OPINIONS

• Westminster City Council Chief Executive Charlie Parker argues that central government should show greater confidence in councils’ ability to run their own finances (18.08.14)

• Eric Pickles – a petty dictator on green issues? Damian Carrington’s Guardian blog (01.08.14)

• Another plateful of Pickles: he talked of his priorities being ‘localism, localism and localism’, but was this just a way of devolving responsibility for the cuts? Emma Maier in Inside Housing (08.08.14):

• Alex Thomson of the right-leaning think tank Localis calls for more localism in MJ: you cannot say that we don’t cover all sides of the localism debate! (14.08.14)

• Catherine Staite, director of Inlogov at Birmingham University explains why the Scottish independence referendum will fuel the localism campaign (27.07.14)

• Mark Smulian argues in the LGC for ‘radical decentralisation’ in Scottish local government (19.08.14)

• An interesting article by Tim Worstall in Forbes Magazine defending the big supermarkets against what he describes as ‘the usual crew of food campaigners’ (14.08.14)

LOCALISM AROUND THE COUNTRY

• The Welfare Reform Act exposes the meaningless of ‘localism’ in Sandwell (09.08.14)

• Localism powerless to prevent dumping of nuclear waste

• ‘Localism was mis-sold to the public’ A view from Spalding, Lincolnshire on the exclusion of a councillor from a planning debate, after he had previously expressed a view (10.08.14)

• ‘Localism receives its last rites’ A comment on the apparent lack of resident engagement by a district council in West Sussex on volume housing proposals (24.07.14)

• Environment Minister Lord de Mauley walks Hadrian’s Wall in a suit and tie, as he praises countryside management initiatives in Northumberland as ‘localism in action’ (19.08.2014)

• Neil Carmichael, Conservative MP for Stroud, Gloucestershire takes his Labour district council to task for not having a local plan in place (02.08.2014)

• Easy if you can afford it. Lord Phillmore pays £400,000 to help buy the Bottle and Glass, a closed pub in Binfield Heath near Henley, which was declared an Asset of Community Value under the Localism Act (18.08.14)