National Archives under threat?

[Greensleeves]

I see from the leaked list of quangos which the government is planning to axe that it includes The National Archives, the future of which is shown as 'under review'.  Worrying.....  Suppose it'll get sold off to the highest bidder and we'll end up paying through the nose for the data.  Or am I just being a miserable old cynic....?

[t mo]

hi g s
no i,m with you it,s all about money these days and as genealogy has taken off since w d y t y a have been on air it,s turned into a very lucrative market and if private enterprise can make good profits from it why can,t governments do the same if its run properly

trevor

[Redroger]

As you sow, so also shall you reap!

[Nick29]

Selling off is just one possibility.  There has been a tendency over the last few years to merge offices together.   One example is the merger of the Tax and Customs offices.   It may be possible that the NA could be merged with the GRO and Passport Offices, although the logisitics of moving either of them could be quite daunting.

[Redroger]

Must get there quickly before it becomes the preserve of the rich, like many other things.

[Greensleeves]

The possibilities for merging could be interesting:  National Archives and Forestry Commission, for example 

Whichever way it goes, I fear that we will be paying more for less.  But I do think that the National Archives are such a wonderful resource that it would be terrible to deny people access to them.

[Redroger]

So do I Greensleeves, but when saving is obsessional common sense by definition goes out of the window!

[Lady Pommy]

They merged Education and Employment, which always seemed a little odd to me ... education dealing with pre-school upwards, and employment dealing with anyone under pension age !   How could they possibly be similar ??

Anything is possible it seems ... ahhh !    It wasn't like that when I was younger ... 

[Maggie1895]

The possibilities for merging could be interesting: National Archives and Forestry Commission, for example

Brilliant Greensleeves!  All they'd have to do would be to put Environment and Employment in with them and we could keep half the unemployed counting the numbers of papers in the archives, passing their audit results along to the other half who then spend their time planting enough trees for the Foresty Commission to be able to replace all the parchment, whilst the Environment keeps track of the balance for EU targets..

Everybody happy and the lack of jobs solved overnight.   Wonder what other departmental mergers could work as well?