I cannot remember exactly why, I may have been in a flap about a councillor or consultant giving me a hard time, but I remember being told by my principle officer and team leader to relax. ‘It’s only a game’, he said. Now. Let’s be clear. Planning is clearly not a game. Late Victorian intervention into a laissez-faire market on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged was not a game. The need to rebuild the country after the great wars and to build homes for heroes was not a game. Looking back on my time in development control with ten years more experience myself I think that my former colleague was expressing a world-weary, cynical view that when you strip back the noble traditions of the profession and look narrowly at the ability of one person to get anything done, you have to play ‘the game’. I was on the panel at a ‘Movers & Shakers’ breakfast seminar recently (check me out) and was asked what I would like to see in the Autumn Statement and much-trailed Housing White Pap