ikcmrrohly: In pursuit of little platoons, Pickles uproots the state

Friday, May 20, 2011

In pursuit of little platoons, Pickles uproots the state | Polly Toynbee (Guardian)

'Let local people decide!' sounds fine in rhetoric but reeks in reality. The
consequence is services sold out or gone forever

Here is a great example of what pollsters call the public's "cognitive
polyphasia". In plain language it means we want impossibly contradictory
things. As the localism bill returns to the Commons for report stage today,
the government should be warned that while people love the Ambridge sound of
localism, they deplore the postcode lottery it brings.

Brave would be the politician these days who refused to pay lip service to the
localist idea: who could be against local people taking making local choices,
until you ask what and how? Labour in power was utterly conflicted, pouring
out initiatives for community action while raining down centralised diktats.

Now here comes Eric Pickles, not conflicted but deceiving. Tory devolution
hands down responsibility for failing to finance local services, devolving the
blame for cuts. His bill squares the problem: if the money doesn't cover all
that councils are obliged to do, this bill gives him the power to revoke any
inconvenient duty on councils. Parliament has painstakingly passed laws
obliging councils to do things we regard as essential ...

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