Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Minister helps to create safe, tolerant and inclusive communities

We have a Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who leads a team of ministers with the following responsibilities:

  • creating safe, tolerant and inclusive communities
  • building better homes and neighbourhoods
  • promoting strong and accountable local government
  • improving local services and environment
  • regenerating and investing in our towns, cities and regions.

The Planning blog has an entertaining slant on Mr Pickles's splendid achievements since coming to office, including of course the crucial identification of the need for a portrait of the queen at CLG headquarters and the crowd-pleasing requirement to have English county flags displayed outside the building.

Among the comments, this one will hardly seem eccentric:

'I’m trying to give this government a chance but I’m running out of patience. Why is this pickled egg arsing about with flags and pictures of the queen!!??'

Well all politicians get a little flak from time to time. What worries me is that he's probably doing his best.

14 Sep 2010 14:55:59 | Social policy

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You are not obliged to say anything According to the Guardian the president of the Police Superintendents' Association is to tell ministers that police should be protected from public sector cuts because otherwise how can they ensure protection from civil unrest that arises from social and industrial tension? Ensure protection for whom, exactly? The way the coalition is behaving, there won't be too many folk to protect against the mounting outrage. (Just as an aside, I spoke to a council worker today who had been told that their right to claim travel costs between council sites, which currently she manages judiciously by bus and train, is to be wiped out. So from now on it's 'I'm walking, I'll be about three and a half hours'. There's efficiency for you. The interesting question is, how much of this sort of treatment will people take? Will public sector workers soon have to pay for telephone calls and office furniture? Then the electricity, water and so on? The buildings? Should this principle be applied to members of parliament perhaps? No it shouldn't, it's nonsense). Of course the police are there to protect our leaders, we mustn't forget that. But as one comment to the Guardian article notes, 'They can always get the army in to beat up the police if they protest.' The police protesting is an entertaining prospect, and it may not all be posturing and positioning. Because we don't like to get excited in this country, this could all take a little time. We don't do rebellion, certainly not revolution; but we can get quite cross sometimes. Keep your eye on the few months leading up to the 2012 Olympics.
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Silly bagger Robbie told this story how he saw a fancy carpet on a clothesline, rolled it up and made off with it on his bike. This was over Eastleigh way, you know where the new houses are, well not so new, and how he was so neat going across the big field there, it was all wasteland then, said he carried his bike for a bit then put the rug down and rode over it so his tyretracks wouldn't show. And the same on the fields coming back past your end, where it's muddy in the dip. The sort of thing he did, he wanted to be a proper criminal. Robbie took it to the feller in that used-stuff store down on Paisley Lane, he said that's not a carpet lad it's a curtain, could you not tell the difference? There should be two. And they both should be clean.

Kevin Harris

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