Shrill war trumpet

The housing minister role is not reknowned as providing a natural path to Number 10.

However, one possible route from housing to the top has been revealed in new US drama series Designated Survivor. When the US president delivers the annual State of the Union address to Congress, a member of the cabinet is taken to a safe place, in order that there is someone left to run the country should a catastrophic terror attack wipe out all the top politicians.

Lo and behold that is precisely what happens in the Netflix show, leaving a shell-shocked survivor Tom Kirkman, secretary of housing and urban development, to become US president. Mr Kirkman, played by Kiefer Sutherland, struggles to assert his authority, and is dismissed as a “glorified estate agent”. Interesting stuff. Maybe this also explains why former UK housing minister Kris Hopkins was always so keen to be held hostage during the State Opening of parliament? See Closed Circuit passim.

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Affinity Sutton and Circle have now got the go-ahead for their 128,000-home mega-merger and have unveiled their new name: Clarion Group.

Closed Circuit’s spy’s first reaction was “why name yourself after dead and decaying flesh?”, before realising it was ‘Clarion’ not ‘carrion’.

Clarion, by contrast, means ‘loud and clear’. It also is the name of a shrill-sounding medieval trumpet. The organisations are big fans of 15^th century musical instruments and their subsidiaries will be called Lute and Lyre. Not really.

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“Own goal for housing minister” could have been a major headline this week. Gavin Barwell apparently embarrassed himself at his first Conservative Party conference as housing minister.

So what did he do? Did he speak out of turn? Did he muddle his figures up? Did he crumble under pressure from questions from fearless housing journalists?

It turns out that the own goal was, errm, literally an own goal. Mr Barwell, headed the ball into his own net in the annual journalists vs MPs football match. It was the first ever own goal in the annual event, apparently. At least he fared marginally better than MP Alan Mak, who was reportedly so bad he was substituted twice in the game.

For those of you who care – the journalists ran out 5-2 winners against the politicians. Whether there were many people cheering on either team in the match between probably the two most disliked groups of people in the country (well apart from estate agents, possibly), is doubtful.