The Government
have announced they are pressing ahead with “devolution”. Local areas will be
able to decide how to spend money previously spent by unelected Civil Servants,
but the minister, without consulting parliament will decide how the money will
be divvied up. …….and he has decided that the lions share will go to areas that
have “elected Mayors”. In fact areas without Mayors will get somewhere near to
bugger all.
He has also
announced that areas with Mayors will be able to sort out their public
transport systems, but if you don’t have a Mayor you will have to put up with
an inferior system designed to make private bus company owners very rich.
West Yorkshire
does not have an elected Mayor, and there are no plans for them to have one.
Why don’t they have one? Because the government won’t let them have one.
At the very start
of the process, the West Yorkshire leaders stated that whilst none of them were
in favour of Elected Mayors, if that was the only game in town we would go for
it. We decided that our preferred region would be based on the Leeds City Region,
but if that was blocked we would stick to West Yorkshire.
Originally we were
told the minister, or to be more precise the Chancellor would go for it, but
that was before he was got at by the gerrymandering Tory MP’s. They decided
that North and East Yorkshire would like to get a share of the success of Leeds
City Region, and would like a Conservative Mayor who could divert money away
from economic growth into subsidising sheep.
So, even though
they have agreed that South Yorkshire can have a Mayor and the goodies that go
with it, we can’t.
A true catch 22.
You can have extra money if you have a Mayor. OK we’ll have a Mayor. You can’t
have a mayor.
