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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> Birt - roof falls in http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1117789270 Message started by Forum Admin on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 9:02am

Title: Birt - roof falls in
Post by Forum Admin on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 9:02am

This is taken from the Financial Times:

Blue skies for Birt as No 10 shows its age
By Cathy Newman, Chief Political Correspondent
June 3 2005

The sky has fallen in on Tony Blair's blue skies thinker.

Lord Birt, charged by the prime minister to think the unthinkable, has had a narrow escape after the ceiling of his office collapsed.

A memo circulated in Downing Street - and seen by the FT - offered a graphic description of the incident. "The ceiling in John Birt's room collapsed overnight; fortunately the room was empty at the time; had he been in the room he would have sustained serious injury," wrote Jay Jayasundara, an accommodation manager at Number Ten.

Whitehall mandarins struggled to suppress a sense of schadenfreude. Lord Birt is regarded with some suspicion by ministers and officials irritated at his licence to range freely over their policy portfolios. One insider joked that the prime minister's ally now had a clear view of the blue skies from which to draw inspiration.

Another made the more serious point that the high-level mishap illustrated the desperate need for refurbishment of Downing Street, where Lord Birt has his eyrie. A £30m plan to redevelop the engine room of government is thought to have been delayed over concerns about the cost.

Perhaps Mr Jayasundara hoped the damage in Lord Birt's office would spur his bosses to action.

He judiciously sent the memo to Jonathan Powell, the prime minister's chief of staff, and Ivan Rogers, principal private secretary.