I am indebted to HoldTheFrontPage for reminding us, yet again, that Eric Pickles has the political clout of a wet haddock. It reports today that a council is continuing to defy an order by Pickles’s communities and local government department.

Pickles wrote in November to the south London council of Lambeth to “demand” that it stop publishing its Lambeth Talk magazine on a monthly basis. Go quarterly by January, said the minister, or else.

So what has Lambeth done? It has gone on publishing its magazine as before in defiance of Pickles’s law, the local audit and accountability act, which limits the publication of council newspapers to four per year.

But Lambeth is not alone. Three other London boroughs are still publishing their own regular publications: Tower Hamlets, (East End Life, a weekly); Waltham Forest, (Waltham Forest News, a fortnightly); and Greenwich (Greenwich Time, a weekly).

Newspaper publishers who believe such council-run publications provide unfair competition to their commercial operations must be frustrated by Pickles’s apparent weakness and sloth.

That said, two councils, notably Greenwich and arguably Lambeth, could make out a decent case for their publications. What is unarguable is that a law exists that is not being obeyed, and the minister responsible for it looks foolish.

Hat tip: HoldTheFrontPage

