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摘要

Diary can always count on our old chum/ adversary (*delete depending on mood) Eric Pickles to come up with a striking image.And so it proved yet again when he appeared at a Westminster Social Policy Forum keynote seminar last week.Recalling when he first encountered civil servants as secretary of state in 2010, Lord Pickles said their attitude to power reminded him of American actor Charlton Heston.Not the Charlton from Planet of the Apes, he hastily added, but rather his real-life role as president of the National Rifle Association.'From my cold, dead hands,' Charlton was known to say as he held up a weapon in the face of criticism from the anti-gun lobby.If you close your eyes tightly enough, you can almost hear those Whitehall mandarins saying the same as they clutch the levers of power.