[cma-l] Communities in control: real people, real power - audio interview

[CMA-L]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: "phil at radio-regen.myzen.co.uk" <phil at radio-regen.myzen.co.uk>

Good post Dave...

I'm not going to leap to the defence of Hazel but IMHO her understanding of
community media is genuine [if yet to be matched with directed funding] and
long standing.

I can however vouch or one of her special advisors on this White Paper, who
certainly believes in localism and participatory budgeting.  He also sits
on the Board of ALLFM.

So let's not totally smother ourselves in Westminster village cynicism -
yet - and judge the success of the words by the tangible actions they
generate...

I'm as ready as anyone to flick V-signs at Whitehall over this but my other
hand has its fingers crossed hoping it's not going to be necessary....

bests

Phil

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Dave Rushton local.tv at virgin.net
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:26:28 +0100
To: cma-l at commedia.org.uk
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Communities in control: real people,real power - audio
interview


Lest we lose all sense of proportion ....

 From today's Guardian - Simon Jenkins.

Tax and policy? You're lucky to have parking tickets and bin bags

Britain's local democratic deficit is the starkest variance between
our politics and that of other western states

Hazel Blears, the secretary of state for "communities", yesterday
published a white paper containing an astonishing proposal. To make
local electors vote, they should be entered for a "prize draw" to
win, say, an iPod or shopping voucher. Instead of the incentive of
real power, they should have an incentive of greed. They may not vote
because the vote is democratically barren, but they might at least be
bribed to do so. Welcome the age of heroic cynicism.

Nobody can take this government's localist pledges seriously until it
does so itself. Consider two villages, both the size of an average
British parish. One is in central France. It chooses its own mayor,
known by name to everyone. Its commune is a one-stop shop, caring for
the mairie, primary school, church, market and square, planning
development and even administering a small welfare fund. The commune
levies a local tax to pay for these things.

A small municipality in Sweden runs the same services under an
elected council, but it also runs its doctors' clinic and its housing
allocations. This is covered by a proportion of a locally determined
income tax, "redistributed" to ensure a degree of service
equalisation between rich and poor areas.

Blears and her boss, Gordon Brown, would never tolerate such
permissive localism. They genuinely believe that Britons are not able
to run their own affairs, are indeed indolent, incompetent and
probably venal. Last year Blears announced a series of "experimental
pilots" whereby parishes and urban neighbourhoods would be donated
tiny pots of money, just to see how they chose to spend them. They
would not be allowed to raise them from taxes.

Now we have more gesture localism. Blears's latest white paper was so
meagre it hardly merited a report in the press. It is full of quotes
from Aristotle, Milton and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and
is called Communities in Control - a title as ironic as its
predecessor from Ruth Kelly, Strong and Prosperous Communities
(2006), not to mention John Prescott's In Touch With the People. Like
the concept of a state secretary "for communities", Whitehall has no
sense of self-ridicule.

The white paper, presaging legislation, contains the usual dribble of
largesse. Apart from prize draws, there are measures to make it
easier for municipalities to choose elected mayors. Communities,
undefined, are to be allowed to petition for local debates and demand
meetings. Neighbourhoods might have more access to small "kitties"
for traffic-calming and play areas, donated from above and prescribed
as between £5,000 and £2.5m. A Soviet municipality under Lenin would
have been treated less patronisingly.

This is dark-ages democracy and, for those who have laboured in the
localist vineyard, depressing. Blears has experience of local
government and, like many who have risen to higher things, clearly
takes a dim view of its participants. Already the schools minister,
Lord Adonis, has all but centralised primary and secondary education,
depriving communities of their most cohering institutions and
crushing teachers with bureaucracy.

Occasional suggestions that "local people" might regain some control
over their health service, as in Scandinavia, and over the police and
local order, as in America, have vanished into the Whitehall sands. A
battle is said to be taking place over re-establishing elected watch
committees, but since these will be separate from local councils they
will be subject to central control and "producer capture" by the police.

With planning "nationalised" under the 2004 and 2008 acts, the
absence of schools, health, and law and order strips the heart from
any concept of local democracy, and Blears knows it. Democracy cannot
be built on bin bags and parking tickets.

Speaking recently to parish councillors - still the most numerous
body of elected people in Britain - Blears said she was "a firm
believer in devolution to the local level" and wanted to give
parishes "new flexibilities and powers". She just does not mean it,
any more than the authors of identical speeches and identical white
papers before her.

Indeed, last week she openly questioned if local democrats were
capable of accepting more power. She brutally stated, via Public
Finance magazine: "Are you up for this?" The justice minister Michael
Wills put it more bluntly in a speech to the Fabian Society last
autumn. Localism, he said, "means a reinforcement of inequality in
this country". In other words, the answer to Blears's question is no.

All experience makes clear that there is no point in pursuing the
localist debate if three requirements are not met: that elected
bodies run some substantial public services; that they own some
institutions; and that they raise some discretionary taxes. The
franchise must bite. Without such bite, all democracy is play-acting
and all devolution empty paternalism.

Blears and her colleagues believe that people will not accept any
diversity in standards that might result from local taxing powers.
But they have allowed such power to Scotland and the mayor in London.
Nor does any other country in Europe find this a problem. The concept
of equalising locally raised revenue between rich and poor areas is
familiar everywhere - as Blears knows well - and was explicit in
Britain before rate-capping.

Rich people already purchase private schools, doctors, security and
transport. Why should they not be free to decide on their own public
services? The only proviso is that the local taxes be subject to
redistribution, as are private incomes. This would be easier if such
taxes include an income element. But it is not postcode lotteries
that ministers fear. What they fear is a loss of control.

Britain's local democratic deficit is the starkest variance between
its politics and that of other western states. Under Margaret
Thatcher, who began the march to centralisation, the path was
deliberate. "I must take more power to the centre," she said, "to
stop socialism." Under Tony Blair and Brown the march has been more
sinister because denied.

British people still regard their local council as their first port
of call for public services: by two to one, compared with central
government (according to Mori). Yet these councils are, to the
centre, mere agencies. Their elected representatives are superfluous
as conduits of accountability, and their voters not to be trusted
with policy, taxes or priorities.

Empowerment is empty without accountability, and accountability is
empty without fiscal bite. There is no communal governance in Britain
at present and no intention, on the part of either big party, to
introduce it.

To the government, Britons are considered incompetent to shoulder the
democratic responsibilities considered normal elsewhere. Ask why, and
ministers all give the same reply: "But have you actually met any
councillors? They are useless." Were it true, which it is not, they
do not ask what has made them so.

Blears on local government is like a 19th-century aristocrat on
extending the franchise. The peasants are never quite ready for it.
But at least in the 19th century Britain was progressing towards
democracy. In the 20th it is moving in the opposite direction.

simon.jenkins at guardian.co.uk