Communities Secretary Hazel Blears' suggestion that to revive interest in politics and enable cabinet ministers to remain what she called 'grounded' and in touch with the real world, the cabinet should meet in local halls and community centres up and down the country is more than silly, it is quite frightening. It is frightening because it displays the complete abandonment of any accepted idea of the range and function of local government by this Labour regime.
We have town halls in every local government authority area, purpose built for local realities and local politics. We have a democratic electoral system to choose our local representatives. What has been removed from us, and from democratic local governance, is both political power and responsibility, and funding.
Give it back, give it all back. Disband the quangoes, the regional appointed administrations, the centralised meddling in local affairs that comes from London. We neither need nor want ministries to run our local schools, hospitals, housing, sport, parks and leisure facilities, etc. They are nothing to do with cabinet government.
Do your own jobs, make policy that is of national scope, deliver it, according to your Party manifesto, a good start would be a referendum you committed to on the Lisbon Treaty. Foreign policy is what cabinet does, and we have thousands of troops sitting at Basra airport taking missiles and not coming home, also a commitment by your liar of a Leader. Sort the disastrous tax structure out and recover the desperate mess made of pensions. There is a long list of national-level undertakings you are failing in.
Hazel Blears needs to ensure that power is devolved to its lowest level of competent use, and wielded by elected councillors. The rest of the cabinet needs to remember what they are for, which is not micro-managing our lives.
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"Disband the quangoes, the regional appointed administrations, the centralised meddling in local affairs that comes from London."
Amen to that Hats! One of the problems with the escalating costs of the Olympics is the elephantine level of pseud-political interference by incompetent report-writers.
Massive salaries and benefits are being squandered on faceless bureaucrats who have absolutely no intention of providing incisive service to deliver the project.
Unfortunately, Town Halls contain a large proportion of people with the same indifference, although I have to admit that just recently, that argument was turned on its head by one shining example of a council which is leading from the top, in a small town not a million miles from here...
Folkestone!
You know much more than most about this grotesque centralising of formerly locally administered powers, Scroblene. I suppose it's easier for these incompetents to to sit in the office interfering with local affairs than acting like grown up national politicians dealing with what should be their concerns. Housing should be run locally not by mad hips-toting London ministers. Or how about paying the same salaries to teachers in London as are paid to teachers in cheaper parts of the country, so that London and home counties' school children end up paying for unjustifiable higher living standards of provincial teachers with their education, as teachers abandon London schools. Local employment wages and conditions for all state employees should be set locally not nationally by inapproriate collusion between ministers and public service unions.
And even when they do tackle national concerns they are off first class to the ends of the earth with mobs of hangers-on. Look at Miliband running round America preaching to the uncaring and absent what our country thinks they should be doing, and lauding the United Nations and how it must be revivified.
Why doesn't he sort out the position of our armies here and there, kick the Ministry of Defence into its part, and tackle the failures of our representatives abroad to represent UK people in difficulties. (just for starters)
A lot of what is wrong is due to the suppression of local democracy and decision taking. Grrr.
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