Hoary old chestnuts

That Eric Pickles has got my dander right up again.

Not content with telling councils how to collect the bins or where to put railings, Mr Pickles is now moving on to banning local authorities from including non-Christian elements in any celebrations they organise in winter.

Yes, that's right, not just banning local councils from failing to include the Christian religion; but banning councils from organising winter celebrations which include anything other than Christianity. Apparently, local councils should not be free to decide to run events called Winterval, or Winter Lights, and must include 'Christmas lights, Christmas trees, carol services and nativity scenes'. Who died and made Mr Pickles supreme ruler of the universe?

Mr Pickles is Communities Secretary in the coalition government. That's the department responsible for local government. He is also a Conservative. I had thought that one of the things Conservatives shared with Liberal Democrats was some respect for local government, local decision-making and local determination. Apparently not. Has Mr Pickles really got nothing better to do than to micro-manage the bin collections, street furniture and Christmas celebrations of every council in the country?

The coalition government will shortly be steering a Localism Bill through parliament, aimed at reducing central control of local councils so that they can be freed up to get on with working for their residents rather than for civil servants in Whitehall. Does Mr Pickles have even a glimmer of understanding of the local freedom and local choice his government wants to promote? And if not, is he really the right person to hold the post he currently has? Or is he, as I suspect, more interested in grabbing cheap tabloid headlines and whooping up the readership of the Daily Mail into a frenzy, than in liberating local councils to represent local people?

Why should a religion to which only half the population of the UK adheres be given a monopoly by the Government on holding celebrations in winter? It's not even as if Jesus was born in December anyway; the church took the date over from a much older pagan tradition. And to be honest, how much is there in our Christmas celebrations that's religious anyway? There's nothing particularly Christian about tinsel, mince pies, snowmen, or tacky wrapping paper. Is Mr Pickles going to ban those too?

The urban legend of Birmingham Council's Winterval in the 1990s has been endlessly recycled by people whose favourite start to the day is harrumphing into their Daily Express about how Britain's gone downhill since the 1930s, to show that we're all going to hell in a handcart. It's supposed to have been part of a politically correct plot to obliterate Christmas. The fact that during Winterval "there was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor sent a Christmas card with a traditional Christmas scene wishing everyone a Merry Christmas" is of course set to one side as it rather inconveniently gets in the way of a good story.

Under Mr Pickles, it appears that instead of local government run from the centre by politically correct box-tickers, we're going to see local government run from the centre by ignorant populists. I'm really not sure which is worse.

But then, what more seasonal at Christmas than another load of hoary old chestnuts from Mr Eric Pickles?