Aiming for a 20% rise in gossip emissions by 2016
Tory story
News reaches me that Maggie Punyer, the esteemed organiser of the annual Harrogate housing bash, is the Conservative party candidate for the town at the next general election.

After marshalling the characters of social housing for the week-long bunfight that is the Chartered Institute of Housing annual conference, the House of Commons should be a doddle.

Barking mad
Bolton has its problems but, so far, they have seemed small-scale compared to the trouble across the sea in Northern Ireland.

However, Bolton is already home to some 35 family members and friends of the loyalist outcast Johnny Adair and, I hear, could soon be kennelling the Mad Dog himself.

Concerned housing providers and local police are working up plans to cope with a potential increase in violence when he is released in January.

Gypsy things
The deputy prime minister may live to regret not jumping in one of his Jags and gracing Harrogate with his presence this year. His own home could soon become less than comfortable if a group of angry villagers from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, press ahead with plans to erect a "gypsy camp" outside Prescott Towers.

They want to protest against a group of travellers allowed to live on the outskirts of their South Cambridgeshire village, but whether they will stand firm when faced with the wrath of Two Jabs remains to be seen.

A lot of hot air
Officials at the ODPM and the Treasury were fuming after the press picked up on a report claiming that Kate Barker's proposals for increased housing development would increase carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2016. To make matters worse, the report was commissioned by another government department – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

There's been more harsh criticism from other corners of government, with one source calling the report "fundamentally flawed" for appearing to work on the premise that thousands of extra homes would somehow create thousands of new people. Oh dear.

And why not?
Jon Rouse is beginning to come to terms with the influence he wields as new chief executive of the Housing Corporation. In a recent presentation to employees at Drum Housing Association, he mentioned that he'd just seen the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; not long after, he received a letter from one of those present who, inspired by Rouse's presentation, had gone to see the film. Unlike the audience member, however, Rouse did not agree that it was the best film he had ever seen.

How clean are your houses?

Props to the William Sutton Trust for trying to help the Home Office with an innovative project to tackle domestic violence. Shame, though, that it wasn’t that helpful. The Home Office wanted to test fingerprinting technology in the hope that it could be useful in domestic abuse cases and the trust stepped in with the test samples: some of its old kitchens. Unfortunately they proved to be so clean that fingerprints were almost entirely absent. Were the tenants exceptionally clean? Did they exist only on takeaways? Or are more sinister forces at work? Sadly, it seems we shall never know.

Source

Housing Today