Lockdown has prompted many of us to take up new hobbies – from painting to learning a language.
And it seems that levels of boredom at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have reached such levels that the press office has turned to blogging its way through the coronavirus crisis.
‘MHCLG in the Media’ bills itself as a review of stories about the department in the news, including ‘rebuttal of inaccurate comment’.
In a move that has the remnants of Dominic Cummings’ clammy fingerprints all over it, the blog has been busy laying into Guardian editorials - which apparently ignore ‘the fact councils’ core spending power rose by over £2.9bn this financial year even before additional emergency funding was announced’ – and tweets by Newsnight’s policy editor.
The blustering bloggers also variously described suggestions in the Manchester Evening News about the future of rough sleeping support as ‘inaccurate, simply wrong, entirely wrong, entirely incorrect and misleading’.
Diary awaits the next installation of the blog, which might look to correct MHCLG’s own press statement referring to ‘City of Lincolnshire Council’.