War breaks out bewteen central and local gov

With local and central government both manoeuvring to avoid the blame for service cuts, open conflict between the two has been simmering for sometime.

The bullish Tory Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is the key player from the Government point of view and then there are several Labour council leaders setting themselves up to be the Derek Hatton of 2011.

One of them is Nottingham City Council’s Jon Collins who recently fired off a stunning attack at Pickles and Housing Minister Grant Shapps.

Collins’ outburst came after Pickles and Shapps pushed the council to publish details of all its expenditure above £500 on line – and in doing so highlighted several examples of council waste, taken from newspaper stories and FOI requests, which they said might have been avoided.

Refusing the demand, Collins said: “Grant Shapps is a fool. He’s risking his already risible reputation and fast becoming as big a buffoon as his boss Eric Pickles.

“Only such a fool would think he can attempt to discredit us with nothing more than half-witted and inaccurate headlines from the ever more partisan newspapers and selective extracts from FOI requests and expect to be taken seriously.

“He’s even more of a fool if he’s had civil servants trawling the internet to find these stories for him because that would mean he’s using public money and civil service time to help him make cheap political points – which is illegal - when he should be focussing on the housing brief that is, after all, his job.”

Don’t think Pickles is the type to take that kind of abuse lying down.

Politics Vs Religion

I was actually a little surprised with the exuberance of an attack Grant Shapps and Lord Freud launched at the Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday.

Normally when politicians respond to critical comments from the church, they go down the “they’re entitled to their opinion, but I don’t agree” route.

But Freud and Shapps (a good name for a detective TV show if ever I heard one) went for a full on tag-team attack during a briefing on housing benefit reform.

It followed comments made by Archbishop Rowan Williams recently that housing benefit reforms would lead to “social zoning” with low-income families getting pushed out of expensive areas.

After Williams’ words were put to Shapps he said it was “completely untrue” and “not based on fact”.

He went on: “It’s completely untrue and I'm afraid it is borne out of not recognising all of the facts and jumping on a bandwagon that says ‘oh no this must be terrible because it’s going to mean change’.”

Lord Freud was then tagged in: “I think it’s fair to say there has been in some of the commentary, elements of hysteria and exaggeration and I think that's deeply unhelpful – largely because it frightens people who've got absolutely no reason to be frightened.

“I think people should look at these – what are rather reasonable measures – and not stir up particularly nonsensical claims about the consequences.”

I never really thought Williams was one for a political punch up, but with his bishops sauntering off to Rome a good fist fight with a couple of Tories might be a handy diversion.

Let’s hope he gets a chance to speak his mind to Freud in the House of Lords soon.