Seen but not heard

Most people would agree that Boris Johnson’s housing advisor Richard Blakeway is a larger-than-life character and is certainly no shrinking violet.

But while speaking at a London Assembly committee meeting last week, Mr Blakeway was told repeatedly to ‘speak up’ by an increasingly irate member of the public who was struggling to hear what he was saying.

Three times the member of the public shouted his demand before Mr Blakeway complied.

A bemused Mr Blakeway joked: ‘I’ve never been accused of not speaking loudly enough before.’

Is housing minister Grant Shapps running out of new policy ideas?

That at least was one interpretation of a letter he sent to shadow housing minister Alison Seabeck during the summer recess asking for information on Labour’s plans for housing.

Ms Seabeck expressed some surprise that the minister - who has been studying the housing sector as minister and shadow minister for many years - should seek her advice after she’d spent just 10 months in the shadow role. Perhaps he was just trying to keep one step ahead of the opposition.

If you live in Tees Valley you don’t have to be MAD to clean up your community, but it helps.

Tristar Homes and Apollo Housing staff are working with residents to tidy up estates in Thornaby with the curiously named Make a Difference day, or MAD for short.

MAD volunteers will litter pick, hedge trim and weed paths. As philosopher George Santayana might have put it: ‘Sanity is MADness put to good uses’.

BBC TV series DIY SOS has taken a step up from its usual practice of enlisting local builders and brought in a housing association’s entire maintenance arm.

Housing Maintenance Solutions, part of Liverpool Mutual Homes, has volunteered to transform the Norris Green Youth Centre in north Liverpool as part of Children in Need. Could this finally be the big society in action?

Send your juicy housing gossip to closedcircuit@insidehousing.co.uk