‘All local government should be abolished’

MikeF

I could hardly agree more. I had to attend a planning committee meeting for my local council - Lewisham - a couple of years ago and was appalled at the standard of debate. The chairman used his casting vote in favour of a project that flagrantly violated the council's own planning guidelines purely to justify a platitude he had uttered about 'the nature of capitalism'. An irony that struck me a while ago is that many leftwing councils, for whose members the term 'Victorian' is a cause of self-regarding horror, are all too often housed in imposing Victorian, though sometimes Edwardian, town halls whose grandeur obvious feeds the self-importance of their occupants. The idiocies of the old GLC in County Hall or modern day Hackney come to mind. Perhaps if councillors and their officials were rehoused in a sink estate, with their residents moved to the town hall, they might behave differently.

Merda taurorum animas conturbit

But then, Rod, if Dudley Council had granted planning permission to the mosque you would by now be filling your column with accusations of "political correctness gone mad" with councillors having "ignored a 22,000 name petition by local residents opposed to its construction" and "torn up their own Unitary Development Plan in order not to offend Muslims".

So 'racist local councillors' or 'politically-correct local councillors'. Take your pick, Rod, but either way commentators like yourself will still find some avenue have a pop at them.

Hereford

I love going to my local cinema for the films, but what amuses me the most is an advert, for cinema advertising which has an endorsement on it which reads. "We have gained great benefit from cinema advertising." it is signed Jane Smith, Litter Strategy Coordination Officer, Lewisham Council (I have changed the name and the council)

What makes me giggle is the question of what are they advertising, to who and for what advantage to the Council Tax Payer. What makes my diet coke spurt down my nose is the job title. I bet it makes her feel incredibly important.

FrankB

Having served twenty-five years in the Armed Forces and now working in Local Government I sympathise with Rod’s article and feel able to make a judgement between the two. In my experience the staff that deal directly with the public are generally hard working, diligent and have a genuine desire to help. The problems stem from three areas. In the first instance waste is created by having departments that are not directly involved with the provision of services, for example diversity officers and staff producing unnecessary statistics. Secondly the standards of higher level managers are often poor with no real grasp of leadership. They have been promoted or recruited on the basis of technical ability and do not always inspire those who work for them. Whilst many are able to communicate using “management-speak” they seem at a loss to achieve anything real, and have little or no breadth of vision. The third factor is the councillors who are often have a desire to do good, but do not have the experience or background to run what are essentially multi-million pound companies. Some also become more concerned with their own importance

Ed Hummer

Rod, do you think that when they come for you, you'll be able to weigh your support for the Dudley mosque in the balance? I doubt it.

Andrew Forbes

Certainly they are being given more power to rule us, rather than serve us. This has encouraged the mindset that they are our superiors for whom things like dustbins, potholes and the services for which we pay council tax are something of an irritant.

Hey, if the pot holes get any deeper, we can fill them with domestic waste. 2 problems solved.

The bins are a case in point; not so long ago, people would ring and complain that the bin men are careless and dropping rubbish about the place. Now, with recycling inspectors and fines, we're just grateful they took the bins away this week.

So, yes, abolish them; replace with simple service provision; bins, roads, lights, schools, etc. Nothing else.

Herbert Thornton

Not all elected local government people and not all employees of local government can be as useless as Ron's article suggests, but my own two-year experience (some 50 years ago) of working in local government was so depressing that I left and found work that was more congenial.

Council committee meetings were especially disheartening. One day, I was attending a meeting of what I think was called the Public Works Committee. One item on the agenda was whether to construct a new reservoir at a cost of several million pounds. Another was whether to construct a bus shelter, to cost something like a hundred pounds, at a bus stop.

By now I had become rather cynical, so out of curiosity I timed the committee's discussion of these items.

The cost of the reservoir was so far beyond the personal experiences of the committee members, and so overawed them, that no-one dared say much about it. The discussion on it, such as it was, lasted three minutes and the expenditure was unanimously approved.

The building of the new bus shelter on the other hand reflected the scale of their own lives and experience. They approved it, but only after debating every aspect of it that they could think of, for nearly an hour.

At another meeting discussing the amounts Insurers paid out to people who became disabled, one of the younger left-wing councillors declared that the Insurance Companies should be compelled to pay out far more. It was a pleasure to hear an old Labour Alderman, one of the breed who in those days had common sense - interrupt loudly - "Don't be daft lad. They can't pay out more than they take in. If they that they'll soon be in the soup!"

It used to be widely believed that service as Councillor in local government was an ideal first step on the ladder towards becoming an M.P. and eventually, possible even a Minister. I wonder how far this accounts for the appalling incompetence and irresponsibility that now exists in Parliament and central government?

robert

Might one know why we have had no references to Rod's 'chav furniture' this week?

Ray

Sadly, my own experience of local government confirms Herbert Thornton's analysis.
Too many councillors (usually, but not always, of the political left) will spend an inordinate amount of time and energy delving into trivia whilst completely overlooking the big picture.
Like Herbert, I too have witnessed a well-meaning, if rather dim Labour councillor getting hot under the collar about the fact that three new bus shelters outside a railway station were not being cleaned and repaired often enough. Never once did he think to ask the obvious question: why has the local authority just installed three expensive new bus shelters at a railway station that has only ever been serviced by two bus routes?

richard conquest

It was Thatcher's great failure, not to do to the town halls what Thomas Cromwell did to the monasteries. We are all servants of an increasingly dictatorial public sector now. Who will liberate us ?

Nicholas Storey

You might have junk furniture, Liddle, but you are a thorough Chap whom Boris would be proud to see on board the Spectator Battle Cruiser. However, I wish that you had mentioned something about the state of rubble to which St Austell has been reduced by the Lib Dem dominated Restormel Borough Council and its hangers-on. Would you like some photographs?

AndrewM

Rod needs to spend a little time in the New England, USA. Here, many towns are run by decisions made at the local town meeting. Yes, that's right, every couple of months the local citizenry get together in the school gymnasium and discuss issues, and then they get a vote. Wow, real democracy. Items on the agenda include local schooling, emergency services, waste transfer, transport, parks and recreation, and the raising of taxes. The ability to raise and spend taxes gives the local government true independence from the state and federal government. Citizens, get to see up close how their money is being spent, and how decisions affect there daily lives. If they don't like something, they vote it down. It is an empowering experience.
Yes, it is true that some irritable decisions continue to be made for the apparent benefit of the "community", however, these do not include the spending of billions of dollars fighting needless wars, nor the mass killing of people from other communities. The Selectmen who run the show are all volunteers, rather than Grand Pooh-Bahs relishing the spending of a lot of pork. Selectmen who get ideas of their own grandeur are invariably removed from office at the next election. And yes their successors get the point...local citizens have the power to make change.
So Rod, rather than remove local government, embrace a system that is tried and tested, and apparently benign. And one more thing, truly democratic. Perhaps the New World does have something to teach the Old after all.

chris barclay

I don't dispute the incompetence of much local government or the lack of ability of many local councillors. However does Rod Liddle want to replace local Government with bureaucrats applying the dictat of national government (the likes of Brown, Kelly and Smith) regardless of loal conditions? If in any doubt, look at what happens in socialist countries.

The problem of local government is its lack of accountability. Elections are fragmented; only a minority of councillors are elected at any one time. Each councillor stands on his/her own manifesto, instead of one common to all councillors of the party. What is needed is for all councillors to be elected together in a four year cycle, which hopefully does not coincide with a general election. Voters can then focus on what the parties offer for their local area. If electors in one borough vote in a loony leftie council or let such a council be elected, then let them suffer the consequences, instead of expecting the national government to bale them out.

Mention has been made of the magnificence of many town halls built in the Victorian era. This is not by chance. The Victorian era was a time when many local governments did great things for local people. It was a time when mayors and councillors felt great pride, justifiable pride, in holding their offices.

In London and perhaps other big cities, there is the complication of the division of power and responsibility between city and borough governments. However that serious issue should not detract from the conclusion that the problem of local government is not an excess of power, but a deficit of responsibility.

Michael Schwartz

The examples quoted seem to be from the District Council tier of local government. This tells me more about this level than anything else in local government. Time for one tier of local government only?
In addition, what about local education authorities? Will everything come from central government - and be in the hands of the party which has given us bog standard comprehensives and disgraceful results?

Max Butler

I wonder where the funding for the Dudley mosque really came from - Saudi Arabia possibly?
No mosque-building should allowed in this country until it is possible to build churches, synagogues and temples in that country.

logdon

Rod Liddle coasts along very nicely until he get's on to the subject of the Dudley mosque. The council quite happily sold the land so it's obvious in nice dhimmi fashion that they were initially accepting of the proposition. And the money! But in mice and men fashion many locals have objected on grounds of the way in which the area would be inundated with little provision for parking. However I just left Fraser Nelson's article and thought about the dots. How many Pakistani posters telling us to get out of their country? We are there for the simple reason that Taliban supported Al Qaeda killed 3000 people on 9/11 plus the preceding horrors of Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, then subsequently Madrid, Bali and London. And we debate the massive Saudi funded wahabbi mosque expansion going on in Britain? Is tolerance a one way street? If Nelson's predictions are right we will soon be in a low level war in the region, then what? Will all those mosque goers side with the country which gave them succour and a path to better life or will they cling on to the traditions of a country we are to all intent and purpose at war with? Maybe we should send a Hazel Blears task force to sort it all out and give them another 70 million?

logdon

Here's more on the mosque......

Mosque inquiry will cost taxpayers £100k
Taxpayers will pick up a £100,000 bill for the planning inquiry which resurrected plans for a Black Country mosque, it has been revealed.

The cost of the four-day hearing will be met by Dudley Council after the Government’s planning inspectorate overturned its decision to reject the £18 million proposal.

The authority was forced to hire security staff to police the summit at the inspector’s request - but will not receive a penny from Whitehall to cover costs.

The decision to allow the appeal for the project in Hall Street, Dudley, was this week announced after the public inquiry in June.

Dudley Council boss David Caunt described the decision as a “sad day” for local democracy saying it ignored the 22,000 people who signed a petition in opposition.
And Councillor Caunt said that the £100,000 bill rubbed salt in the wound.

“I’m very frustrated that a one man government-appointed judge and jury can turn up, listen to the arguments for four days and drive around the borough before coming to the conclusion that he knows better than the locals. The councillor added: “And then we have to pick up the bill for it.

“The security was requested by the inspector himself, but we have to pay,” he went on to say.

The council chief warned the price of the inquiry could even run over the authority’s initial £100,000 estimate because of the tight security measures.

Work on the mosque, featuring a 65-feet minaret, could start before Christmas. However the plans could yet be scuppered by a land-swap deal which states that the building must be “substantially” built by the end of the year.

Dudley Muslim Association now has outline planning permission for the scheme, but still needs to submit a detailed application which the council has up to 13 weeks to determine.

When the site was transferred to the association in 2003 there was a legal agreement that if the project was not “substantially” completed by the end of this year the land would be returned to the council. Muslim leaders have called for an extension to the deadline.

Mushtaq Hussain, secretary of Dudley Muslim Association, said: “We always maintained the condition was subject to us getting planning permission and having a reasonable and realistic time to get the project completed.”

Richard Middleton

This has nothing to do with the issue at hand; it has to do with Mr Liddle. I listened to him on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions this evening (25/7)and no matter his opinions, he was just rude. Extremely rude to a fellow panelist, who didn't deserve it. Liddle came across as a boorish yob, who does a diservice to The Spectator.

NeilS

I'd love to see single-tier government - local councils abolished, devolution reversed, withdrawal from the EU and authority vested in a single UK Government. Unfortunately I can't see that happening.

How about something practical? Send all the diversity officers, litter strategy chairs, smoking enforcement officers et al home on full pay. Let them keep their salary until they find another job. Yes, we will be paying them for doing nothing. But paying them for doing nothing is cheaper than paying them to do the negative work they do now. Stop them doing any more damage to the economy and we'd still be better off!

Nick

Thank God! At last someone is taking the mickey out of the meaningless "commyoooonity" word!
Next up, "appropriate"...

Ann

Why does Liddle write so much nonsense all the time? He is one of those silly hacks who made me give up the ST, which is full of self-important and ignorant scribbles too numerous too list (Clarkson, Knight, Jenkins, ....), antisemitic book reviewers etc etc.

My local council is just fine, although of course it has some idiots, too (not as many as in the ST, though). I do not want to have ALL local services run by Whitehall, thanks so much.

Yes, that particular person is a cretin. So? Someone complained, and obviously he was overriden. Seems to me like good governance. But &*%$ like Liddle will never see it that way. Or he couldn't think of anything useful to say (which would hardly be the first time).

Dane Clouston

Quite agree about Rod Quixote Liddle behaving boorishly and rudely to a fellow panellist on Radio 4.

And what a ridiculous idea to get rid of local government because of a few examples of incompetence!

What's he trying to prove?

Ann

"these do not include the spending of billions of dollars fighting needless wars"

Oh great, yet another poster riding this silly hobbyhorse, smugly secure in his delusional certainty that his little New England community is insulated from the big wide world, especially from Jihad.

Stephen Deaves

I agree. I live in the benighted borough of Lewisham. All the wheezes and they come up with to waste our money would make a strong man cry. On of them is Controlled Parking Zones aka CPZ. They are busilly installing these all over the place creating a parking problem that never existed. Don't get me started on road humps! No I will. They call them cusions! My partner came back from abroad with a couple of broken ribs. No matter how slowly I drove over the damn things he screamed in agony every time. I was on a bus. An old man fell towards me I caught him before he hit the ground. He thanked me and said last year on a bus going over a similar hump or cushion(!) he fell and broke three ribs. I complained to the Council (yes I shoud have saved my breath for cooling my porridge but hey ho) and was told that they are a good thing. Save lives etc and are popular(with the contractors who build them I assume). Yes abolish local government. It is a waste of time and money.

J Pesach

I like in Lewisham and used to work for Lewisham Council before joining the private sector. I've found the private sector to be riddled with more pointless meetings, bloated management (who are, I note, paid far more than top Council employees) and meaningless jargon. As for customer service, at least local Councils are accountable to the electorate not like BT or British Gas.

Rent-a-gob Rod Liddle's article is appalling tosh (as usual), he attacks local government based on a single anecdote without providing an alternative to our current system. What his long piece says is, "sometimes Council officials make mistakes". So what? Does the Spectator make mistakes sometimes? Does the private sector? Yes.

Ian

I wholeheartedly agree, but what are you proposing in place of local councils? I heard Oliver Letwin on the radio last weekend enthusiastically advocating greater decision making at a local level, adding that he had "faith" that communities would use the powers conferred on them to make the right decisions. He is going to be disappointed, I fear. The only thing likely to make even worse decisions than a local council is an even smaller unit of local government with even less real power to play with.

John Bradford

Of course that's right. Local authorities were fine in the Victorian era, when people and news travelled at the speed of a horse, but it's not appropriate for today. A reorganised House of Lords should take over the role on a national basis. Please go to http://sixthreformact.blogspot.com/

Nicholas Storey

I have just noticed the happiest of coincidences in this thread: 'Merda taurorum' is right next to 'Hereford'

Peter Tapsell

Love this article. So true. Reminds me of the sort of satire that George Fripley writes.

EdH

It's a shocking gravy train. Just have a look at the Guardian jobs pages and the meaningless job titles... And the salaries they command. Not to mention the final salary pensions and the stressing of work-life balance that translates as astronomical holiday allowances. I'm afraid our local government offices are stuffed with lazy, overpaid buffoons.