Rotherham Council is no more; not as an independent, elected local Council serving local people in Rotherham according to democratic standards, aspirations and needs. Rotherham is the latest such Council, to be subjected to Erick Pickles DCLG "intervention". The other Council is London’s Tower Hamlets. There, the number of Commissioners is fewer and their remit less extensive than is shown to be the case on Rotherham. However, the interventions conform the dominant view in Society that local Councils are failing in very serious ways. So what should happen?
Rotherham Council is no more; not as an independent, elected local Council serving local people in Rotherham according to democratic standards, aspirations and needs. Rotherham is the latest such Council, to be subjected to Erick Pickles DCLG "intervention". The other Council is London’s Tower Hamlets. There, the number of Commissioners is fewer and their remit less extensive than is shown to be the case on Rotherham. However, the interventions conform the dominant view in Society that local Councils are failing in very serious ways. So what should happen?
Should more interventions occur?
Should there be fewer Councils, such as appears to be being encouraged by Osborne’s Manchester Area Super Council, with a ‘super mayor’ in the zone accompanied in propaganda of the past week by a £6 Bn starter package to boost the “engine”?
It is worth pointing out that the Labour Party and the Lib Dems have gone along with this move which means that “democracy” “as we have been known to have claimed to have known it”, is being faded out.
Or will these moves in fact bring life to democracy locally, zonally, regionally?
If the evidence of Doncaster is anything to go by, democracy is not being strengthened by the DCLP interventions.
What has been happening is that new layers of highly and additionally publicly paid bureaucrats are being deployed to hide the truth about the massive income and social disparity that has been taking place across England.
The myth boosted and propagated by Gideon Osborne and previous UK Treasury Ministers that “London is an Economic Powerhouse” is also environmentally and socially unfounded and is a lethal lie.
Again, the Labour Party in Parliament and in Office has been as much a party to the perpetuation of this “London s the Economic Power House” myth as the Conservatives.
Both Parties are led by the small number of City of London and London-based Big conglomerates.
London’s ordinary population has been being systematically disadvantaged, additionally deprived, cynically lied to as it is also being comprehensively disenfranchised out of all civic, democracy, social and ethical rights and is subjected to subliminal brainwashing and hoodwinking conducted under the camouflage of publicity propaganda tagged as the “Power House”.
The same will happen in Manchester and there is no sign that any democratic, ethical structure is being planned.
In fact, with a Super Mayor, the immediate adverse consequence will be to create a super dictatorship with corruption exceeding that seen in other parts.
The currently ongoing “trial”, sited in the High Court complex in the Royal Courts of Justice, into allegations of corruption and vote fraud against Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor Lustful Rahman cannot be commented on but the fact that such a situation ahs arisen is undoubtedly a confirmation that moving away from the conventional local democratic model is no way to serve democracy to the local people.
Rotherham may have more detailed lists of failures concerning children but other local councils have as many failures.
Tower Hamlets has been a rotten boro for far longer than Eric Pickles has been an MP.
Yet there has never before been so much in the public domain about Tower Hamlets until the model of local democratic representation was drastically replaced.
That had been done, locally, under the kind of fantasy promises that Osborne has been making about the Super Mayor for Manchester!
None of the Parties has come up with a single narrative for local democracy as in any way central to local service, local accountability, local harmony and local harmony.
Rotherham may be able to generate ‘positive’ headlines, as it has already done this morning (Friday 27 February 2015) when the BBC Breakfast programme featured the children’s’-services head woman as a new starter.
But as the victims in Rotherham know – and as those in Oxfordshire, Rochdale too know- nothing is being done to deal with let alone stop the abuses on these scales or on any scales.
All PR and no local, democratic accountability.
Does Pickles dig any of it?
Should more interventions occur?
Should there be fewer Councils, such as appears to be being encouraged by Osborne’s Manchester Area Super Council, with a ‘super mayor’ in the zone accompanied in propaganda of the past week by a £6 Bn starter package to boost the “engine”?
It is worth pointing out that the Labour Party and the Lib Dems have gone along with this move which means that “democracy” “as we have been known to have claimed to have known it”, is being faded out.
Or will these moves in fact bring life to democracy locally, zonally, regionally?
If the evidence of Doncaster is anything to go by, democracy is not being strengthened by the DCLP interventions.
What has been happening is that new layers of highly and additionally publicly paid bureaucrats are being deployed to hide the truth about the massive income and social disparity that has been taking place across England.
The myth boosted and propagated by Gideon Osborne and previous UK Treasury Ministers that “London is an Economic Powerhouse” is also environmentally and socially unfounded and is a lethal lie.
Again, the Labour Party in Parliament and in Office has been as much a party to the perpetuation of this “London s the Economic Power House” myth as the Conservatives.
Both Parties are led by the small number of City of London and London-based Big conglomerates.
London’s ordinary population has been being systematically disadvantaged, additionally deprived, cynically lied to as it is also being comprehensively disenfranchised out of all civic, democracy, social and ethical rights and is subjected to subliminal brainwashing and hoodwinking conducted under the camouflage of publicity propaganda tagged as the “Power House”.
The same will happen in Manchester and there is no sign that any democratic, ethical structure is being planned.
In fact, with a Super Mayor, the immediate adverse consequence will be to create a super dictatorship with corruption exceeding that seen in other parts.
The currently ongoing “trial”, sited in the High Court complex in the Royal Courts of Justice, into allegations of corruption and vote fraud against Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor Lustful Rahman cannot be commented on but the fact that such a situation ahs arisen is undoubtedly a confirmation that moving away from the conventional local democratic model is no way to serve democracy to the local people.
Rotherham may have more detailed lists of failures concerning children but other local councils have as many failures.
Tower Hamlets has been a rotten boro for far longer than Eric Pickles has been an MP.
Yet there has never before been so much in the public domain about Tower Hamlets until the model of local democratic representation was drastically replaced.
That had been done, locally, under the kind of fantasy promises that Osborne has been making about the Super Mayor for Manchester!
None of the Parties has come up with a single narrative for local democracy as in any way central to local service, local accountability, local harmony and local harmony.
Rotherham may be able to generate ‘positive’ headlines, as it has already done this morning (Friday 27 February 2015) when the BBC Breakfast programme featured the children’s’-services head woman as a new starter.
But as the victims in Rotherham know – and as those in Oxfordshire, Rochdale too know- nothing is being done to deal with let alone stop the abuses on these scales or on any scales.
All PR and no local, democratic accountability.
Does Pickles dig any of it?
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