Sunday 30 September 2007
Local Government Re-organisation
You might remember from some time ago, that Two Jags Prescott was driving a steam roller through local government in order to implement Unitary Authorities. But he hadn't expected the local councils to fight back. They did. Strong evidence was given to the commission/quango he had charged with driving the agenda through, and after the consultation period was complete, they had to admit that the current arrangements weren't too bad in most areas of the country. So County Councils and District Councils lived on. You might be excused for thinking that the matter had been resolved.
NO CHANCE
You see, that was the wrong answer. One of this current crop of Government Ministers is reported to have let the cat out of the bag about consultation. Consultation is not about discovering and meeting the needs/wishes of the people, it is about explaining the imminent actions of the Government to the people.
HIDDEN AGENDA
There is of course a hidden agenda, and these days that means it is a European hidden agenda. One layer of local government must be removed in order to make room for the Regional Assemblies that we must have in place to meet another EU target. How can the EU be properly democratic if it doesn't have Regional Assemblies? (Yes, I heard that, me neither!) As part of successive government's commitments to the EEC/EC/EU it seems to me that there must have been some secret binding agreement that not only will we have these artificial "regions" of England foisted upon us, with their Government Offices of the Whatever Region, but that we must also have an Assembly with politicians in charge. The only way to fit these Regional Assemblies into England without there being an obvious excess of government (I feel a "more Chiefs than Indians" jibe coming on soon) is to take a layer of existing local government out first. If they keep the remaining authorities strapped for cash then they can be expected to get poor scores from the next set of government inspectors to turn them over. In short they can be judged to be failing authorities and to need the local government equivalent of the "special measures" that they give to failing schools. And do you know what? We just happen to have a solution. If we organise a Regional Assembly, it will be able to help you out of this terrible situation (that we drove you into in the first place). Funny that! Have you noticed whenever "Europe" fails that the answer is always "more Europe"? And the hidden agenda has most definitely not gone away.
I was prompted down this train of thought by a chance conversation at a meeting of my professional body recently. One of my colleagues talked about the financial pressures that his employer is under. They are a local council in a two tier area. But it would seem that the national government no longer allows for two tier local government. They are only allowing the expenditure that would have been appropriate had a unitary authority been in place instead. National government are saying to the affected councils that they had better join with the other councils in their area and set up what the Government are calling something like "co-operative working". It is then up to the councils locally to decide which council will provide which service on an agency basis for the whole group, and most importantly, the decisions about redundancy (who, when, how many, etc) will all be made locally. National Government will escape the blame! Now how good is that!
So the UK Government tried asking the people to have Unitary Authorities, and the people said "no". So they impose it underhand. With hindsight, I suppose that I should have known better than to expect anything different. Equally, I should not have been surprised about the lack of publicly available protest about what is going on. But I am. I am a fool. I am a human. I trust people who say they are on my side, and it is a great philosophical shift (almost too great) to believe that the Government are truly not on my side, and wish only for their own benefit. And that their wish for control of me will be backed up by the politicised police force provided with all sorts of hardware specifically provided for repression of the populace.
I fear that I will be writing more about these topics in the near future.
Not another blog?
Sadly, yes.
Not because I am an erudite writer, but because it seems to be the only way to get things across to our masters these days. When I first moved into this house, we had a hard working MP with a bit of common sense between his ears. In fact, quite a lot of common sense between his ears. Certainly from the comments I heard around and about, he represented the majority views of his constituents, and he was hard working about it.
Then he retired and we got an upcoming star. Quite how he was chosen by the party machine is not clear, but he "emerged" as the party's spokesman for the area, just as the retirement of the previous MP was announced. He seemed keen, hard working, just a bit closer to the other lot, but still recognisably of the same party. But over time he has moved a lot closer to the "other lot". Yes I have written to him, often using the good folks at WriteToThem.com. He sends back copies of his speeches, and explanations of why he won't support the points I make. Alas he is a career politician, and his constituents come second, a poor second.
So what else is there to do? It seems that shouting from the rooftops is the only option left!
