‘Time changes everything,' Thomas Hardy wrote ‘except something within us which is always surprised by change.' An extension of this insight might be that we retain the capacity to be shocked even by things that no longer surprise us.

This may explain my feelings when I came home from a summer break – in which I thought very little about local government policy – to read reports of new findings from the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities (Sigoma) indicating up to 26 councils may have to issue section 114 notices over the next two years.