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is hidden down a tree-lined cul-de-sac in the centre of Cambridge.

Most people probably don't know it's there or what it does - and they probably never will now, as it's just become the latest victim of the cuts.

Communities Secretary has decided "in principle" to close it and all the other regional offices "subject to the satisfactory resolution of consequential issues through the Spending Review" ... whatever that means.

Closing the region offices will save Mr Pickles £119m a year.

It'll mean the loss of 1,700 civil servants jobs nationwide, 160 of them at Eastbrook in Cambridge.

The regional office co-ordinates and publicises the work of government departments in the Eastern region. Highways works, grants to local government, EU funding for deprived areas... it all goes through the Cambridge office. Supporters say it's vital work.

Mr Pickles calls it an "unnecessary tier of administration" which he believes to be inefficient, ineffective and unpopular.

"The Government Offices are not voices of the region in Whitehall. They have become agents of Whitehall to intervene and interfere in localities, and are a fundamental part of the 'command and control' apparatus of England's over-centralised state," he maintains.

No-one is surprised by this news. Both the Conservatives and Lib Dems have expressed their doubts about regional offices (set up in 1994 by - er - the Conservatives).

But those working at Eastbrook to whom we've spoken describe the mood as sad and angry that there's been no proper consultation.

"This will not only result in the loss of 160 jobs in this region but also the loss of all the expertise and the link-up between local authorities and central Government. It will result in local authorities having to recreate this themselves" says Richard Edwards, of the .

But the government believes the region's local authorities are more than capable of lobbying for money and overseeing its spending for themselves.

said that he "deeply regretted" the loss of these jobs and felt for the families that will be hit by this decision.

But he added " We are facing tough government decisions to bring down the
national debt and this office was another example of government bureaucracy. I am confident that by streamlining in this way we can make government more efficient and cost-effective."

The full details of when the office will close will emerge later in the year. But this is the largest single number of job losses in our region due to the coalition's cuts - so far.

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If you live in rural Norfolk and you're reading this - congratulations!

It can be quite an achievement getting on the internet - even more so getting a decent enough speed to do anything once you're connected.

And the man responsible for overseeing the service understands.

"Our objective is to make sure that every household in the UK gets broadband by the end of this parliament.

"There are still 160,000 households who can't get it and a number of those are in Norfolk. What I want to do is work with the MPs and county councillors to find the best way of doing this."

People in urban areas may scoff but the lack of decent broadband is becoming a big issue in rural Norfolk.

Here is just one example: The company Liftshare.com is based in the centre of Attleborough, just a few hundred yards away from the telephone exchange and it gets a good connection speed.

It wants to expand and has planning permission for a larger premises on the outskirts of town.

But the company can't move the mile-and-a-half down the road because on the outskirts of town the broadband speed is too slow.

Ali Clabburn of Liftshare says: "It is essential in business for everyone to have a level playing field, but at the moment in Norfolk unless you happen to be lucky enough to live in the centre of town you just don't have access to high enough broadband speeds."

Norfolk's MPs (seven Conservative, two Lib Dem) have made improving the region's infrastructure their main priority. Last week they were lobbying Danny Alexander at the Treasury. This week it's Jeremy Hunt.

"Norfolk is world class," says Mid Norfolk MP George Freeman, "but with poor broadband, a poor A11 and poor rail links we will never reach our full potential."

The Government has said that despite the spending squeeze, infrastructure projects which boost the economy will still be funded. This is why the Norfolk MPs are working so hard.

There will also be three pilot projects in rural parts of Britain aimed at improving broadband; they're hoping for a slice of that too.

So far there has been little evidence that the coalition Government is prepared to invest in the East with most of its spending going to the North and Midlands where ministers claim it's more needed.

The question is whether the Norfolk MPs will really be able to make a difference?

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She's a woman with a mission.

Andrea Leadsom, the newly elected Conservative member for the newly created seat of South Northamptonshire, is an MP with an agenda - and it's all about bonding.

Not the cosying up kind, so prevalent in parliament but the most fundamental link of all: between parent and child.

She's a former chariman and trustee of the

The charity aims to target families in need of help. Families where mothers and fathers can't identify with their offspring and run the risk of failiing in their care.

"Early intervention is very effective," she tells me. "Do you know that 40% of under 5's have family bonding issues?"

No I didn't and frankly, I'm horrified.

The charity aims not simply to prevent terrible cases like Baby P but to ensure that the next generation is raised with affection and develops sociably, helping keep them from a downward spiral in the long term.

Isn't there a name for that? Oh yeah... love. Teaching them to love their children. Well I never.

"Saves money in the long run. We'll all end up paying if they turn to crime."

I suppose we will.

This certainly chimes in with David Cameron's ideas on the Big Society and yes, she is a fan.

She's also a fan of George Osborne and her position on the Treasury Select Committee, after 25 years in banking - stay calm, she was a hedge fund manager among other things - will afford her plenty of opportunities to indulge that particular interest.

But Mrs Leadsom does not support the Alternative Vote system, which we are due to have a referendum on next May.

"I'm in the 'No' camp because I think you should be able to hold a party's feet to the fire over delivering their manifesto promises.

"AV produces more coalitions and if you don't deliver, then you can blame it on our coalition partner; no-one will actually have to put a policy into practice."

What she would like to see put into practice is a national roll out of these children's charity centres.

If those figures stack up, there appears to be a significant need for her to achieve that goal.

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The weather was kind but the outlook for the Latitude Festival and all our arts could be decidedly frosty in future.

If the expected 30% cuts to the arts budget go ahead, many a small company will surely face ruin and our flagship touring companies will find delivering that increasingly onerous.

So this weekend might mark the end of the ballet, opera and Shakespeare companies appearing at in Suffolk.

"I think an increase in lottery funding will match the loss of government subsidy," claims Therese Coffey, the new Suffolk Coastal MP (Con), on her first visit to the festival.

Its organiser, Melvin Benn, who also backs Leeds, Reading and part of Glastonbury Festivals, doesn't think the idea of philanthropy will work here in the way it funds the arts in America.

"People like me are taxed so much more heavily - there's corporation tax and personal tax, and they keep on going up and up," he says.

"I do think we need to think about the kind of tax concessions that are the foundation for giving in America," Therese Coffey concedes.

She is a newly-appointed member of the Culture Select Committee and will be following all matters arty in future.

Mr Benn, meanwhile, was happy with the blue skies overhead for now and not worrying too much yet, about storm clouds in the future.

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Sumer Is Icumen In (some of us had to study Old English in the time before sanity) and with it, what now appears to be that annual set piece - the Prime Minister's drinks party.

Us regional journalists are assembled in a rather stuffy upstairs room in Downing Street.

It should have been the garden but the weather was a bit iffy.

What is it like to be there?

Less tardis like than you'd imagine. An ante-chamber, where you simply abandon your handbag in a pile on the floor - no one's going to lay a finger on it here.

Then a corridor, narrow, leading to another ante-chamber - it's all buttermilk and classic paintings, through to the staircase.

It's the famous staircase. The one with the pictures of all the Prime Ministers. Atlee, Macmillan and a big portrait of Campbell-Bannerman on the half landing - who actually died in Downing Street in 1908.

Eventually, after mini sausauge and mash, various ministers plus Nick Clegg and David Cameron, join the throng.

The Prime Minister looks well, tanned and fit, and he moves around the room, eyes flickering to the next encounter.

When it comes to our turn, Mr Cameron extols the virtues of Milton Keynes.
"Milton Keynes always strikes me as a place of growth with nice green spaces. I'm always there," he says.

And indeed he has visited at least twice, that I can recall.

"I'm in the east tomorrow too. Bedford then Easyjet in Luton."

I would like to ask him how the recent decision to include the east in the Greater London Area and deny it the that firms in other regions will benefit from, will go down in places like Luton with high unemployment rates of its own.

But his gaze has moved and he's gone.

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Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat's political advisor to Nick Clegg, is a busy man.

Entering his office in the House of Commons he's trying to send a text message to Nick Clegg.

For the last hour he's been interviewed by the , which is making a film for the civil service about how the coalition Government works.

Before that, he was lurking behind the Speaker's chair watching the reaction of his MPs during .

He's returned to the office to find the agenda for a Cabinet away day at and is wondering if he needs to go... and in 40 minutes he's due in Downing Street for a meeting with Ed Llewelyn, David Cameron's right-hand man.

One afternoon in the life of someone who's at the heart of Government.

The MP for North Norfolk says being political advisor to Nick Clegg and one of the back office lynchpins of the coalition Government is a surreal experience. He says he often has to pinch himself.

"It's been quite extraordinary. We are all in completely new territory. We're conditioned to being on the outside looking in. Suddenly you find yourself in Downing Street attending meetings and with a room in the cabinet office."

His job is to work behind the scenes holding meetings with his Conservative partners to spot problems and resolve them before they become a big deal.

He believes the coalition government has made an "assured start" despite a handful of Lib Dem MPs (including Colchester's Bob Russell) voting against the VAT increase. He accepts that there will be differences between the partners from time to time but appears unconcerned.

"There is no inconsistency between having strong principles and different philosophies coming together to deliver a programme for the national interest."

The trick he says is to keep talking to people and to make everyone in the party feel part of the Government.

"I always take the view that problems aren't insurmountable, the quicker an issue is dealt with stops it building up a head of steam"

He warns though that a lot of challenges lie ahead "and there'll be an awful lot more as the cuts begin to bite".

So will he be making his MPs vote for policies they don't agree with?

"We must remember that we are acting in the national interest by providing stable government and we have to act in accordance to make sure it works."

Is that the faint whiff of a whip in its tone?

Of course, he is now a whip. From Whig to whip in a few short weeks.

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Now we know that Suffolk, too, is in chaos after the government's cuts to the school building programme.

Bedford is the other county that operates the three-tier middle school system. Bedford's already said it would have to scrap its plans for reform.

• Both counties had wanted to get rid of three-tier.
• Both counties needed the building schools for the future money to do it.
• Both are now up the proverbial without the proverbial.

Suffolk will have an odd mix of some areas with and some without, depending where you are.

One wonders if the Department for Education had foreseen these consequences.

Whatever you think about two- or three-tier education, the middle of a transition would not be the time you'd choose to have the plug pulled.

Councillor Sandy Martin, the leader of the Labour group on Suffolk County Council, told us: "We had a situation when half the county was already two tier and half the county was three tier.

"The county council made the decision to go all two tier and now the first phase of the schools organisation review is going ahead, but the second phase, involving Bury St Edmunds and the west of the county, is being put on ice.

"The only real justification for the whole organisational review was to make the whole system consistent and that's now not going to happen.

"There's no consistency whatsoever. We're going to get children taught on split sites, some in middle schools and some in secondary schools. They'll be taught in old buildings, out-of-date buildings, that now won't be replaced and then there'll be some children going to three-tier education in the west."

And talking of unforeseen consequences we hear that Michael Gove, he of the wholesale apology, may face more than criticism but legal action over cancelled contracts.

There's a pattern emerging here.

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Nick Clegg has told us that the Alternative Vote is an opportunity for reform.

Bernard Jenkin, Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex, doesn't agree.

"I've been asked by the 1922 Executive Committee to keep a watching brief on AV and help form a viable and sustained cross party "No" campaign," he tells me.

So you don't like it then?

"First past the post is a tried and tested system. The most popular in the world. By comparison only three other countries use AV - Australia, Fiji and Papa New Guinea ...

"AV is simply a staging post for the Lib Dems who really want Proportional Representation.

"AV is unaccceptable. It might actually decrease not increase proportionality and it can lead to quirky results."

Listen to: Radio 4's The Now Show on alternative voting

More quirky than the fact that in May it took 33,000 votes to elect a Labour MP, 35,000 for a Conservative and a whopping 120,000 votes to get a Lib Dem to Parliament?

"The Lib Dems want it because it will give them more seats but it's a leap in the dark. How it will actually work, we can only speculate. It can create uncertainty and we don't like weak government.

"This is not the system for fair votes. It is not PR. It does not address the issue over safe seats and it does not create fair representation.

That's a no then...

Mr Jenkin is, however, at pains to emphasise that he thinks Conservative MPs should vote for having the AV referendum, since that is the basis of their agreement with the Lib Dems.

Nick Clegg once called AV "a miserable little reform" but achieving this goal is now, for some Lib Dems, the only reason to be in the coalition.

They must be hoping the voting public will see it their same way.

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When Europe was casting around for someone to become its first president it was David Miliband who said the successful candidate should be someone "who stops the traffic in the street".

Mr Miliband appears to be someone who does just that.

As a interview with Look East comes to an end, a car driver screeches to a halt, the driver wrenches down his window and holding up his mobile yells: " 'ere David can I have your photo?".

Mr Miliband duly obliges and as other cars start to queue, the former Foreign Secretary engages the driver in conversation.

He discovers the driver's an estate agent, which prompts from Mr Miliband the comment: "Estate agents are more popular than politicians these days."

When he made his "stopping the traffic" comment, David Miliband was referring to his mentor Tony Blair who was being widely tipped as the first president of Europe.

At the same time Mr Miliband was being touted for the post of European Foreign Minister. He ruled himself out of that job saying he wanted to instead devote his energies to the Labour Party.

So here he is, in Corby, on the latest leg of his leadership campaign tour.

For an hour inside a traditional working men's club he tells supporters that Labour needs to accept that it lost the last election badly and it needs to build a new relationship with the public.

"I think Labour lost badly because too many people on moderately low incomes thought that we were no longer on their side," he says afterwards.

"People also thought that we didn't have a clear enough plan for the future.

"We've got a big hill to climb, we've got to become an alternative government again, we need to build ourselves as a party that's in touch with people around the country again, including in seats, like here in Corby, where we lost a fantastic MP."

But how does someone who was so associated with the last administration - which did lose so badly - set himself up as a future leader?

"It's important to show people we have the capacity to learn. I believe I've got the ability to get the party to unite and become a real movement for change in people's lives.

"I think we should be proud of the things that went well like the minimum wage and the health service but we should also be more humble about the things that went wrong, like the 10p tax rate," referring to the fiasco over the decision by Gordon Brown when Chancellor to abolish the 10p rate of tax.

"I think people want a party that stands up for middle and low income Britain, they want a party that stands up for the creation of wealth as well as fair redistribution, they also want a party that listens."

One thing that hasn't yet changed is the way Labour stage manages these events.

Mr Milband was dropped off by Special Branch a short distance from the hall so that he could be filmed walking along the street.

Outside the hall a group of photogenic politics students just happened to be hanging around and Mr Miliband chatted casually while the cameras rolled.

He was not addressing a public meeting but a carefully screened group of people. Most of them were Labour Party members from the surrounding area but there were also a few photgenic school childen in the room.

The press were allowed to stay for Mr Miliband's opening remarks but were then made to leave during the questions.

The one thing Labour hadn't planned was the estate agent screeching to a halt for his picture. And that probably said more about the appeal of David Miliband than anything else that happened during his short visit to Corby.

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Ever since being elected the MP for Colchester in 1997 Bob Russell has always been loyal to his party.

He styled himself the "Voice of Colchester", he regularly sang the praises of his beloved and he would queue all night to table the first Commons motion of the new parliamentary term.

Now his mood is not so affable. In fact, he's becoming Russell the Rebel.

He was the first government MP to vote against the budget and has now torn into the man responsible for MPs expenses.

Mr Russell told that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority was "the most inefficient organisation I have ever known in 40 years of public office."

The MP has not been happy with the new rules, which he says are costing him money and may mean he'll have to lose staff.

So when Sir Ian appeared before MPs, Bob gave him both barrels.

"You have created something when, quite frankly, a credit card system would have done it," complained Mr Russell.

"In two months you have destroyed the whole ethos of the public service I thought I'd been elected to undertake".

(For the record we should report that Sir Ian said his staff were hearing compliments from MPs who were satisfied with IPSA's work).

So what is happening with Mr Russell?

He is uncomfortable with being portrayed as a rebel. It was interesting to note that throughout Prime Minister's Questions he kept nodding at nearly everything Mr Cameron said.

But he is doing what he's always done - speaking out when he feels he has to.

Mr Russell has campaigned strongly on issues like child poverty for many years and has never taken his constituents or his large majority for granted.

As a Liberal Democrat on the opposition benches he would often speak his mind but he was then swimming with the Lib Dem tide.

The question is whose sands have shifted?

Mr Russell accepts the Conservative/Liberal coalition and he certainly has no plans to wreck it.

But he's said he will not compromise on those issues that are dear to him and he will speak out when he feels he has to.

The Lib Dem whips will probably allow him the freedom to say what he wants. For now.

But there are many who would like to see the coalition fail and will fall eagerly on any criticism, whatever the consequences.

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Should those who wear burkas be banned from doing so in public? A growing number of politicians across Europe seem to think so.

has just imposed a ban, France is expected to in the next few months and now the MP for Kettering wants Britain to do the same.

Philip Hollobone's Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill has just been presented to the House. MPs will debate it later in the year.

If it were to become law, it would prohibit anyone from covering their face in public: balaclavas would be out, so too, masks and Muslim womens' Islamic veils.

"It's part of the British way of life," explains Mr Hollobone.

"You smile at people you pass in the street, you wave and say hello. You can't do that if your face is covered. I think there is a traditional mistrust in this country of people covering their face. We don't like it, it's not part of the British way of life and it's time we put a stop to it".

Racial equality groups say his views are unhelpful and point out that in Kettering only a handful of women wear the Muslim veil but Mr Hollobone still believes this is an important issue.

"We're never going to have a fully integrated society; we'll never get along together if we can't see someone's face. One of the tragedies in this country at the moment is that there are lots of women who can't speak English and will never be able to speak English or get involved in society because we can't see their faces".

Does he think his views are inflammatory?

"I think it's inflammatory for people to cover their face in public".

A recent ComRes poll found that two thirds of Britons believe that wearing the burka should be illegal in places such as banks and airports. One in three of those questioned wanted an outright ban on face veils in public.

None of the Westminster parties support a ban although you may remember that the former Justice Secretary,, asked Muslim women to reveal their faces in his surgeries because he thought the veils got in the way of effective communication.

As a private members bill there's little chance of Mr Hollobone's plan becoming law.

But he wants to start a debate. If enough people agree with him the government may have to take notice.

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