So, the main changes are known with just the minor posts to be filled.  The first Brown Cabinet is now assembled.  What does it mean for us and our clients?
 
Well, mixed news, I suspect.  Some is good – Ed Balls running a new Ministry for Children, Schools and Families will undoubtedly give a boost to the war on child poverty.  And the fact that we get to retain Yvette at housing is great: a Minister who knows her brief and cares deeply about the need to boost affordable housing.  Other people who have been supportive of our agenda – the Milibands, John Denham, Peter Hain – have also done well.
 
The disappointment, however, is that the early indications that housing would have its own Cabinet Secretary have proved wrong.  Yes, Yvette can attend Cabinet, but only where necessary.  Housing is still packaged under Communities and Local Government, now under Hazel Blears.  How Hazel will take things forward isn’t yet clear – she has been very supportive of regeneration schemes in her constituency of Salford but equally has never previously signalled an interest in the issue of housing more broadly. 
 
So, we will see.  Overall, we are much further forward than we were under the last administration.  But if affordable housing is to be a “national priority” as Gordon Brown has pledged, it is essential that Yvette is able to speak with authority at Cabinet and that Hazel backs her.

Apocalyptic mud, deafening noise, people pushed to tiredness beyond endurance – it can only be Glastonbury, the Glyndeborne for the under-50s.  And Shelter is here en masse with our hardworking staff spending hours knee-deep in muck signing up people to add to our 100,000+ campaigners and to push the case for housing.
 
The reception is gratifying.  The Wall of Shame, erected outside the Leftfield stage, proves a hit, with passers-by queuing to fill it with supportive graffiti.  No-one needs prompting; no-one needs coaching.  Within hours, the wall is a visible demonstration of the public support for more housing.  It even tempts two policemen into demonstrating their support by waltzing with our workers.
 
And then the privilege of sharing a platform with Tony Benn, whose name alone filled the Leftfield tent with over 5,000 people.  I am old enough to remember when Tony Benn was a hate figure, and not just on the right, and there are some of his ideas which are - how can I put it? – not Shelter policy.  But through him, you feel genuinely connected in to a timeless line of dissent.  And that is one tradition we are proud to be part of.

Back from one of my regular trips to Scotland.  It is one of the oddities of Shelter that Scotland, which now has a  powerful Parliament , is managed as part of Shelter, whereas Wales, where devolution is less extensive, is independent (albeit linked in, not least financially).  The fact that in Northern Ireland, we partner not with Shelter NI but the Housing Rights Project only adds to the absurdity.
 
On the whole, the model of an integrated organisation covering North and South of the border works well.  But there are clearly areas of tension.  The changes in legal aid, for example, do not apply in Scotland and the measures we are having to take to respond have less resonance there, as my meetings with staff yesterday emphasised.  Housing is a devolved issue and the discussions I had with officials at the Scottish Executive at the start of the day about the target to end homelessness by 2012 are light years ahead of any similar meetings at CLG.
 
And of course the landscape is changing.  This was my first trip North since the SNP’s success in the elections.  For the first time, there is a real sense among those around the table that the two nations may now really be set on a path of separation.  No-one is saying that explicitly.  But the territory is changing.  We are already used to the idea that campaigns, policy, and services should be based on common principles but may differ in detail North and South.  If the nations continue to shift apart in the way they have, those differences in detail are going to increase and even the principles may increasingly be tested.

Fab speech from Ming Campbell in Birmingham committing the Lib Dems to building a million more affordable homes over the next decade.  Although the speech itself didn’t say so, his people tell us privately that “the lion’s share” of those would be social rented homes.  Not only does that outstrip anything that we have heard from the Government, but the fact that he used vast swathes of Shelter campaigning material to make his case makes us feel doubly good.
 
“So what?” I hear you cry.  “It’s only the Lib Dems.  Not much chance of them having to deliver on the promise”.  And you’d be right, of course.  But what the Opposition says nevertheless puts real pressure on Gordon Brown.  The response from Yvette was understandably defensive: Labour is not used to being outflanked on housing.
 
Nevertheless, we need to be cautious about this sort of promise.  Brown’s pledge a few weeks ago to “lift a million children out of bad housing” sounds at first blush like it is delivering against our Million Children Campaign target.  In practice, once you work through the figures, you realise that it is the outcome of the existing Decent Homes programme and current investment in new social renting.  Not the transformative step we have been seeking.
 
Let’s not be churlish here.  Things are moving in our direction and the sort of noises we have been hearing from Gordon Brown and now Ming Campbell are light years in advance of anything we have heard over the past decade.  But promises are cheap.  Action is expensive.

Crunch time for the Olympics.  As the IOC inspectors arrive for the first of their six-monthy visits to assess progress towards the 2012 target, there are signs that the hidden tension about what the Games will leave behind is in danger of escalating into open warfare.
 
The 2012 Games have always been marketed as a legacy Games.  But the exact nature of that legacy is what is in doubt.  It could be sporting, leaving an array of top facilities for top athletes.  Or it could be regeneration, transforming the East End for those who live there and creating housing and facilities aimed at the many, rather than the elite.
 
The combatants are clear.  On the one side, there are the sporting bodies, specifically the British Olympic Committee.  On the other, the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who is believed by the sporting establishment to be too committed to building a sustainable future for the local community and insufficiently interested in the sporting legacy.  Issues such as who will manage the stadium after the Games and what it will be used for remain unresolved.  Stories are being planted in the press, yesterday’s Guardian running the elite sporting case and the Times the grass-roots one.
 
One thing is clear.  We cannot afford a fight.  In five years time, the facilities must be in place.  Out sporting elite has waited sixty years for the Olympics to return to London.  The population of the East End has waited far, far longer for a serious attempt at transforming where they live.