Grant who?

Former housing minister and current Conservative Party chair Grant Shapps was left raging by the insolence of UN special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik, who announced she will recommend suspending and reviewing the bedroom tax last week.

Mr Shapps’ anger can roughly be paraphrased thus: ‘How dare this woman question elected government officials, and who the hell is she anyway?’

It seems the feeling is somewhat mutual. Closed Circuit asked Ms Rolnik her opinion of Mr Shapps at last week’s press conference.

‘Who is he?’ She replied. ‘No really, I don’t know. He is some kind of parliamentarian, yes?.’

Closed Circuit has spotted some strange goings-on at Circle, during an interesting time for the housing association’s executive team. No, we are not referring to the large payoff for its former finance director which Inside Housing covered last week.

Closed Circuit is instead referring to details of Rosemary Boot’s departure, revealed in the landlord’s accounts. Of the three executive officers who left during 2012/13, apparently executive director (commercial) Ms Boot was appointed on 25 June 2012 and, according to the accounts, resigned on 25 January 2012.

Closed Circuit’s grasp on the space-time continuum isn’t great but, unless they have a time machine, surely staff can’t be resigning before they’ve even been appointed?

Conference fringe events are like parties. How do you decide who to invite? Closed Circuit got some insight as it listened (well, OK, eavesdropped) to a conversation between two potential conference session hosts at the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow this week.

‘We never invite the G15 along,’ said one of the plotters. ‘They’re just a bunch of willy-waving men who undermine the National Housing Federation [for the sake of clarity, we should point out this wasn’t anyone from the NHF speaking].’

Closed Circuit doesn’t want to dwell on the biology of it but would like to point out this is not completely accurate as there are three female G15 chief executives.

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