Just to let those of you in Colchester know, the next meeting of the Castle Neighbourhood Action Panel will be on Monday 27th September, starting at 1pm in the Town Hall.
Any residents can come along and raise issues that they want the NAP to deal with, or if you can’t make it to the meeting, then please leave a comment or email me with your problem and I’ll raise it for you. For more information see the Colchester Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership website.
The observant amongst you will have noticed that I’m not at Liberal Democrat Conference this year. I had originally intended to go, but then events (the Tour of Britain on Friday, the Free Festival yesterday and various meetings next week) got in the way and meant it wouldn’t really have been worth my while to go all the way up to Liverpool for just a day or two.
Or so I thought. When I heard I’d been nominated for a Blog of the Year award for co-creating the bizarre phenomenon that was #nickcleggsfault , I thought it was nice to be recognised but there was no way I’d win the award, and I assumed that was the general consensus from the lack of interest there was in volunteering to stand in for me at the awards. It was quite a big surprise, then, to turn my computer on this morning and discover that I’d won.
So, with thanks to Stephen Tall for standing in for me and providing a relevant excuse, here’s an approximation of what I might have said had I been there to accept the award last night:
First off, I’d like to thank Justin McKeating – while I used the phrase ‘Nick Clegg’s fault’, he was the person who put a hash in front of it while blaming Nick for stubbing his toe. However, I don’t think either of us expected it to become as explosively popular as it did.
I also feel somewhat guilty about winning this award as I did basically nothing compared to the hard work everyone else has done – I was one of the supporters of Bridget’s motion to get the Digital Economy Bill discussed at the last Conference, I’ve seen the amount of work candidates like Daisy and Tamora do even before they spend time doing digital campaigning on top of that and I’m still a member of Simon’s Vote Clegg, Get Clegg group and see how it’s continuing to generate interesting – and by the usual internet standards, fantastically polite – conversations months after the election. So, to get this award for typing 140 characters early one morning seems almost as absurd as some of the things Nick was being blamed for and so I’d also like to thank everyone out there who took part in #nickcleggsfault back in April and May – this is as much your award as it mine and Justin’s.
It’s still coming home with me and going on my mantelpiece, though.
Hearing about US Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell’s idiocy:
They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.
I was reminded of another reactionary blowhard’s pronouncements about genetic engineering from a few years ago:
I’m now wondering whether ‘sordid little griefhole’ works as a description of the Tea Party.
About a year ago, I wrote a post about how Councils were having to choose between two new structures for organising themselves, both of which required a huge concentration of power into the hands of one individual – either a ‘strong leader’ or an elected Mayor.
However, after the General Election and with the Labour Government being replaced with the Coalition, it looked like this would be something that would quickly fall by the wayside, especially with the statement in the Programme for Government which stated that while the twelve largest cities would have the opportunity to decide on whether they wanted elected mayors, for other Councils there was this:
We will give councils a general power of competence
…
We will allow councils to return to the committee system, should they wish to.
So, no need to carry on with the old process and a chance for Councils to determine for themselves what the best way of running their affairs would be. Sounds great, until someone realised that they hadn’t got rid of the old legislation requiring Councils to go through the changes, and so that would stay in place until the Localism Bill finally made its way through Parliament. Yes, we have to change systems in 2011, and then change them again in 2012, no doubt all in the name of efficiency.
But that’s not what I really want to write about today. As the local press have reported, we’re now in the process of deciding which of the two options we want (pdf file) – strong leader or elected mayor. While I still remain somewhat ambivalent about the choice being offered in themselves – it’s somewhat akin to being asked whether you want to be thrown out of a plane or out of a helicopter – I think that the elected Mayor option should be strongly opposed and rejected.
This isn’t because I’ve become a fervent supporter of the strong leader system, but because that option is the one that’s easiest to amend in the future when we have the power to do so. I’m opposed to systems where power is concentrated in individuals and I think the best Council structure would be one where power is dispersed back to committees, area panels and the like rather than concentrated upwards. It’s much easier to switch to something entirely new from the strong leader situation than it would be if we had an elected Mayor in place – you’re more likely to get a leader who’ll give up their powers than a Mayor who’ll happily abolish their entire existence.
Of course, that’s at the heart of my opposition to elected Mayors – this idea that concentrating all the power of the Council into one person is somehow a good thing and will solve all problems. (It’s also very similar to the arguments Mussolini and the Fascists used in the 1920s and have been used by anti-democrats ever since – democracy and consensus have failed, only a strongman leader can solve these problems) No matter what living in an elected dictatorship might have taught us, democracy isn’t just about voting every once in a while and then forgetting about it. It’s a system of checks and balances that should be there to prevent, not encourage, the exercise of arbitrary power by anyone. The way the Mayoral system is established in Britain doesn’t allow for this – the Council is reduced to little more than a rubber stamp (just look at how little power the GLA has to check the Mayor of London) and huge chunks of what the Council does can be determined solely by Mayoral fiat.
‘But that’s what we want!’ Some people say. ‘Let the Mayor smash through red tape, bureaucracy, political correctness, council jobsworths and whatever other nonsense the Daily Mail says is blighting the country!’ What they fail to realise they’re assuming in this is that they’ll get a Mayor who agrees with them. I know we all like to assume that the majority agree with us, no matter how silent they might be when asked, but just imagine what someone you fundamentally disagree with could do with that unchecked power over your Borough. Concentrating power into a single post might increase the reward for winning an election, but there’s always that matching risk someone you don’t like will get all that power – all it takes is one good election campaign, one last minute scandal as people go to vote, one slip up in an interview or at a hustings and suddenly someone you never wanted running your life has a huge say over it.
I’m not claiming that the alternatives are perfect political systems for local government, but they do have the advantage of diffusing power, of ensuring everyone has the chance to have their say, not just the coterie who get to surround the winning Mayoral candidate, and there’s a recognition that individuals are fallible. Checks and balances may not lead to the supposedly dynamic and efficient government that seems to be perennially just one reform away from us, but they do keep the arbitrary abuse of power away.
What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most — that we are all frail human beings.
Karl Popper, The Open Society And Its Enemies
Sep 16
We’re currently having lots of meetings talking about Colchester Council’s budget for next year. Because of the economic situation and the likely severe drop in money we get from the Government – despite the fact we still send them far more of the business rates we collect for them than we get in return – there are likely to be cuts in several areas, so we want to know which areas are of the most importance to people in Colchester.
So, to have your say on which areas you think are most and least important – and to suggest any other savings or income ideas for the Council you might have – visit www.colchester.gov.uk/yourcolchester and have your say. You can also take part in the process by following @YourColchester on Twitter.
As you might have heard, following Ros Scott’s decision not to stand for re-election as President of the Liberal Democrats, there’s a rather unexpected election set to take place.
So, if you’re looking for a candidate to support who’s not a middle-aged man who spends far too much time in Westminster, might I suggest you consider backing Jennie Rigg? I may not agree with her on everything (and we seem to be fundamentally opposed on the merits on different versions of that most Lib Dem of all issues, Doctor Who) but she’d give the Party the shake up it could probably do with right now.
Sep 14
I’ve been nominated in the 2010 Liberal Democrat Voice Blog Of The Year Awards, which probably seems rather odd given how little blogging I’ve done in the last twelve months. And so it would be, if it was for blogging, but instead it’s for the early morning Twitter conversation with Justin that turned into a globe-spanning hashtag that even got mentioned on Newsnight.
Unaccountably, the offers to pay us large amounts of money as experts on the use of hashtags in social media have failed to materialise, and our attempts to persuade people to #SendUsMoney experienced the common Difficult Second Hashtag problem and failed to reach the same level of success. But even if I’m not going to be at the awards ceremony – I’ve too much on here to get up to Conference – I can at least display a meaningless graphic here for a while.
And remember that there’s an open vote for Best non-Liberal Democrat blog running on the LDV site now. I’d definitely urge you to vote for anyone but Tom Harris,
(if any happen to be passing by this way…)
You might have heard that Phil Woolas is this week in an electoral court because of a legal challenge about his campaign in Oldham East and Saddleworth during this year’s General Election.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the electoral petition, look at the copies of his leaflets that are available here and here (pdf files) as part of it. Now, ask yourself this: are you happy that Phil Woolas used those leaflets as an official Labour candidate? Are you happy that he has faced no disciplinary action or disapproval from the leadership of the party because of them? And are you happy that a man who can happily put out such leaflets remains an official Labour front bench spokesman on home affairs, including immigration? And if you are fine with that, just how far does a Labour candidate have to go before you’ll disavow their actions?
(links from Anton Vowl on Twitter, and further coverage of the electoral court is available via Nick Thornsby’s blog and Twitter)
UPDATE: Interesting post here from a Labour member wanting him expelled. However, what interests me is the suggestion in the comments that Woolas is involved with David Miliband’s leadership campaign – anyone know more about this?
Sep 12
The website for the yes campaign in the AV referendum is finally up and running, so you can now get along there and sign up to support and help out in whatever way you wish. There’s also the Take Back Parliament campaign – at the moment, I’m not sure how much overlap there is between the two – and there’ll be another meeting of the Essex TBP group at the beginning of October. More details of that soon.
Sep 11
Seems that I wasn’t the only person to get an email from the Liberal Party this morning.
For those of you who don’t have the time to read the whole thing, the simple version:
Dear Liberal Democrats,
Worried about the difficult decisions that come with being in power? Join us and you’ll never have to worry about anything like that again!
Yours,
The Liberal Party
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