Fighting evil powers at work in Hackney

Apart from Glamorous Gardener's terrifying cake party there wasn't much Halloween stuff going on in Hackney blogs.

But Mayor Pipe's description of the coalition government prompted the resurrection of a survey of Hackney politicians carried out last year.

The Mayor, one of the contributors to "Do Hackney politicians believe in ghosts?", said: "I am happy to confirm that I have never felt the need to attribute any event to ‘supernatural’ causes. Whilst I accept that people are entitled to hold whatever beliefs they like – as long as this causes no harm to others..."

On Wednesday night Mayor Pipe said the government's cuts were "extremely divisive, some may even say evil". Evil appears to mean anything that harms others or something "producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury..."

Anyway, it looked like Pipe had found people who held beliefs that were evil - a concept often employed to dehumanise somebody before a merciless attack.

But while the language was strong, Pipe quickly re-humanised all close-to-hand Conservatives claiming that Boris Johnson had something like a conscience (Pipe's 'social cleansing' phrase mysteriously pre-dated Johnson's more public use of a similar phrase - the two seem to get on well at the moment) he then re-humanised the Conservative councillors present at the meeting: "I can't see the people opposite as the representatives of this government. I could stand here and attempt to savage the people opposite for whatever reason they had for standing under the party colours they chose to..." (but I won't).

However it wasn't long before he and a number of other Labour politicians were gritting their teeth as Conservative councillors returned passionately to their loft extensions - an issue which apparently only affects the rich home-owning members of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community - but has consumed hours and hours of council time. Cuts or no cuts, some things don't change!