Lovers of irony will appreciate the juxtaposition of some of the news stories on the website this week.

Greg Barker, ex-MP for Bexhill & Battle, former Government Minister and the man charged with delivering the Coalition's Government's Green Deal programme knows who he is blaming for the programme's relative failure.

Customer service. We all talk about it. We all go on about how it's the thing that makes the difference between our business and our competitors'. We all like to think we give it. We all like to think we understand what we mean by it.

“I want to be an architect, so that I can design hideous buildings that people loath, that are out of step with popular culture, the environment and everything around them”. Said no-one, ever.

Way back in the mists of time, before t'internet took over our lives, when 'blog' was just a funny-sounding word, I wrote an Editor's Comment about the fact that Travis Perkins, then the country's 3rd largest builders merchant, had resigned from its own industry organisation.

That nice man Brandon Lewis has said that as far as he is concerned a successful housing plan under the Tories will see the building of 1 million homes. Yes, One. Million. New. Homes.

Those of us who grew up in the 1970s will remember the excitement - depending on your age - of going to bed by candlelight because there was no electricity that evening.

Planners and planning departments come in for a good deal of criticism from the building community. And rightly so in a good many cases. The planning laws can be said to be archaic, overly complicated, onerous and enforced by people to whose heads are full of the little bit of power they have been granted.…

We have something of a housing crisis in this country, which seems to be a fact universally acknowledged.

Figures released today show that 'winter deaths' in the year 2014-2015 were the highest since 1999. 43,000 'extra' winter deaths is the chilling (sorry) headline.