Closed circuit

How’s this for an incentive? Faced with persuading the area’s homeless population to take part in the recent US Census, shelter workers in Los Angeles offered their clients root beer floats, a frothy confection of the soft drink and vanilla ice cream.

LA County’s shelters boast as many as 15,000 bed spaces, according to news website Examiner.com - pity the person working the ice cream scoop.

There was a notable absentee among the 800 guests for much of last week’s Housing Heroes awards, organised by Inside Housing and the Chartered Institute of Housing and held in London’s swanky Park Lane Hilton Hotel.

Richard Blakeway, housing advisor to London mayor Boris Johnson, arrived as 799 others were polishing off their lunch.

A profusely apologetic Mr Blakeway wolfed down his lamb cutlets, blaming his tardiness on the embryonic announcement of Grant Shapps as housing minister. Alas, the jovial Tory aide was to be denied his pud. Several glances at his Blackberry later and he was off again, saying: ‘Just tell everyone I’ve gone to the loo’.

Inside Housing’s web-filtering software happened on the most unlikely of political scandals last week.

The software banned us from the websites of former Labour housing minister Margaret Beckett and new communities and local government minister and Conservative MP Greg Clark. The reason? Pornography. The mind boggles (but we suspect our software is over-zealous).

There’s likely to be at least one apoplectic reaction to the news that Inside Housing columnist Jon Cruddas will not stand for the Labour leadership - from the master of spin himself.

Malcolm Tucker, angry director of communications in BBC comedy The Thick of It, had recently tweeted his support for the east London MP with customary profanity-laden verve: ‘F*** Miliband. Cruddas, or I’m going to work for f****** Dave’.

Meanwhile, Housemark has taken the LibCon coalition to a new level.

A recent briefing note on new government appointments from the benchmarking firm advises, ‘tackling anti-social behaviour will be the responsibility of home secretary Harriet Harman and justice secretary Ken Clarke’. LibConLab pact anyone?