Have you ever been out for a meal and then spent the next 12 hours glued to the throne in the smallest room of the house?

I have, I can tell you. And a colleague had to have three days off work with salmonella poisoning following a slap-up meal at a local restaurant.

It's pretty disgusting, isn't it, that you pay hard-earned cash for a meal and end up being poisoned? It's rare, of course, and I don't for one minute want to imply that Cornwall is full of unhygenic restaurants or food retailers. It isn't. But I have been horrified to discover that there are a handful in Cornwall that I wouldn't want to buy food for my dog from.

I spent the weekend ploughing through inspection reports written by officials working for Kerrier and Carrick district councils and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The findings were pretty sickening.

Take this inspector's comment, for example, about a well-known food outlet: "Cleanliness of kitchen was again not acceptable. Floor has grease build up making it slippery and dangerous. Frying oil is too dirty for continued use - needs changing asap."

Or, about another food retailer: "The cleanliness of the kitchen was poor, including walls (build up of grease). Floors - dirt and food debris."

There were also warnings in the reports about failures to follow basic rules to avoid cross-contamination between cooked and raw meat being stored together. The inspector in one report had to point out: "The overall aim is to ensure the food you sell/produce is safe to eat."

Did a professional food retailer really have to be told this? Should he really be allowed to stay in business if he has to be reminded of something so elementary?

It's good to learn that local council inspectors are giving these rogue caterers such a hard time but why did I have to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how bad things are in a handful of local food outlets? Why isn't this information made public automatically?

I bet standards of hygiene would improve dramatically if the reports of council inspectors had, by law, to be prominently displayed in each establishment.

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There are hundreds of highly-paid professionals employed at County Hall.

There are lawyers, accountants, administrators, surveyors, architects, engineers - you name it, they've got one or, more likely, a dozen. In fact, there are about 13,000 full-time equivalent staff in total plus an army of "casuals."

With all this expertise on tap, you would think they have enough brain power between them to tackle any issue that arises. That, however, doesn't seem to be the case. More and more council officers pass on the work they are paid handsomely to do to external consultants who charge us - the hard-pressed taxpayers - an arm and a leg.

Take, for example, preparation of the county council's case to abolish district councils and have just one local authority in Cornwall. This has just cost Cornish taxpayers £54,446 in consultants' fees. Why? Surely the council's own staff could have put together the bid for a unitary authority without outside help?

Consultancy must be the UK's biggest growth industry. Every local and national government department seems now to rely upon consultants.

Strangely, however, staff numbers go on growing despite the fact that more and more of the work is farmed out to someone else!