I took about an hour to set up my blog which is free. David Miliband's blog costs £40k a year to run, according to Iain Dale’s Blog (very good blog, slightly envious). We the tax payer pay two members of his staff to spend about 40% of their time writing it for him. Good use of staff in the DEFRA department? They might wish to spend some of the time sorting out the mess that Margaret Beckett left it in!