GIGANTIC KILLING OFF AND SHUFFLING

 

 Councils

beat mayors

every time 

 Boris Johnson last week pledged to create directly elected mayors for each individual county. How will this will apply to Cumbria and which councils will survive in the coming local government re-organisation.?

 

For an answer, perhaps it is useful to reflect on Prime Minister Edward Heath`s disastrous local government re-organisation of 1974 which started it all by igniting many big- is- best changes that still have echoes today.

These changes included killing off the historic counties of Cumberland and Westmorland and killing off hundreds of small town and rural councils.

These included two Penrith councils, two Carlisle councils and councils in Alston, North Westmorland, Keswick and South Westmorland.

The local government re-organisation was indeed a gigantic killing off and shuffling around, concentrating more and more power in Westminster aimed primarily to prepare Britain for the coming great European adventure which until recently dominated all our lives.

As I recall, many of the newly-created district councils were initially not given names but instead were given European numbers to link in with similar numbers and councils across Europe. Happily that never happened.

Today, 40 odd years later, Mr Johnson is trying hard to turn the clock back and to return some of that power to local communities through directly elected mayors based in major towns and cities.

Sadly, transparency and closeness to communities achieved by the hundreds of now abolished small town councils is no longer there.

Elected mayors, despite all Boris Johnson`s spin they are now attracting will never achieve the transparency and closeness of that sort.

PICTURED: London Mayor Sadiq Khan

 

  Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation publishes this blog. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 52227

 

 

WANTED: 68 CHEFS FOR THE LAKES

Local people vanish and tourists go hungry

Newspaper columnist Ross Brewster, the Sunday Times and MP Tim Farron last weekend painted grim pictures of the Lake District as it is now, after Brexit and Covid have done their worst.

Ross Brewster is nostalgic for Lakeland village fetes, for May Days, and carnivals of fifty years ago which all, sadly, have vanished from the calendar because the local people who organised them have vanished too. 

On a similar theme, the Sunday Times devoted nearly half a page to details of another vanished Lakes group: the workers who staffed the many restaurants and cafes.

“Wanted 68 chefs for the Lakes . The tourists are going hungry” said the Sunday Times headline.

Local MP Tim Farron (Westmorland and North Lonsdale) is concerned about both vanished groups.

He talks darkly about about Lakeland Clearance. Surely not clearances as devastating as the the Highland Clearances of two hundred years ago?

Possibly he has table clearances in mind- the sort of cups-and- saucers` clearances performed by waiters a hundred times a day.

Mr Farron is campaigning for a change in the planning laws to keep the local people in place locally.

And for hungry tourists, he wants a post Brexit relaxation of visa rules to allow EU citizens to return to Britain and fill the employment gaps.

Sadly, there are fewer and fewer of the these employment gaps.

Clearances of whatever kind have triumphed.

Restaurants are no more.

  Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation publishes this blog. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 52227