The role of councils

[LMS6202]

Seeing the thread about a council turning down a line re-opening got me thinking thus >>

IMO councils have too much power and fingers in too many pies. For instance why are councils responsible for street lights, housing, roads, etc? All these things can and should be run by the utility companies or national bodies. As for funding of the arts by councils I am vehemently agin that. If someone wants to go and see a daub on canvas hanging on a wall. or hear some fat bird warbling at the top of her voice or see a skinny gel tiptoeing across a stage then they should pay through the nose to a private company to run the things.

The only things councils should be responsible for is local health, welfare and education. Scrap all the NHS trusts that Blair set up and put them under council administration. Call me a Philistine or whatever you like but I think their are too many bodies and too much control of us now.

 

[Wyvern]

Most councils subsidise local transport particularly out of hours.

Without them many branch lines would have long closed, along with evening and weekend bus services

 

[Z12XE]

The bigger problem is that there are too many layers of local government in some areas which in turn creates duplicate office staff and huge amounts of waste.

County
Borough or District
Town or Parish

The middle level is the one I would axe with things like Garbage collection going up a level to provide county wide services and the more communinty based stuff going down to Parish as those people are more familar with the area etc.

Although in some areas now this is being considered.

Also, IMO currently in Parish and Town level at the moment there are (in the words of Marcus Churchill) "Too Much Politics" our local Town Council wastes more time dealing with petty squabbles between the Tory and Lib Dem councellors - the two parties always vote against each other because thats what they are told to do by their local whip, regardless of whether the indvidual thinks different.
We have 16 councellors, 10 Tory, 5 Lib Dem and 1 Independant - I'd sack the whole bloody lot apart from the independant as he's the only useful one there.

 

[LMS6202]

The bigger problem is that there are too many layers of local government in some areas which in turn creates duplicate office staff and huge amounts of waste.

County
Borough or District
Town or Parish

The middle level is the one I would axe with things like Garbage collection going up a level to provide county wide services and the more communinty based stuff going down to Parish as those people are more familar with the area etc.

Although in some areas now this is being considered.

Also, IMO currently in Parish and Town level at the moment there are (in the words of Marcus Churchill) "Too Much Politics" our local Town Council wastes more time dealing with petty squabbles between the Tory and Lib Dem councellors - the two parties always vote against each other because thats what they are told to do by their local whip, regardless of whether the indvidual thinks different.
We have 16 councellors, 10 Tory, 5 Lib Dem and 1 Independant - I'd sack the whole bloody lot apart from the independant as he's the only useful one there.

Couldn't agree with you more Sir. Councils should be unitary as has recently been done in Durham and Northumberland. As for parties, well, party politics is a ruination in that MP's and councillors have to act as their party says and vote accordingly. If they were all independent then they could act and vote as their constituents and conscience dictates. That is democracy. What we have in this land now is a plutocracy.

 

[142094]

Northumberland doesn't seem to be doing much good at the minute, lot of cost cutting and closures being reccommended.

 

[LMS6202]

Northumberland doesn't seem to be doing much good at the minute, lot of cost cutting and closures being reccommended.

Which was probably the whole idea in the first place.