Let’s see if the Tories are punished for it in the locals.

It’s what Tories do no matter how much Cameron likes to say otherwise. If Cameron is true to his word then he is not a Tory but the sad aspect is he is not true to his word.

I have a question; if it was a “unanimous decision” by a Council which includes 15 Labour Councillors, how can the “Labour leader of the Council” (presumably you mean the leader of the Labour Group on the Council) complain? He voted for the decision, didn’t he – or has “unanimous” up and changed its meaning without telling anyone?

As local councils are coming to appreciate, local community centres and libraries – as well as adult education classes on the social sciences – are potential focal points for subversive discussion. The councils don’t want to risk providing platforms for popular dissent.

Btw after the £000 millions loses chalked up by Fulham and Hammersmith council through contracting ultra vires interest rate swaps during the 1980s, I’m amazed that the council is now being upheld by the government as some sort of model for others to follow:

In June 1988 the Audit Commission was tipped off by someone working on the swaps desk of Goldman Sachs that the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham had a massive exposure to interest rate swaps. When the commission contacted the council, the chief executive told them not to worry as “everybody knows that interest rates are going to fall”; the treasurer thought the interest rate swaps were a ‘nice little earner’. The controller of the commission, Howard Davies realised that the council had put all of its positions on interest rates going down; he sent a team in to investigate.

By January 1989 the commission obtained legal opinions from two Queen’s Counsel. Although they did not agree, the commission preferred the opinion which made it ultra vires for councils to engage in interest rate swaps. Moreover interest rates had gone up from 8% to 15%. The auditor and the commission then went to court and had the contracts declared illegal (appeals all the way up to the House of Lords failed); the five banks involved lost millions of pounds. Many other local authorities had been engaging in interest rate swaps in the 1980s, although Hammersmith was unusual in betting all one way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_swap

To be on the safe side, Pickles is abolishing the Audit Commission as well, which minimise prospects for any embarrassing new findings about other Conservative controlled councils in future.

@ 4

“To be on the safe side, Pickles is abolishing the Audit Commission as well, which minimise prospects for any embarrassing new findings about other Conservative controlled councils in future.”

A masterstroke of bastardry, that.

@5: “A masterstroke of bastardry, that”

The abolition of the Audit Commission will create untold market opportunities for private sector audit firms. These are the very sort of audit firms which failed to warn the shareholders of banks – never mind the public – that their appointed directors and hired managers were running high risk investment management strategies that could lead to horrendous losses and to systemic bank failures with depositors queuing up to take their money out.

As Alan Greenspan put it in testimony on 24 October 2008 to the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee:

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122476545437862295.html

Well done Eric Pickles.

@4 “As local councils are coming to appreciate, local community centres and libraries – as well as adult education classes on the social sciences – are potential focal points for subversive discussion. The councils don’t want to risk providing platforms for popular dissent.”

Are you really suggesting closed libraries would be closed by Tory councils as they are forums for “dissent”? Perhaps CCTV in town centres is used to spot gangs of covert Labour canvassers whispering behind their hands about their support of moderate centre-left policy. Where will the municipal jackboot strike next?

As for the issue at hand, it is pretty well addressed here: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2011/02/the-big-society-in-hammersmith-and-fulham-is-thriving.html