One thought on “Devolution: between a rock and a hard place”

1. Well that is certainly fair and democratic.

   If you don’t have a mayor, you wont get your fair share of resources.

   Even if the majority of the locals don’t want a mayor, is it fair or democratic to be forced to have one or otherwise let the area starve economically from withheld funds.

   So much for localism.

   I seem to remember that back in 2009 a parliamentary politician (3 guesses who) said:

   “Since 1997, central government has given itself extra powers over transport, culture, sport, planning and house building, social housing and environmental management powers which used to be under local democratic control.

   So now, local authorities simply can’t do what people expect them to do.

   The central state, acting through its centralised government departments and agencies, doesn’t have the imagination and flexibility to tailor its services to people’s needs.

   If we had more local discretion if we allowed more decisions to be made at the local level and more money to be spent at the local level then we’d have better outcomes and more things that actually work.

   And if people were given more responsibility, guess what – they’d take it – and that rise in personal responsibility would help mend our broken society.”

   So why is that why they think the way to give local people greater freedom to choose their own future is to:

   a. force us to have a super-mayor and threaten us with unfair funding if we don’t – though at least a super-mayor is elected; and

   b. devolve a lot of power to un-elected LEPs whose private sector motives are even less altruistic than most Tory politicians.

   You couldn’t make up this sort of contradictory posturing and sound bites – only the Conservatives can be this good at being two faced.

   Oh – and who said those words? Only Dodgy Dave Cameron in the run up to the election which made him PM. Oh, what irony.

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