After months, if not years, of prevarication, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) appears finally to have come down on the side of fees in the battle over how to pay for financial advice.

The chief City watchdog may not have said so explicitly, but the only reasonable conclusion to draw from its Retail Distribution Review, published this week, is that it wants commission to become history, at least for financial advisers who want to prefix their title with the word independent. This is a long overdue but very welcome development.

To retain their independent status, advisers must, in future, cover the whole market and not be tied to individual product providers. They must also have a minimum level of professional qualification and explain upfront how they will be paid. Most crucially, however, their remuneration must not be determined by product providers.

In conjunction with the watchdog's guidelines on treating customers fairly, this should, in theory at least, make it difficult for independent financial advisers (IFAs) to continue to use commission, a practice that has led to customers being sold expensive and often inappropriate financial products.

Better still, the proposals mean that the charlatans who sell only their own bank's products in branches will no longer be able to call themselves advisers. Instead, they will have to go by the more humble, but more accurate, description of salesmen. No shame in that; selling is perfectly legitimate but it should never be disguised as something it is not. The angry reaction of the banks is a sure sign, if any were needed, that the FSA is on the right track.

However, as with much in the murky world of financial advice, not everything is entirely clear. Many independent advisers have interpreted the FSA's report as a green light to continue using commission. Indeed, there can be little doubt that commission will still flourish unless the FSA enforces the new rules. It should do so with vigour. Otherwise all its warm words will be as good as useless.

The watchdog should also not hesitate to strip advisers of their independent status if it discovers wrongdoing. The reputation of the entire financial industry depends upon it.

Cavalier councils must change their spendthrift ways

THIS week's council elections turned the spotlight on how local authorities spend taxpayers' money. Predictably, this illumination highlighted some bad practice.

Research by the Taxpayers' Alliance found that councils spend more than £400 million a year on publicity - hardly an essential frontline service. A prime example drops through my letterbox each month. Going by the name of IslingtonNow, this 16-page exercise in self-justification is full of shameless council propaganda and features on saving the planet. At a time when many people are struggling to pay their council tax this is an unacceptable waste of public money.

Then there is the issue of pensions. When the salaries of council workers were less than their private sector counterparts, perhaps there was some justification for superior pensions. But with more than 30,000 council employees now earning more than £50,000 a year, it is hard to argue that taxpayers should also fund generous final-salary schemes. The millions of private sector workers with little or no pension provision can feel rightfully aggrieved that local authorities spend more than £4 billion a year on these schemes. This figure is equivalent to more than 1p on the basic rate of income tax.

Meanwhile, as the public is expected to stomach above-inflation increases in council tax each year, some town hall bureaucrats think that it is acceptable to withdraw weekly rubbish collections and then employ people on salaries of £20,000 to rifle through residents' bins to monitor compliance with their draconian disposal rules.

Of course, there are many efficient councils with hard-working employees who do a great job in difficult circumstances. The unfair funding from central government also doesn't help. But there are also too many authorities in which waste is endemic and bureaucrats think it appropriate to spend the public's money on pointless publicity, overly generous pensions and meddling jobsworths. That attitude must change.

Good reason to postpone the 2p increase in fuel duty

IT HAS not been a good week for those who drive a car or heat or light their homes. Sadly, of course, that is pretty much everybody. With a gallon of petrol edging above £5 and npower announcing the first of what is likely to be a new round of gas and electricity price rises, any relief from soaring energy costs appears to be a very long way off.

Unfortunately, there is little that motorists can do to ease the pain at the pumps. The same, however, cannot be said of the Government. At the very least, Alistair Darling should acknowledge the problem by abandoning the 2p a litre increase in petrol duty planned for October.

With Treasury coffers swelling from VAT on fuel, there is a persuasive argument that he should actually cut fuel duty. It is, after all, higher in the UK than virtually anywhere else in the world. The notion that expensive energy will encourage less reliance on carbon does not bear scrutiny. For most people there are simply no practical alternatives. Raising energy taxes at a time of record oil prices is insensitive in the extreme.