The position of Minister of State for Communities and Local Government was a cabinet-level position in the United Kingdom Government. It was created by Tony Blair in 2005 following his victory in the general election of that year. The minister held many responsibilities which were formally held by the Deputy Prime Minister, to whom he reported.
David Miliband became the first holder of the post. His selection was not without controversy, as some speculated that Tony Blair had wanted to give David Blunkett the position as a Secretary of State, but this was opposed by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. On 5 May 2006, it was announced that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would be losing its responsibility for local government and housing, and Ruth Kelly would be appointed Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
Famous quotes containing the words minister, state, communities, local and/or government:
“Before any woman is a wife, a sister or a mother she is a human being. We ask nothing as women but everything as human beings.”
—Ida C. Hultin, U.S. minister and suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 17, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)