Originally Posted by Aardvark

Not quite. Apart from the fact that the Spectator is a humorous magazine, the article is short on facts and long on hyperbole. Rod Liddle is wrong about the costing of waste collection, he is wrong about the percentage of councils who do not collect some sort of waste every week, he has misinterpreted the Wensleydale situation - the people who are being asked to deliver their own waste to the roadside live at the end of country tracks where refuse vehicles cannot go or, if they can go, would take an inordinate amount of the working day to collect a small amount of refuse (we had a similar problem with remote farms in West Oxon). The article is as much use as an authority on the subject as mkpd citing Penn and Teller as an authority on recycling. Rod Liddle is wrong about authorities getting more powers. Powers are defined in statutes and cannot be extended or increased by local councils as they could be sued for misfeasance in public office or punished for acting ultra vires. Liddle cites one abuse of power that was highlighted in national papers and will not be repeated.

BC, You have not gone through all the powers and duties and costed them or provided an exact calculation of how much can be saved by your reforms. If you have everything centralised then where will job interviews be held for teachers if there is no local structure in place? If there is a local structure who will administer and fund it? Who centrally will decide which schools will get which money and who will fund that bureaucracy as there is nobody in place at present? If social services has been centralised as you suggest then how will you manage the local offices?

Ive listed the powers that will be ran by central government, they are several different studies which I will look for show saving on specific powers being centralised eg fire and police services, benefit administration, etc.
I would abolish council tax so funding would come from the government paid for as I said by ending foreign aid, leaving the EU, ending money given to immigrants and custs in local government non-jobs like Ethnic diversity co-ordinator etc.
Many social services are centralised and are ran quite well with managers running local offices.
All this is quite in depth I feel to cover as a whole it would perhaps be better to look at each service at a time.
Here is an example of Care homes of the Elderly being taken off local government Ministers to strip councils of power to run care homes - UK Politics, UK - The Independent

The fact that you have been a candidate is not the same as having been elected and having done the job. I was unpaid as a parish councillor and I resigned the Tory whip as a district councillor in protest about an unreasonable increase in funding of pay and allowances for councillors:

What I saw at local government level was a lot of pigs at the trof.
Not just money going to councillors but jobs created for their friends and other party members not to mention the fact all councillors had to vote a specific way as the pasrty said so even when many if not most would disagree with somthing.

Oxford Mail - Council pay bill about to quadruple

I don't need people making cheap shots about money and my views on such. I've put my head above the parapet on the subject and stand by my record.

To suggest, as some on this forum do, that all local councillors are in some way corrupt or money grabbing is to do a great disservice to so many people who have done sterling work with little thought of reward. The current system of 'paid' councillors is a Labour invention which many of us opposed. Our authority preferred the amateur system (£22 per day allowances - much less than the minimum wage) and committee decisions as opposed to cabinet and scrutiny.

I agree they should be a very low set limit on what anyone on the council gets paid.

The majority of people who work in local authorities are not jobsworths, although I have met a few who are, but dedicated people who are very involved in running their communities. Some bigger district and metropolitan authorities do seem to have a lot of PC jobs that I would happily disestablish, but the majority of jobs are based on statutory duties that have to be fulfilled. A reduction in statutory duties and a return to the committee system would yield substantial savings with very little effort. Centralising everything and removing local democratic accountability might have been good for Moseley and his ilk, but it is not the best way to run a country.

Originally Posted by BonnieDundee

I don't know, local gov't could be made more participatory and directly democratic now and it would probably help matters, particularly if it was granted more powers and functions and became more important to the local people. But obviously it would have to be mroe participatory and democratic otherwise that would leave the quangos with even more power.

But I think a significant change in that direction would have to be accompanied by a change in the way society thinks about these things.

What is the BNP's position on these issues?