Titbits – Four Communications, Hackney Today and parties’ row over Cazenove

■ Four Communications, the public relations firm which lobbied for the controversial Stoke Newington Sainsbury’s scheme, has lost the contract to handle PR for Sainsbury’s. As late as last month Four Comms’ local arm was still boasting on its website that it “is retained by Sainsbury’s to handle PR for development projects across London” – despite the fact that it lost the contract months ago. The line was deleted after a call from the Hackney Citizen. Four Local is now headed up by Hackney councillor Karen Alcock.

■ Hackney Today made a loss of over £160,000 over three years, according to figures provided by the council in response to a Freedom of Information request. But now it has transpired council beancounters got these figures wrong. A council spokesperson said figures supplied were “unfortunately incorrect”, adding they had “overestimated expenditure…and did not account for all income received in 2012/13.” In fact Hackney Today lost less than £1,000 over three years.

■ Labour and the Lib Dems are at odds over many issues – one of which appears to be pronunciation. At last month’s full council meeting, whenever a Labour councillor pronounced the name of Cazenove ward, placing emphasis on the second letter (pronounced ‘ey’), Lib Dem councillor Abraham Jacobson shrieked back ‘Cazenove!’ (pronounced with a hard ‘a’). A hot local election topic perhaps?