Hansom Sign ‘o’ the times

Disunity at communities

If any further proof were needed of just how seriously the Brown government takes the issue of housing, I can reveal the latest rumblings from the corridors of power. Apparently, communities secretary Hazel Blears and housing minister Yvette Cooper fell out over last month’s housing green paper. The dispute apparently centred around who was responsible for penning this centrepiece of Brown’s renewed New Labour. As Cooper’s boss, Blears thought it should be her. Cooper, however, pre-empted the flame-haired Salford MP by reading out her version of the green paper at Cabinet. It’s probably fair to say that Blears won’t be spending the summer break with her deputy.

Frying pans, fires and the O2

Whisper it softly, but things are looking distinctly rosy at the venue formerly known as the Millennium Dome. The artist currently known as Prince is enjoying a string of sold-out dates, and the venue, now known as the O2 seems to be shaking off the white elephant tag. And now it seems the people behind this remarkable transformation want to share their good fortune. The project management firm that undertook the redevelopment has hired Weber Shandwick, a PR firm whose former clients include, er, Wembley contractor Multiplex. Let’s hope it’s a slightly quieter gig for the Weber folk and “PR” continues to stand solely for Purple Rain in the Greenwich area.

How about Derr?

Naturally, I immediately took on last week’s ministerial advice and began referring to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform by its new acronym, Berr. Besides being infinitely snappier than DBERR, it also makes for much more entertaining searching on Google. Last Friday, typing in “Berr” brought up a pet store in California. Sadly, those fun-spoiling berrsterds at the ministry have cottoned on and made sure that the competing Berrs now appear in “the correct order of importance”.

But I was looking for a civil engineer …

On a similar theme, surfers looking for the Civil Engineering Contractors’ Association will be delighted to find that “Ceca” leads somewhere slightly more exotic than the august body’s website. According to Wikipedia, the buxom Svetlana “Ceca” Ražnatovic is in the vanguard of the Serbian “modern folk-pop-dance music” scene. Any other surfing distractions to the usual address please.

Confused of Tunbridge Wells

The government will be pleased to learn that all is not lost on the home information pack front. While taking the waters on my annual summer retreat at Tunbridge Wells, I had a heartening conversation with my cab driver. “I’m glad you're here mate,” he enthused on hearing of my day job. “I’m really keen on getting myself trained up as one of these energy performance inspectors – what do you reckon?” I wished him luck.