A few thoughts of the week.

1.As I posted on Twitter the other day.

The Harrogate Agenda

@NiallWarry

28 May

It should not be up to politicians, the MSM or pressure groups as to how we are governed but the views and wishes of the 'People' that should hold sway. This is why we need these reforms - http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/Default.aspx

 

2. I read in the Sunday papers about the plotting going on behind the scenes in the Conservative party as to who should replace Boris and it struck me that the decision to get rid of the PM should be up to the ‘People’ and not Tory MPs. Our third demand ‘a Separation of Power’ calls for an elected PM.

 

3. One of the reasons politicians are pressing ahead with the new legislation to ‘Tackle On-Line Abuse’ is because so many of them receive hate mail and death threats. I don’t wish to make light of this but I would suggest if politicians up their game and did a decent job of serving the wishes of the people, they were elected to serve, they might start receiving letters of praise rather than hate.

 

4.All the MSM are at it, including Andrew Neil in the Mail, which is that when they have been writing about the shootings in Uvalde, Texas they all fail to mention the ‘elephant in the room’ which is that the shooter was a regular marijuana user as pointed out by Peter Hitchens. One can only assume that with so many of their friends as recreational drugs users they don’t see this as a problem which it most certainly is especially amongst the less well off.

 

The Harrogate Agenda stands for a ‘People’s Democracy’.     

 

 

Local democracy is a sham.

This article is by the Editorial  Chairman and co-founder of 'The Week' Jeremy O'Grady.

Rumour has it that the local elections were held across much of the country last week, but if so I missed them. 

I knew there were elections of course they just didn't feel like local ones: they were everywhere treated as a verdict on Westminster politics.

Would Johnson be punished for Partygate?

Would Starmer make headway?

No talk of the distinctive policies made by this or that council; no focus on Aspires remarkable triumph in Tower Hamlets. Yet how else could it be?

So nationalised, so beholden to decisions  made in Westminster/Whitehall has our politics grown, that local goernment is now a cipher.  And does that matter?

In all sorts of ways I think it does, though one example will have to suffice: the selection of academy trusts to run local schools. The Department for Education  is currently pushing for one such trust to take over the school my child attends (Holland Park in London).That could involve it forming a trust with a highly regarded school nearby, the option desired by the local council and many parents.

The other option, favoured by the DfE, is for it to join a big national trust: far easier to deal with. So the DfE has quietly appointed to the school a clutch of compliant governors (none from the locality) who've duly rubber- stamped its wishes. And as local government has no say in the matter, and there's no other legitimised way of registering local preference, anyone protesting their decision is easily dismissed as vexatious. The idea of local representation was once seen as a fundamental plank of democracy, In Britain, that plank has rotted.

Our second demand 'Real Local Democracy' addresses this issue and makes local democracy count again by decentralising power down to the counties and districts and thus reducing the size of central government.
 

 

The People's Way.

 The break in weekly posts has been caused by having to deal with my ailing 96 year old mother and some preparatory work on a THA event, to be held towards the end of the year in London to celebrate our 10th Anniversary. An announcement will be made next week on Turbulent Times. 

In the meantime with the local elections at the forefront of my mind I had this thought as to why we need our six demands:-

"There should not be a Left or a Right way in politics only the 'People's Way."