"Empowering local government to make decisions about their own communities is what this Government campaigned on and is not being delivered today.
...
Today’s announcement is a skewed version of democracy that isn’t used to determine any other wards or constituencies, just Māori ones. We say the Government needs to either apply them to all wards or none at all."
If you don't subscribe to the slow journalism magazine Delayed Gratification, here's a nice example of their approach to long-form journalism.
From last year's articles, here's (a still very relevant) deep dive into the problems at Woking & Birmingham Councils... if you have the time & are concerned about the future of local government, then I'd recommend setting aside 20mns for this
perhaps think about subscribing; its a great publication
Look like one group is doing well out of the cost of living (enforced poverty) crisis & the financial plight of local councils (now often taking a zero tolerance approach to outstanding payments)...
Yup, the Bailiffs are have a good time (and of course, the bosses are paying themselves accordingly.
Yet one more symptom of a country in which callousness has been normalised & poverty is increasingly violently punished.
"Collapsing councils are a microcosm of the British state’s failings: austerity, short-termism, Treasury myopia and decades of failure to solve the so-called wicked problems of policymaking, such as council tax, planning and our broken social care model. Every block in the Jenga tower appears to be wobbling"
Anoosh Chakelian writes about the dire straits local government is in.
David Mellen, the Labour leader of Nottingham city council, said elected members did not have the final say over “devastating” funding gap that led to them approving more than 500 redundancies, council tax rises and millions of pounds of cuts last week. #Nottingham#Austerity#Section114#LocalGovernment#UKPolitics#Democracy
"Here is the real “no-go zone” in Britain: the very richest. The people who own our talk-TV channels and sit on the boards of our academy trusts and who enjoy setting distraction games for the rest of us to play. The obvious stuff that binds most of us together – our schools, our parks, having enough cash to clothe the kids or to look after our parents – rarely makes the news. Funny that"