Society Daily 07.07.10

Eric Pickles: not as funny as you'd think. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Full coverage: Public sector cuts

NHS losing 47 jobs a day

Public spending watchdog chief quits

Private firms hit by public sector cuts

Eric Pickles: council vacancies should go online to save money

Cutswatch: tell us about cuts being made in your area

Archive: all Society Guardian public sector cuts stories

Today's top Society Guardian news and comment

Drug watchdog says ban mephedrone substitutes

Top doctor calls for food minimum health standards

Sharon Shoesmith: the real Baby P effect

Local government data: how useful will it be?

Thinktank: Age, income and education keep couples together

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Other news…

A group of OAPs tired of drug dealers blighting their area have begun a surveillance operation using digital cameras, and are publishing the results on YouTube and Twitterreports the Daily Telegraph.

George Osborne is under pressure from Conservative MPs to end the immunity of the NHS from spending cuts, according to the Independent.

Sour Pickles

I followed Communities secretary Eric Pickles' speech to the Local Government Association conference yesterday on television. If there was a serious message in there somewhere, it was crowded out by a procession of terrible, over-rehearsed jokes, and a truly awesome smugness.

Pickles looks like he ought to be a natural wit – my colleague Peter Hetherington uses the epithet "engaging" to describe him – but this was glib, Daily Mail-pastiche, stuffed with cliche and mixed metaphor.

Local government he said, was "a prisoner of regulations... chained to the radiator by red tape." In Pickles's world, one does not merely reduce bureaucracy but light a "bonfire of the inanities". Rules and regulations are never anything other than "barmy" and planning strategies are invariably "Soviet-style". Council job titles he didn't recognise or understand were, inevitably, "non-jobs".

As Rich Watts tweeted at one stage:

"Is Pickles going to say anything serious or just make crap jokes/one-liners all day?"

Well, there was a stab at some serious stuff: the formal announcement of the abolition of regional housebuilding and planning strategies; and an intriguing reference to a German model of local government that Pickles says scraps the council chief executive role in favour of an all-powerful elected executive leader.

But otherwise very little, jokes or otherwise, that we hadn't heard before, and a preponderance of what blogger Julian Dobson has called "pointless forelock-tugging to the Taxpayers' Alliance".

Perhaps his speech jarred because its glibness sounded so oddly out of synch with the realities unfolding for local government in the Age of Austerity. Many councillors present yesterday would have welcomed Pickles's promise to liberate them from targets, excessive inspection, and millions of pages of detailed policy guidance. But Pickles and his colleagues have also imposed upon them billions of pounds of cuts, and issued a central diktat preventing them from increasing council tax levels. The consequences of this for many town halls, their staff and citizens will be traumatic and nightmarish.

You waited in vain for Pickles to acknowledge this – or even confound the notion, rapidly growing in plausibility, that he actually despises public service workers.

The LGA leader Dame Margaret Eaton, who had spoken earlier, displayed less ideology, and more emotional intelligence. She is a Conservative, and like Pickles, an enthusiastic reformer. But her speech showed a subtlety and awareness missing from that of her political boss.

It was a time of "great opportunity" to make councils more efficient and remove unneccessary institutional bureaucracy, she said. But it was also important not to lose sight of councils' vital obligations to look after vulnerable elderly people, protect children, maintain roads, and empty bins. Early on in the speech, there was a perceptive line about how the financial crisis and the deep cuts to public spending poses "a challenge to all of us in public life to show we are on the side of people".

She also delivered a gently humiliating slap down for Pickles, who had paraded his determination to get rid of "council non-jobs" across the media that morning:

"We all know it's too easy for us to be undermined by an odd-sounding job title or a piece of officialdom that – however well-intentioned – looks plain daft in the outside world. We need to make sure we give no one the excuse to attack our colleagues' hard work. I must say, we also need national politicians to stop chasing cheap headlines at our expense."

It was a nudge for Pickles to show more a little more respect for the people who will try and hold together public services in the coming years – and a warning, perhaps, for him to spend a little less time on Planet Daily Mail.

On my radar...

• US fundraiser and author Dan Pallotta's plans to set up a "charity defence league" (thanks to Martin Brookes for the tip). According to Civil Society this organisation would:

"Represent and promote the non-profit sector worldwide by providing 'a charity anti-defamation league in the media, legislative initiatives, and public awareness advertising campaigns' to educate the public about the futility of focusing on metrics such as spending on overheads."

• Agebomb blogger Geraldine Bedell on the pros and cons of putting care home reviews online.

• A piece by Richard Smith, the former editor of the BMJ, on whether the NHS can "get digital".

"Evidence on whether the technology 'works' is highly contested with people not even being able to agree what is the right kind of evidence. 'The evidence is never enough' and 'the champions cannot overcome internal resistance.' So mostly it doesn't happen. One insightful doctor said, 'If it's telemedicine it doesn't work. If it works we call it medicine.'"

• Liberal Conspiracy blog, which asks whether the ever-principled Taxpayer's Alliance consider "social" i-phone apps to be a "great innovation" or a "fashionable gimmick"? As this blog post reveals the answer – naturally – depends on whether a Labour government is involved or not.

• The Daily Mash article "Government unveils School App" (satire).

In today's Society Guardian supplement

Will cuts undermine progress in post-riots Birmingham?

Claire Allan: the coalition has a cynical approach to mental illness

The race discrimination case that has dragged on for 10 years

An innovative home that provides dementia care

Interview: Lindsey Davies, the new president of the Faculty of Public Health

Katie Ghose: prioritising human rights could help save public money

All today's SocietyGuardian supplement content

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Guardian Public Services awards 2010

Guardian charity awards 2010

Society Guardian social enterprise summit

We are starting to plan this year's Society Guardian Social Enterprise Summit. Last year's summit was a great success - you can read about it here. Once again we are looking to showcase inspiration, innovation and practical ideas on how social enterprises can deliver public services. Whether you are from the public sector or from a social business, we want you to tell us who you'd like to see and what you would like to see discussed. Email to charmian.walker-smith@guardian.co.uk. You can Follow Guardian Social Enterprise on Twitter.