The Ghost of Jeremy Beadle Haunts NCC...

This is just one of those classic local news stories. The plot could easily be (and for all I know may have been) the plot of an Ealing Comedy or, perhaps more likely, the basis of the late Mr Beadle's jolly japes.

Essentially, for no good reason that anybody can see, NCC popped down to Clifton and erected a couple of concrete bollards smack in the middle of a resident's drive. They then of course had to sheepishly return and take them away again.

I laughed out loud when I read it but, as the resident points out, money has been wasted here and you really have to wonder at what sort of jobsworth can put up a concrete bollard in the middle of somebody's drive without stopping and thinking "...hang about..." halfway through.

The sad thing about this though is that, because it's a nice, simple, funny story everybody will remember it and it will be the talk of Clifton for many years to come. Someone might even lose their job over it and, if so, I doubt they'd see a lot of sympathy.

Yet a senior manager making decisions that could potentially cost the council £4m plus, when there were clearly identifiable reasons why those decisions were reckless at best, I wonder what might happen to them? Would anybody remember that one? Or care?

So, if there are any readers who are in a position to find out, please do let me know if Lisa Black does face any action over her decision to ignore longstanding accuracy issues in Housing Benefit processing, including the abandoning of quality control in order to train workers in 1970s era manufacturing philosophies.

I would be happy to publicise what happens. With appropriate discretion for the bean spiller of course.