Localism? – Shmocalism!

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I speak as a Parish Councillor, the lowest cog in the administrative wheel that is local government in England.

We receive many daft letters from our district council leaders and the latest on “Localism” is a classic of ineptitude and time wasting.
I recently spent several hours spread over many days, with another Parish council, trying to understand the “requirement” for Parish Councils (PCs) to formulate and write a “Neighbourhood Plan” (NP).
District Councils have to create a “Local Plan” covering the development (or not) aspirations for their local areas. One of our Parish councillors went to a “Training session” and found that each NP would cost in the region of £5,000 and was advised that not  to write one would be a grave error with possibly grave consequences.
Words fail me (well, clearly not, but almost!); here we are in debt up to our ears and sinking faster by the day, with a national water and energy supply crisis barely mentioned at all by government or the press and a group of District Councillors & Coalition politicians are blithering on about the Localism Bill.
If you can actually bother to read it (I did, and I wish I hadn’t) you discover that there are no definitions for the “idea” and certainly no money to enable ‘acts of localism’, but nevertheless a group of councillors has been called together to ‘specialise’ in the undefined pile of poo that is “Localism “and are prepared to field questions on a subject that, by their own admission, they don’t “fully understand”.

The Localism Bill is really a Centralism bill

Joe Anderson: “I’m not prepared to try and pretend the Big Society is going to deliver” The leader of Liverpool City Council has written to the prime minister withdrawing its involvement from his “big society” plans.
But here, dear reader, is the crunch; the epitome of stupidity, consigning Localism to the pyre of empty, sound bite driven, insincere  policies such as “Education, education, education”; “Joined up thinking on transport”; and to cap them all, “We are all in this together” etc.
  • If the ‘Neighbourhood plan differs from the ”Local plan’ – the LP wins.
  • If the LP differs from the Government Plan – the government wins.
So then, just what is the point – where is devolved power?
No-where – that’s where!
Well worth £5,000 of tax payers money!

Cameraman and fatty Pickles are lying stinkpots – but we knew that really didn’t we? Cameraman hasn’t even defined “Big Society” yet; we are still waiting Dave, well, those of us who have an attention span of more than 48 hours anyway. )

What a load of political poo. Makes me mad!
Happy Christmas & a good New Year 😉 to all my readers (Thanks Peter!)
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