You can take the gossip out of the column …

He snows what he’s talking about
Social Animal bumped into TV newsman Jon Snow last week at the Andy Ludlow Awards ceremony for homelessness projects. Before turning his hand to journalism, Snow worked in housing – at a New Horizon Day Centre for young homeless people in north London in the 1970s, in fact.

Now the chair of the organisation, he took the opportunity of a speaking slot at the awards ceremony to urge housing minister Keith Hill to provide good funding for day centres. You can take the man out of housing but you can’t take housing out of the man …

The long good stare
A new weapon in the fight against antisocial behaviour is reportedly being used with successful results in South Africa – and it’s got nothing to do with ASBOs, ABCs or any other set of initials.

In short, it involves staring. Groups of concerned citizens have been wandering around sleazy neighbourhoods staring out drug dealers, prostitutes and kerb crawlers.

Shamed individuals are reported to have abandoned their patch and, much unnerved, returned to harmless activities such as watching TV.

Alive and well and living in Whitehall
What have deputy prime minister John Prescott and king of rock’n’roll Elvis Presley got in common?

Well, apart from both owning numerous automobiles, they apparently share a penchant for watching several TV programmes at once.

Presley famously had four TVs in his living room; Prescott has four in his office – tuned to TV news services.

Power to the inspectors
The seeds of revolution at the Audit Commission were sown at last week’s Housing Quality Network conference.

Complaints from Roger Jarman, the commission’s strategic policy adviser, that the housing inspectorate does not have enough resources prompted a radical suggestion: industrial action.

The housing professionals in the audience loved this suggestion, of course, although nobody seemed sure how Jarman felt about the idea – but striking must be a touchy subject, given the government’s newly unveiled proposals to axe thousands of civil servants’ jobs.

That will do nicely, thank you
In Chesterfield, people posing as council officers have been issuing bogus penalty fines for offences such as littering.

No two-week payment period with these fines, however – they are strictly payable in cash, on the spot.

The poor council has now warned residents to demand ID from anyone that attempts to give them a fine. How long before they fake that, too, I wonder?

Hack attack

Unleashing the government’s five-year strategy on crime, home secretary David Blunkett treated journalists to a first-hand demonstration of his own zero tolerance of antisocial behaviour. “I’ll get an ASBO on you!” he threatened a roomful of rowdy reporters before a Q&A session at the Home Office on Monday.

But worse was to come: at the end, the hacks were all locked in for half an hour as Home Office officials barred the door until Blunkett’s planned announcement to parliament began. It was the least pleasant lock-in Social Animal has ever experienced.

Source

Housing Today