Monday, November 14, 2005

‘Stealth Regionalism' – the new, New Labour must have …

David Miliband, Minister for local government and Blair’s preferred dauphin has been busily finding out ways to get the ‘R’ strategy in England back on track. ‘Super councils’ are apparently the answer.

Super councils will run straight across county boundaries, sometimes amalgamating several into one new leviathan.
Super councils will eradicate traditional English shire counties – all 34 of them (you know, the ones that have been around for as long as 1,500 years)…….
Super councils will take power away from local communities – the district and county authorities will disappear, to be replaced by a unitary option…..

In a leaked report, Miliband was apparently concerned that the current two-tier system led to ‘confusion’ and created ‘fragmented leadership’……..

The Wake’s reaction to this b/s hyperbole is complete and utter homicidal anger. It’s nothing to do with supposedly making things more effective or more efficient. It’s got everything to do with dividing, emasculating and ruling my Country.

Come to think of it, this ‘to make things more efficient, we must make things bigger’ strategy has become a bit of a recurring theme over the past few weeks from various Labour ministries.

A couple of weeks ago a report stated that the existing police forces in England are to be rationalised down to less than half the current number. English health authorities are scheduled to have similar amalgamation fever bestowed on them - lucky us eh! Now if I didn’t know better, I’d say there just might be a bit of backdoor regionalisation going on.

Miliband, Blair, Prescott, Brown et al. Why do you hate us so much?

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