Eric Pickles has been in the news again. He’s a busy man. Almost exactly a decade before his reappearance, I attended ‘Herefordshire 2020: A Vision for the County’, a half day conference in Hereford. It was a brave attempt to demonstrate how the private and public sectors could work together for a positive future. The star of the show was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who gave a bizarre and disturbing performance . The theme of Eric Pickles’ speech was that we need to get away from the central control of policy; we need to deregulate and stop the tick box mentality where there are regulations for everything. Make government officials with clipboards get a sense of perspective. On entering his department, he proudly told us, he gave his civil servants his three priorities; localism, localism and localism. “Localism will support growth and growth will support localism”. His confidence grew. To a Parish Councillor trying to achieve change he chided, “Stop