May politics thread, feat. EURO Elections & May Resigning at last

are you ready for SOME LOCAL ELECTIONS

  • Yes
  • No
  • Local and CITY-REGION MAYORAL suckers
  • Don’t have any

0 voters

Politics and screaming will continue as before otherwise

District, baby!

Incidentally, gutted to learn the mayoralty of Torbay has been abolished this year :frowning:

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  • District
  • County
  • County AND District
  • Metropolitan Borough
  • Unitary
  • English local government is unnecessarily complex for the level of power it commands, which is essentially just bin collection and turning down planning applications

0 voters

Hey gunners, Mr Local Gov geek dude. Can you set me/us right or offer any thoughts on the following ignorant musings (posted with brilliant timing, an hour before the end of the month :grinning:)?

Basically, what’s the good bad and ugly about Local Gov, and how could it be better?

We’re often told about how the UK is hugely centralised. Any examples of where does it better that we could look to?

Fair enough if you’re busy and haven’t got time for this nonsense. :+1:

English local government is unnecessarily complex for the level of power it commands, which is essentially just bin collection and turning down planning applications

PARKLIFE!

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At The Drive-in writing song lyrics to be more relevant in the UK needed more work.

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I am voting in the Brighton and Hove City Council elections. It is a unitary authority, having the powers of a non-metropolitan county and district council combined.

I actually had a candidate come and knock and my door and we had a chat, first time that’s ever happened. I was hoping for someone to have a row with, but she seemed nice so I decided to vote for her instead.

I am voting Labour. I’ve even got a poster up.

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Ah. I mean. Like a lot of things I think it just depends what you want from it?

Like, if you look at the US, which has pretty much a home-rule-first bottom up approach, you can see a lot of interesting things happening in terms of governmental responsibility/action/whatnot, but then again you get a lot of stuff like this

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/eagles-landing-cityhood-vote-atlanta-stockbridge/571990/

This one failed but lots of places in the US, where the wealthy essentially want to wall themselves off from paying for services in poorer places, have succeeded.

Think Germany has a complicated federal system. Berlin certainly had the power to regulate the fuck out of short term let’s/Air BnBs when it started to become a problem there. Contrast that to Edinburgh, which has to essentially retrofit planning controls (massively under-resourced, obvs) and wait for a ScotGov consultation at a national level…

I think with a lot of these things, it’s about having the powers in place, but also about having the confidence and resources in place to use them.

The most interesting thing about the Cameron/Osbourne era localism drive was that it gave local authorities a new general power of competency - essentially (as I understand it), anything an individual can do, a local authority can do. This is potentially really wide-reaching. It’s deffo where all these new housing companies that have been springing up have come from (and not least because it puts them outside right-to-buy legislation).

But, again, it’s about having the confidence to use it, and the resources to chase ideas down. And lots of district councils won’t have the resources to do so.

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I’m fairly sure our green candidate came and knocked on our door the other day. I didn’t speak to them, but the other half did. As great as Caroline Lucas is, The Greens made a right pigs ear of running the council when they had a majority, so I’m loathed to vote for them.

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District for me, I’ll be voting Lib Dem as realistically it’s only between them and the Tories and the Lib Dem councilor is lovely and works really hard. Also I’ve only received leaflets from her, no other parties have bothered.

These were the results last time out.

Lib Dems = 51.6%
Conservatives = 25%
UKIP =16.8%
Labour = 6.6%

Also the Tories currently have a majority of one seat in the local council. Hopefully they’ll lose that tomorrow.

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Yes, I don’t remember exactly why there was overflowing rubbish in the streets for weeks, but I do associate it with the Greens running the council, unfortunately

Local elections, European elections and fucking referendums here! YEOW! DEMOCRACY IN ACTION!

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My take on it was that while they had good intentions they were all very inexperienced, so when it came to talks with anyone they never had the upper hand.

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Hi guys.

I’ve registered to vote (with the intention of voting in the EU elections.) The .gov.uk website says the cut off to be able to register in time is the 7th of May.

I’ve been emailed a letter this morning saying that I’m registered from the 1st June. Missing the EU election.

Am I being disenfranchised here? Who do I contact?

Being registered from a particular date in the future sounds odd.

No harm in re-registering.

Forgot this was tomorrow. Gonna set a reminder on my phone so I don’t forget to vote

Looking forward to a Tory decimation in these locals :grinning:

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Labour’s maybe mmmaybe not approach/media narrative of their approach to Brexit will

  • Hurt them in these elections
  • Benefit them in these elections
  • Have little to no effect in these elections

0 voters

hello politics fans :wave:

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