Andrew Orlowski added 'professional contrarian' to his business card many moons ago. (You can say much the same for the Register in general)

It's a shame because what used to be a useful source is now just noise. Maybe he's right in this case, but who would ever know?

I'm afraid I have to agree. gov.uk has been a reversion to the mean. It's not nearly as good as direct.gov that preceded it. On the other hand it replaces many cruddy government websites that had impossible navigation.

So it replaces variance with consistent mediocrity: the McDonalds of websites.