The penguin is mightier than the sword
Policy wanted, apply within
At last the new-look Office of the Deputy Prime Minister select committee has reopened the former DTLR's inquiry into affordable housing. And it wants you to tell it how to make sense of Gordon Brown's appalling comprehensive spending review figures. A plea for evidence begs for advice on "how spending the new resources should be balanced between social housing and options for owner occupation (including shared ownership) and the mechanisms to be used for their distribution".

It just all goes to show that the real reason no detail was given on how Gordon's money would be divided between development and key workers: because there wasn't any.

Remember the ALMOs
While I'm on the subject, it came as no surprise to this newshound that Prescott has lowered the Housing Inspectorate rating that arm's-length hopeful councils need from three stars to two. After the mess that was the ODPM's spending review figures, it is highly unlikely that the department's bean counters could ever get an "excellent with promising prospects for improvement" rating for their cost-effectiveness. Best value, my hindquarters.

Zut alors!
I was amused to note that the Greater London Assembly's Labour party chair Len Duvall has called for the cafe in the capital's City Hall to accept euros. Len represents Greenwich and Lewisham in the GLA, and I'm sure he will back my campaign to let residents of the local millennium village pay their rents in groats, just as they would have done at the onset of the last millennium.

The cat ate it
Don't fancy that board meeting? Are the inspectors coming over and you don't want to see them? Let Social Animal come to the rescue with some handy excuses for missing a day's work.

Housing recruitment consultants Action First have compiled a list of some of the more bizarre excuses their clients received during the World Cup. The overall winner had to be "I got my fingers stuck inside the video recorder while I was trying to set it to tape the big match".

But I reckon honourable mentions must also go to "I have to pick up my uncle from the train station. He has two bags but only one arm", "my dog woke up late" and "I was having a dream about the match and it went into overtime". Indeed.

Blunkett on the barricades
I was pleased, but slightly confused, to read the following BBC News Online headline: "Police raid on West Midlands mosque defended by Home Office." It's nice to see Blunkett sticking up for asylum seekers in such a direct way.

For manure readers only

Housing has its share of urban myths. A bone to any reader who can give a verifiable date and location for this classic, or indeed come up with a better one. For some weeks, residents of a tower block had been complaining about smells and noise coming from a 13th-floor flat occupied by an ex-rag-and-bone man. When the housing officer gained access, she was astonished to find a 16-hand Yorkshire Grey pacing around the living room, by then several inches deep in horse manure. The hapless nag refused to get into the lift and had to be tranquillised and removed by helicopter from the balcony.

Source

Housing Today