Fancy that!

The latest figures for donations to the political parties in the final quarter of 2014 make for exceptionally depressing reading. The system is corrupt and corrupting.

One interesting fact to emerge was that Labour's largest private sector donor was again PwC - PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Here is a selection of recent headlines:

"Jon House resigns his post as chief executive of Cardiff Council" [to join PwC, ed.], Western Mail, 21 May 2013.

"Labour received £600,000 of advice from PwC to help form tax policy", Guardian, 12 November 2014.

Margaret Hodge MP (Lab): Pricewaterhouse Coopers "implementing tax avoidance on an industrial scale". BBC Radio 4 World at One, 6 February 2015. 

"Labour's biggest non-union donation is from PwC" (another £385,000 in Q4 2014 to be precise), New Statesman 19 February 2015.

Meanwhile, the Welsh Local Government Association, that Labour dominated quango, is proud to announce that PwC is a sponsor.

But PwC does not hold sway everywhere. Over at SOLACE, the publicly-funded quango which represents the interests of council chief executives, the partner of choice is rival accountancy firm Grant Thornton.

When it comes to legal matters, SOLACE's preferred partners are Eversheds which last year billed Pembrokeshire County Council a staggering £106,000 for the advice it provided on Bryn Parry-Jones's unlawful pension arrangements and his eventual golden handshake.

Champagne all round.