Local Government report a waste of White Paper

The Communities and Local Government department's White Paper on local democracy, which was published this week is utterly lamentable. Entitled Communities in control: Real people, real power, it even comes in at the knock down price of £33.45. I'd love to know who if anyone actually buys these things (other than you and me, the poor schmucks who had to pay for it to be produced in the first place).

Before you reach for your chequebook to order a copy, don't. After a somewhat lacklustre foreword by the PM, Hazel Blears introduces the White Paper in uncharacteristically hand-of-history-on-my-shoulder tone. She rather grandly gives the proposals a place not just in the history of managerial blather, which it perhaps merits, but in a rather more eminent timeline, which apparently reads:

1647: Putney Debates, English Civil War
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1819: The "Peterloo Massacre"
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1838: Chartists rally at Kersal Moor
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1844: Foundation of the first Co-Operative
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1900-1920: Suffragette Movement
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1939-1945: World War Two
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2008: Hazel Blears publishes glorious 'Communities in Control' white paper

That would be overstating the case for the best of White Papers, but it's just incongruous for this shoddy example.

Local democracy is a really big issue, and has a host of serious problems that need solving, but do we hear any truly radical suggestions to put services under democratic control, throw open the doors of bureaucracy and introduce genuine transparency? Not a bit of it - they've dodged the question. To continue the historic theme, if they carry on behaving like this they'll have the Peasants Revolt 1381 on their hands.

Throughout the 157 pages they talk the talk in the opening sections of each chapter, for example describing their "simple aim: to pass power into the hands of local communities so as to generate vibrant local democracy in every part of the country and give real control over local decisions and services to a wider pool of active citizens." They even drag Aristotle into it, which could explain his less than chuffed expression (see right).

Having talked about the importance of giving people meaningful power, and the problem of the democratic deficit, they then propose very little to solve it.

Amongst their proposals are (my comments in italics):

- bribing people to vote in return for cakes.  Rather undermines Gordon's healthy eating speech.

- allowing council officers to be active in party politics. The last thing people need is even more bias and partisan wheeling and dealing in town halls. If anything we need to beef up laws on civil service impartiality.

- loosening the laws on partisan bias and propaganda in council publicity. Our research has shown that there's already more than enough propaganda paid for with council tax - people want council spin abolished, not freed up even further.

- More quangos to work with Muslim groups and young people. Yet more top-down, Whitehall derived, politically correct though-shalt-take-part preaching. People will vote if their vote actually means something and has genuine power over the things that affect their lives, like tax rates, policing, bin collections, crime and care, not because they receive yet more patronising glossy literature.

All in all, what a missed opportunity - and a waste of paper.

Comments

[Hardeep_Singh]

Did anyone really expect a proper response to people's needs? This and all the preceding knee jerk responses of the past are simply to buy tiume, distract and waffle. New Labour cannot govern they've never been able to perform the primary duty and now that other people's money is running out and government borrowing is on the limit they have no choice but to come out with this clap trap. Recall Hazel Blears light bulb moment when she felt that Gordon Brown could appear in an apprentice style political reality show, good grief. It's not so much the bad idea that we've come to expect of this regime but for their expectation that the public is this naive.

Even the rather politically unmotivated of the electorate is now paying attention because the waters are a little trouble to say the least and they can both hear and see the waterfall ahead. People are really not interested in "eating cake" but bread and food to feed their families in the coming years.

A sincere proposal for local democracy would effectively elliminate the socialist model that strangles our society today. It would effectively nullify most of our glorious leader's centralised control as most of the decisions will be taken at a local level. This would mean many issues simply wouldn't make it nor would they need to all the way up to whitehall.

This report is self serving, time wasting, a lost opportunity (again), patronising and expensive. This kind of incompetent silliness we can ill afford especially from British Parliamentarians.

[A Resident]

Should local people ,neighbours, have Power,
in a small village some get Power Crazy they can ruin others lives with their gossip and spying ordinary citizens are victimised if they dare to speak up threatened with legal action and ridiculed
all this since our local Parish council became 'empowered'