New Co-op Wallpaper Design Revealed

2.12.26pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

Lambeth Labour's Leader, Cllr Steve Reed, has clearly been devoting as much of his time to the absurd notion of Lambeth operating as a Cooperative Council as he has to boosting the over-inflated employment opportunities for his Group's back room political staff.

Having basked in the relative success of the column inches devoted to his Co-Op idea before the election - we note that John Lewis is hardly mentioned these days as it is much too middle-class sounding - the official Labour riposte to David Cameron's Big Society idea needed something solid to show that this was much more than froth and nonsense.

Step forward the Citizen's Commission a grand sounding name for a grass-roots body that was going to look at how the brave new Lambeth Council was going to operate into the future. And what could be better than the Cooperative Council asking its citizens to say how they'd like this to happen?

Unfortunately the Citizen's Commission, as announced, consisted of the Council Leader, his Deputy and the Cabinet Member for Finance. So not much room for dissent or original thought, there.

When a few rumblings were then heard about the pointed lack of real Lambeth residents on this Citizen's Commission, the Labour Leadership hurriedly cobbled together a Mark Two version called the Lambeth Co-Op Commission.

Comprising eight members of the supposed 'great and the good', only half actually live in Lambeth, and the cynical might also point out the Labour-leaning attributes of many of them. Given that all of this Co-Op twaddle emanated from Labour Party HQ, perhaps this is really not that surprising.

Quite what this unelected quango of the chattering classes will actually achieve given that their own direct experiences of social deprivation are probably only when their dishwasher breaks down or the Polish nanny goes AWOL we will just have to wait and see.

Book a place on Thursday 29th July for their first outing at the Brixton Palace of Varieties (Town Hall, Committee Room 8) to find out whether there's any real substance there to challenge the current regime or whether this is just a new line of expensive Cooperative Wallpaper.