English Yokel

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.