There are 10,000 odd parish or town councils in England and Wales, and suddenly everyone wants to be nice to them. Deprived of powers, status and money, it is now thought that they might be important. Ministers and civil servants are scurrying to see what can be done to strengthen these bodies – with a Community Empowerment White Paper being prepared as summer reading for us all.

It raises interesting issues for, just as we resurrect David Milliband’s “double devolution” idea, we face an even more determined campaign by those who oppose the Planning Bill that’s going through Parliament which will centralise decision-making on large infrastructure projects such as nuclear power stations, reservoirs, airports, major roads and even wind farms. A new consortium of environmental and conservation bodies called Planning Disaster is trying to raise the stakes, claiming that we will create a huge “democratic deficit” if legislation lets national considerations override local public opinion.