Charity money boxes that police in South Yorkshire had been poised to hand out to children so they could do some fund-raising have had to be withdrawn – for being too phallic-looking. But the suggestive shaping doesn’t seem to have hindered their popularity at Irwell Valley Housing Association. According to chief executive Tom Manion, they’ve been using the tins for the past three years and had “no complaints”.

Artists, popes and czars

I wonder if Housing Today’s readers have noticed the extraordinary resemblance between the government’s new efficiency czar, Barry Quirk of Lewisham council, and the late, great artist Francis Bacon, famous for his “screaming popes”? Are they by any chance related? I think we should be told.

I’m a celeb, don’t get me out of here

I was delighted this week to hear that a new opponent of spiralling right-to-buy sales in the North-east has been recruited among celebrity circles. Apparently Ant McPartlin, of diminutive Geordie duo Ant and Dec, offered to buy his mum’s council house for her – only to be told she was quite happy with things the way they were. Surely here is an excellent opportunity to get North-east celebs on side in a campaign to save Newcastle’s dwindling social housing stock? Alan Shearer, Gazza, Alan Milburn, Jane Middlemiss, Brendan Foster, Jimmy Nail, Sting – the ball is in your court.

Mentally Hill

“You don’t need to be mad to work here, but it helps” is often the cry at housing offices across the country. But it was nice to hear at the Labour party conference in Brighton last week that Keith Hill agrees. “Only three people understand local authority housing finance: one’s dead, one’s in a lunatic asylum and the other is Nick Raynsford,” he told delegates. So no need to worry if the ODPM is driving you crazy – it’s meant to.

A game of patience

I am struck by a sense of déjà vu. Here we all are eagerly awaiting a mammoth government policy document upon which our future will depend. The ODPM had promised it by “the autumn” but has now slipped back to “the end of the year”. I am of course referring to the ODPM’s five-year plan which it is said will reveal all with regard to the “review of council funding”. Does this ring any bells? Communities Plan – promised for 2002 and unveiled in February 2003 – anyone?

A raft of reports have derided some of Britain’s towns as boring and faceless, but now there’s a new scientific method for finding out whether your town is tedium city. Hoping to provoke a “backlash against blandness” and encourage public support for the Sustainable Communities Bill, the New Economics Foundation has produced a 25-point questionnaire to help identify “clone towns”. It measures numbers of independent retailers versus chain stores and the more points a town scores, the less of a clone it is. To do the questionnaire visit www.neweconomics.org.

Source

Housing Today