I can't find St Nicholas on a roof boss of Norwich Cathedral, though he'll be on a misericord somewhere.
But I did find "Man Fights Dragon", who has a red robe - but if it's anyone it's St George. Not one of the big ones, but my photo quota. Dragons apparently grew a bit between the 15C and the Hobbit.
Father Christmas seems to be 17C in England, around the time of the Republic when traditions were suppressed, at a rapid look.
Thank goodness for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, when King Charles II restored Christmas, Father Christmas/St Nicholas and theatres and May dancing after the misery of Oliver Cromwell's rule in the one and only Republic of England and Wales we have ever had
Blimey, East Anglians have long memories and bear grudges like you can't believe it.
I can't find St Nicholas on a roof boss of Norwich Cathedral, though he'll be on a misericord somewhere.
But I did find "Man Fights Dragon", who has a red robe - but if it's anyone it's St George. Not one of the big ones, but my photo quota. Dragons apparently grew a bit between the 15C and the Hobbit.
Father Christmas seems to be 17C in England, around the time of the Republic when traditions were suppressed, at a rapid look.
Thank goodness for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, when King Charles II restored Christmas, Father Christmas/St Nicholas and theatres and May dancing after the misery of Oliver Cromwell's rule in the one and only Republic of England and Wales we have ever had
Blimey, East Anglians have long memories and bear grudges like you can't believe it.
Unfortunately East Anglia was a Parliamentarian and Oliver Cromwell stronghold at the time, there was a reason Charles I had his HQ in the civil war at Christ Church, Oxford and not Cambridge, Cromwell's alma mater
I can't find St Nicholas on a roof boss of Norwich Cathedral, though he'll be on a misericord somewhere.
But I did find "Man Fights Dragon", who has a red robe - but if it's anyone it's St George. Not one of the big ones, but my photo quota. Dragons apparently grew a bit between the 15C and the Hobbit.
Father Christmas seems to be 17C in England, around the time of the Republic when traditions were suppressed, at a rapid look.
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
Presumably the new councils will need to exist in shadow form for at least a while before going live.
(Me, I suspect that JFDI is now the way to go. Consultation will lead to mithering for partisan advantage, which is roughly what happened in 1972-4 and again in the mid 1990s. Personally, I would put all the council leaders in a room tomorrow, have a Christmas party in the next room, and tell them that they can start photocopying their bottoms the moment they have a map for their county sorted.)
If the borders are agreed in January 2025, how quickly do electoral reviews happen these days? Especially if existing wards are used as building blocks?
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
And when do us voters get a say on these mergers?
Was it even in the manifesto?
At a glance the white paper is pretty clear this will happen whether people want it or not - since it says ministers can impose it where areas have not been 'able to agree how to access devolved powers' or where formation is 'essential'. Essential being defined as being in order to complete the 'roll out'.
I believe in previous deals there has been formal consultation and, technically, votes in councils to accept, but I don't think they really meet the Gunning principles as far as consultations go.
The manifesto was typical vague fluff which can be used to say pretty much anything - all manifestos usually talk about taking power out of whitehall to give to local areas. In England, Labour will deepen devolution settlements for existing Combined Authorities. We will also widen devolution to more areas, encouraging local authorities to come together and take on new powers... Local areas will be able to gain new powers over transport, adult education and skills, housing and planning, and employment support. We will ensure those places have the strong governance arrangements, capacity, and capability to deliver, providing central support where needed... Labour will review the governance arrangements for Combined Authorities to unblock decision making.
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
Presumably the new councils will need to exist in shadow form for at least a while before going live.
(Me, I suspect that JFDI is now the way to go. Consultation will lead to mithering for partisan advantage, which is roughly what happened in 1972-4 and again in the mid 1990s. Personally, I would put all the council leaders in a room tomorrow, have a Christmas party in the next room, and tell them that they can start photocopying their bottoms the moment they have a map for their county sorted.)
If the borders are agreed in January 2025, how quickly do electoral reviews happen these days? Especially if existing wards are used as building blocks?
For areas getting a new strategic mayor it should not be too difficult, but in previous unitarisations the work of implementation executives to act as shadow councils could be quite complex.
Electoral reviews should not be an issue, as they can do a quick and dirty one and then revisit - hence why Buckinghamshire started with 147 councillors but is due to have 97 at its second election.
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
Looks like Ms Rayner intends to save us from the Green-Labour jackboot at Warwick District and transfer us to the warm embrace of Tory-controlled Warwickshire County. What a Girl.
On present polls may end up a Tory-Reform unitary council in Warwickshire and many, even most, other unitary authorities.
With the LDs holding Oxfordshire, Surrey and a few others and Labour confined to the big city councils like Birmingham and Manchester and the London Assembly
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
I'm trying to work out what Ben Houchen has done for Tees Valley to be on the naughty step (i.e. those not getting Established Mayoral devolution)..
Is the problem identifying something, or getting the list down to (say) an A4 page of notes?
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
And when do us voters get a say on these mergers?
Was it even in the manifesto?
Broad approach about devolution but it looks like most English areas will now have no local elections next May folks, next elections for most will be the Senedd and Holyrood and English new unitary elections in 2026
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
They do appear to be in an almighty hurry. Which people were expecting based on prior comments, which is why places like Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire abandoned their opposition to mayoralties on the basis it would be pointless to resist (there is token talk of exceptions to various requirements and potential for bespoke arrangements, but it is very clear that is not going to happen in nearly all cases), but it seems overly ambitious to me.
I do love how there is still an effort to pretend this is not being forced on places, but talking about working 'collaboratively' to deliver the ambition of unversal coverage, even though the white paper makes clear you agree it, or it will be done anyway.
However, in order to ensure a complete national layer of Strategic Authorities is in place to devolve further powers to in future, we will legislate for a ministerial directive, which will enable the government to create Strategic Authorities in any remaining places where local leaders in that region have not been able to agree how to access devolved powers...we will ensure that the ministerial directive is used to conclude the process where there is majority support, or the formation is essential in completing the roll out of Strategic Authorities in England
One weird minor aspect of the white paper is intent to remove the ability of 'Strategic Authorities' to call Mayors by another name. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure anyone has done that anyway? I think it may have been a Gove wheeze to give potential to be called Governors or something, given people suggested mayor sounded odd for big rural areas.
Northumberland has a Mayor which seems strange. President? Governor doesn't sound like an elected post to a Brit
Be grateful Boris Johnson isn't in charge. He'd have called them Provincial Governors, or perhaps Procurators.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
I don't know how it works in other places, but I love English devolution.
1) England is very highly centralised. 2) We need to devolve power outward to local government. 3) We must therefore impose from the centre a new form of local government on areas, whether they want it or not.
Fundamentally switching to unitaries is a good idea imo so I for one an supportive of this move by Labour. If our district (Lab) councillor runs for the ward I'd vote for him, though the county councillor who I don't know from Eve would probably get seniority within Lab
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
And when do us voters get a say on these mergers?
Was it even in the manifesto?
Broad approach about devolution but it looks like most English areas will now have no local elections next May folks, next elections for most will be the Senedd and Holyrood and English new unitary elections in 2026
If that is the case, from a purely political perspective I think Labour have naffed up. These sets of elections weren’t going to deliver them too hard a blow, in all likelihood, which might have helped them calm the narrative a bit. That is purely looking at it with cynical eyes though. I profess to not really having a strong opinion on the reforms themselves - if they cut down on waste and streamline decision making then that’s a good thing.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
Fundamentally switching to unitaries is a good idea imo so I for one an supportive of this move by Labour. If our district (Lab) councillor runs for the ward I'd vote for him, though the county councillor who I don't know from Eve would probably get seniority within Lab
I expect Kemi will be delighted with the switch to unitaries and county council elections being off next year, as the Tories won the last county council elections by 7% NEV in 2021 so she can only go down relative to Boris then.
By contrast Labour won the 2022 local district elections clearly and Labour and the LDs won the 2023 and 2024 local district council elections v a Rishi led Tories by a landslide, so when the new unitaries come in she can start afresh and say she is doing better than Rishi rather than worse than Boris at his peak.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I trust, if living in a parished area, that you are holding an Annual Parish Meeting of local electors as required?
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
Presumably the new councils will need to exist in shadow form for at least a while before going live.
(Me, I suspect that JFDI is now the way to go. Consultation will lead to mithering for partisan advantage, which is roughly what happened in 1972-4 and again in the mid 1990s. Personally, I would put all the council leaders in a room tomorrow, have a Christmas party in the next room, and tell them that they can start photocopying their bottoms the moment they have a map for their county sorted.)
If the borders are agreed in January 2025, how quickly do electoral reviews happen these days? Especially if existing wards are used as building blocks?
If Bucks unitary council wards are a guide, the unitary wards will have the same boundaries as the county council wards had but with 3 councillors like the district wards had rather than 1 councillor per ward as per county council wards
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no change.
I would very much like a more uniform approach taken across the UK (or at least England) when it comes to local government. For decades we have just got by with a very big hodgepodge of different systems but if you want to engage people in local democracy I think you need to make it more easier for people to understand what a local council does and how it is constituted and uniformity really helps here. It’s why I’m a little more ambivalent about metro mayors and mayoral systems because they’re all a little different.
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
They do appear to be in an almighty hurry. Which people were expecting based on prior comments, which is why places like Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire abandoned their opposition to mayoralties on the basis it would be pointless to resist (there is token talk of exceptions to various requirements and potential for bespoke arrangements, but it is very clear that is not going to happen in nearly all cases), but it seems overly ambitious to me.
I do love how there is still an effort to pretend this is not being forced on places, but talking about working 'collaboratively' to deliver the ambition of unversal coverage, even though the white paper makes clear you agree it, or it will be done anyway.
However, in order to ensure a complete national layer of Strategic Authorities is in place to devolve further powers to in future, we will legislate for a ministerial directive, which will enable the government to create Strategic Authorities in any remaining places where local leaders in that region have not been able to agree how to access devolved powers...we will ensure that the ministerial directive is used to conclude the process where there is majority support, or the formation is essential in completing the roll out of Strategic Authorities in England
One weird minor aspect of the white paper is intent to remove the ability of 'Strategic Authorities' to call Mayors by another name. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure anyone has done that anyway? I think it may have been a Gove wheeze to give potential to be called Governors or something, given people suggested mayor sounded odd for big rural areas.
I'm hoping for a bit of out-of-the-box thinking. Where I am, it would make sense to combine districts in Hants, Surrey and Berkshire to make a Blackwater area, although it would really need dividing some districts as for example Fleet and Yateley are commuter towns that would sit well within it, but a lot of the rest of Hart is rural Hampshire. So it could be made up of Rushmoor, Surrey Heath and parts of Hart, Guildford and Bracknell Forest (ie Sandhurst). Arguably Farnham as well but they will never wear it
Broadly Redcliffe-Maud's "West Surrey" (centred on Guildford). And the politically unpleasant logic is that even deep rural areas look to somewhere substantial and that's not necessarily the historical county town and it probably is where the bulk of local government should be.
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
Presumably the new councils will need to exist in shadow form for at least a while before going live.
(Me, I suspect that JFDI is now the way to go. Consultation will lead to mithering for partisan advantage, which is roughly what happened in 1972-4 and again in the mid 1990s. Personally, I would put all the council leaders in a room tomorrow, have a Christmas party in the next room, and tell them that they can start photocopying their bottoms the moment they have a map for their county sorted.)
If the borders are agreed in January 2025, how quickly do electoral reviews happen these days? Especially if existing wards are used as building blocks?
If Bucks unitary council wards are a guide, the unitary wards will have the same boundaries as the county council wards had but with 3 councillors like the district wards had rather than 1 councillor per ward as per county council wards
The LGBCE does like to mix and match cllr numbers per ward when doing electoral reviews, as it makes it easier to draw boundaries with equalised numbers, I'm sure I saw one which had mostly 2 person wards with a handful of 1 person wards and a few 3 person wards, but they seem a bit more pragmatic when it comes to new unitaries, and the Bucks case was just easier to do it that way. In Wiltshire they doubled the number of seats from the old county, which was pretty arbitrary, but I think the wards were new. Somerset, again I don't know if the wards were the same, but they did just double the seat numbers at their first unitary election.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
As far as I am aware, the red coated, bearded, welly wearing chap has always been Santa in the West of Scotland, never Father Christmas. Is that also the case in other places?
My memories of childhood are distant and faint, but I think he was -- this was the late '70s -- Father Xmas and Santa was seen as an Americanism.
For me the definitive guide is Joan Gale Thomas in 'My book about Christmas' first publ 1946, last reprinted 1979. I had it read to me, I once upon a time read it to my children, my children now read it to their children, and so on in perpetuity.
She uses the term Father Christmas throughout, but in an indented note adds: 'Sometimes Father Christmas is called Santa Claus, which means St Nicholas'.
It is steeped in the world of the post war middle class and tells the story and the whole thing wonderfully well.
FWIW, in recent years -- in this very secular part of the United States -- "Christmas" is being gradually replaced by "holidays". A few days ago, after making a purchase, I pleased the older woman behind the counter, and annoyed the younger woman, by saying "Merry Christmas" to both of them. So I amended that to say: "Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, or both, whichever you prefer."
Even Santa Claus is less common than he was even 10 years ago. For much longer than that, Christmas trees have been being replaced by what I call "holiday" trees. They look like Christmas trees, but, when you look closely you see that the tree is topped by a snow flake, rather than a star.
The local Google operation has taken that further and puts up what I call "designer" trees, with simple two-color designs.
I think the long-term goal for the "holidays" folks here is to replace "Christmas" with a "Festival of Lights".
(Me? I'll use whichever greeting other people prefer, as long as they are peaceful.)
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I assume a relatively new area or effectively a town, 99% of English villages and hamlets have a Parish council
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no change.
I would very much like a more uniform approach taken across the UK (or at least England) when it comes to local government. For decades we have just got by with a very big hodgepodge of different systems but if you want to engage people in local democracy I think you need to make it more easier for people to understand what a local council does and how it is constituted and uniformity really helps here. It’s why I’m a little more ambivalent about metro mayors and mayoral systems because they’re all a little different.
And one positive side of the white paper is at least an attempt to make the mayoral system a little more consistent or at least 'off the shelf' and so consistent.
I don't think there's great attachment to local government boundaries, whether that is due to the hodgepodge I am not sure, but it is confusing. And since it was much more confusing historically there is a long trend here towards making things simpler. There are ways to continue local engagement with bigger authorities, including beloved parishes for genuinely local matters.
My concerns still relate to still having two-tier, just at different levels, and that complexity is inherently still there. There's aspirational talk about trying to align public services by areas, mention of fire and police and whatnot, but there are sometimes good reasons other services don't align. The way populations are distributed health services don't align perfectly to ceremonial or administrative counties, so if you wanted to make the NHS line up as well, as was mooted but I don't think is specifically mentioned, you'd probably need to do some principal area boundary reviews as well, and I don't remember the last time we had those.
A county like Wiltshire for example is essentially a doughnut due to the Salisbury Plain, with almost all the major towns around the edges, which makes alignment tricky.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I trust, if living in a parished area, that you are holding an Annual Parish Meeting of local electors as required?
If the county elections are postponed, but the town and parish ones aren’t, that’s a whole lot of extra cost to run the latter as a stand alone set of elections next May
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Having suffered with a Town Council, District Council and a County Council all at the same time, the first independent, the other two Tory and LD only, I'm 100% with Angela.
Especially when some District Councillors double up as County Council.
The Town Council non political do a great job with limited funding, the County Council is doing a decent job and the District Council is full of corruption, thieves and vagabonds.
A previous DC leader clung on through 2 years of corruption, vat fraud and environmental dumping charges, before being found guilty but blowing his own head off before sentancing.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I trust, if living in a parished area, that you are holding an Annual Parish Meeting of local electors as required?
If the county elections are postponed, but the town and parish ones aren’t, that’s a whole lot of extra cost to run the latter as a stand alone set of elections next May
Most town and parish elections will be next up in 2027 anyway although a few will be up next year along with county councils which reject moving to unitaries
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I assume a relatively new area or effectively a town, 99% of English villages and hamlets have a Parish council
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I assume a relatively new area or effectively a town, 99% of English villages and hamlets have a Parish council
In Wiltshire 10% of parishes do not have a council. In fairness that probably amounts to something like 1% of the population or less. Some have a few dozen electors, some hundreds.
Under legislation if a new parish is created and has an electorate over 1000 it must have a council, anything between 150-1000 may have a council (if they don't they can always be reviewed later to get one), and those under 150 should not have a council. Some existing parishes have fewer than 150 electors, but still have councils, presumably as they used to have more people in them.
Re the Letby press conference today, a couple of comments:
1) The new team have to keep things on the boil publicity wise in order to be seen to be doing their job
2) I suggest taking no view about the 'expert change of mind' until the expert involved has clearly said the same
3) It is still worthy of note that although the defence in the trial challenged the admissibility and reliability of that particular expert, and made it a ground of appeal, nonetheless they called in defence no evidence at all to rebut what he said at the trial, despite (it is said) having material available
4) Draw no conclusions until the defence failure to call expert evidence is explained.
I can't find St Nicholas on a roof boss of Norwich Cathedral, though he'll be on a misericord somewhere.
But I did find "Man Fights Dragon", who has a red robe - but if it's anyone it's St George. Not one of the big ones, but my photo quota. Dragons apparently grew a bit between the 15C and the Hobbit.
Father Christmas seems to be 17C in England, around the time of the Republic when traditions were suppressed, at a rapid look.
Thank goodness for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, when King Charles II restored Christmas, Father Christmas/St Nicholas and theatres and May dancing after the misery of Oliver Cromwell's rule in the one and only Republic of England and Wales we have ever had
It was actually King Charles 1 who signed the first banning of Christmas in 1640 in Scotland and in 1642 in England. We were not yet a Commonwealth, and Oliver Cromwell was otherwise engaged in fighting the civil war.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
We don't even have a parish council. The voters turned down the offer of one twenty years ago or so.
I assume a relatively new area or effectively a town, 99% of English villages and hamlets have a Parish council
town
Funny thing is any parish council can ask to be renamed as a town council (legally there's no difference), so I wonder if any have done the reverse. I am aware of at least a few parish councils which represent larger areas (by electors) than some towns.
Having suffered with a Town Council, District Council and a County Council all at the same time, the first independent, the other two Tory and LD only, I'm 100% with Angela.
Especially when some District Councillors double up as County Council.
The Town Council non political do a great job with limited funding, the County Council is doing a decent job and the District Council is full of corruption, thieves and vagabonds.
A previous DC leader clung on through 2 years of corruption, vat fraud and environmental dumping charges, before being found guilty but blowing his own head off before sentancing.
Won't miss the DC and his clan at all
Better still we get a Unitary body.
What happens if the unitary is a rebadged version of your District Council?
Fundamentally switching to unitaries is a good idea imo so I for one an supportive of this move by Labour. If our district (Lab) councillor runs for the ward I'd vote for him, though the county councillor who I don't know from Eve would probably get seniority within Lab
I expect Kemi will be delighted with the switch to unitaries and county council elections being off next year, as the Tories won the last county council elections by 7% NEV in 2021 so she can only go down relative to Boris then.
By contrast Labour won the 2022 local district elections clearly and Labour and the LDs won the 2023 and 2024 local district council elections v a Rishi led Tories by a landslide, so when the new unitaries come in she can start afresh and say she is doing better than Rishi rather than worse than Boris at his peak.
Harder for Conservatives to dump a duff leader if there aren't bad council election results to blame her for.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
Looks like county council elections may be off then next year in most areas where county and district councils agree to move to unitaries from 2026
Presumably the new councils will need to exist in shadow form for at least a while before going live.
(Me, I suspect that JFDI is now the way to go. Consultation will lead to mithering for partisan advantage, which is roughly what happened in 1972-4 and again in the mid 1990s. Personally, I would put all the council leaders in a room tomorrow, have a Christmas party in the next room, and tell them that they can start photocopying their bottoms the moment they have a map for their county sorted.)
If the borders are agreed in January 2025, how quickly do electoral reviews happen these days? Especially if existing wards are used as building blocks?
If the Elections are delayed, Mr Farage will be sounding as if someone had inserted a conical cactus where the sun doesn't shine.
I've been slightly distracted by a video about a project in Usonia called the "Montlake Lid and Pedestrian Bridge Grand Opening", where they have spent half a billion dollars to create 3 acres of "green space" and umpteen urban motorways.
It is allegedly "to help everyone get where they need to do", but the fucking thing has open crosswalks across 8-10 lanes of traffic. Of course, connections are strictly limited - it's stuck in the 1950s.
I can't comment on the design of the bridge until the blood pressure has gone back down.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Most district council employees would become town council employees? You must have some enormous town council organisations round your way, given the scale of district council staff you expect them to take on.
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept. The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23. 5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23 846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23 308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23 104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23 https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
My kids are the same. Really hard to stop this creeping Americanisation when virtually *everyone* describes him as such.
We keep telling them he has "two names" but it doesn't help that Santa is easier to say.
My daughter's friends are all now saying "ladybug". One of them even talks about playing out in "the yard".
There was a time when most urban-dwellers didn't have a garden but they might have a small paved yard area with room for a water butt, the dustbin, etc. I am sure my grandmother from the East End referred to outside as "the yard".
Yes,I can confirm that usage of 'the yard' from my childhood in the East End. Everyone would know what was meant.
Whereas in the US “the yard” means anything from an actual yard to a vast landscaped garden with duck pond.
As far as I am aware, the red coated, bearded, welly wearing chap has always been Santa in the West of Scotland, never Father Christmas. Is that also the case in other places?
Same also in the parts of the world, or at least Scotland, where we have brown sauce with our haddock suppers.
Yet more Jocksplaining on PB, like the time we were all accused of marrying our first cousins.
I can't find St Nicholas on a roof boss of Norwich Cathedral, though he'll be on a misericord somewhere.
But I did find "Man Fights Dragon", who has a red robe - but if it's anyone it's St George. Not one of the big ones, but my photo quota. Dragons apparently grew a bit between the 15C and the Hobbit.
Father Christmas seems to be 17C in England, around the time of the Republic when traditions were suppressed, at a rapid look.
Thank goodness for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, when King Charles II restored Christmas, Father Christmas/St Nicholas and theatres and May dancing after the misery of Oliver Cromwell's rule in the one and only Republic of England and Wales we have ever had
Blimey, East Anglians have long memories and bear grudges like you can't believe it.
Personally I would rather abolish the County Council and keep the District Council.
The government's preferred number of 1/2 a million per unitary does not, unless I'm mistaken, explain why that is more beneficial. Feels very 'plucked out of a drawer in Whitehall', plenty of existing unitaries are not that big.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
If shecorns is tim I'll eat my hat. It's leon.
Not vicious enough to be tim.
But if it is, he'll piss off again when I remind him he owes me a gold sovereign.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
If shecorns is tim I'll eat my hat. It's leon.
She/he is neither - just a poorly trained Labour intern
Re the Letby press conference today, a couple of comments:
1) The new team have to keep things on the boil publicity wise in order to be seen to be doing their job
2) I suggest taking no view about the 'expert change of mind' until the expert involved has clearly said the same
3) It is still worthy of note that although the defence in the trial challenged the admissibility and reliability of that particular expert, and made it a ground of appeal, nonetheless they called in defence no evidence at all to rebut what he said at the trial, despite (it is said) having material available
4) Draw no conclusions until the defence failure to call expert evidence is explained.
The commentary on both sides seems to be mixing up two different questions. Did she do it? Was she properly convicted? And you can apply those separately to each death for any number of combinations.
For instance, why the defence took a certain line at trial or did not call rebuttal evidence addresses the question of conviction but not innocence. Likewise it is easily possible that Letby did kill all or some of the babies but that the court's understanding of probability and statistics was low to zero.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
Before I die, I hope to see Sturgeon and Murrell in jail. Unfortunately, it’s too late for Salmond to see them in jail.
Hopefully the rest of teh evil barstewards will also join them
Complex financial crimes taking years to investigate and (relatively) small sums, with Sturgeon not even charged yet? I'd expect her in jail about the same time as Trump, that is, never.
Personally I would rather abolish the County Council and keep the District Council.
The government's preferred number of 1/2 a million per unitary does not, unless I'm mistaken, explain why that is more beneficial. Feels very 'plucked out of a drawer in Whitehall', plenty of existing unitaries are not that big.
Also, it makes sense to have different sized councils, so that council officers can learn how to run a small council before moving to a bigger one for career development
FWIW, in recent years -- in this very secular part of the United States -- "Christmas" is being gradually replaced by "holidays". A few days ago, after making a purchase, I pleased the older woman behind the counter, and annoyed the younger woman, by saying "Merry Christmas" to both of them. So I amended that to say: "Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, or both, whichever you prefer."
Even Santa Claus is less common than he was even 10 years ago. For much longer than that, Christmas trees have been being replaced by what I call "holiday" trees. They look like Christmas trees, but, when you look closely you see that the tree is topped by a snow flake, rather than a star.
The local Google operation has taken that further and puts up what I call "designer" trees, with simple two-color designs.
I think the long-term goal for the "holidays" folks here is to replace "Christmas" with a "Festival of Lights".
(Me? I'll use whichever greeting other people prefer, as long as they are peaceful.)
Feck them , Santa and Christmas for me and the wishy washy woke nutters can suck it up
Re the Letby press conference today, a couple of comments:
1) The new team have to keep things on the boil publicity wise in order to be seen to be doing their job
2) I suggest taking no view about the 'expert change of mind' until the expert involved has clearly said the same
3) It is still worthy of note that although the defence in the trial challenged the admissibility and reliability of that particular expert, and made it a ground of appeal, nonetheless they called in defence no evidence at all to rebut what he said at the trial, despite (it is said) having material available
4) Draw no conclusions until the defence failure to call expert evidence is explained.
The commentary on both sides seems to be mixing up two different questions. Did she do it? Was she properly convicted? And you can apply those separately to each death for any number of combinations.
For instance, why the defence took a certain line at trial or did not call rebuttal evidence addresses the question of conviction but not innocence. Likewise it is easily possible that Letby did kill all or some of the babies but that the court's understanding of probability and statistics was low to zero.
I just don't like the presentation of every new move by the defence team as automatically some devastating new element. Of course the team will do it that way, media commentators should be more cautious unless they have been truly immersed in the details of the trial and so can contextualise the significance better.
FWIW, in recent years -- in this very secular part of the United States -- "Christmas" is being gradually replaced by "holidays". A few days ago, after making a purchase, I pleased the older woman behind the counter, and annoyed the younger woman, by saying "Merry Christmas" to both of them. So I amended that to say: "Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, or both, whichever you prefer."
Even Santa Claus is less common than he was even 10 years ago. For much longer than that, Christmas trees have been being replaced by what I call "holiday" trees. They look like Christmas trees, but, when you look closely you see that the tree is topped by a snow flake, rather than a star.
The local Google operation has taken that further and puts up what I call "designer" trees, with simple two-color designs.
I think the long-term goal for the "holidays" folks here is to replace "Christmas" with a "Festival of Lights".
(Me? I'll use whichever greeting other people prefer, as long as they are peaceful.)
Feck them , Santa and Christmas for me and the wishy washy woke nutters can suck it up
You tell them Malc !!!!
And a happy Christmas to you, your good lady, and family
I need to catch up on this. I can see it being beneficial IF it is done at a moderate pace that can be adapted to, which imo means over a number of years.
Changes we have seen around Mayors have been very gradual, and seem to have demonstrated that the concept can work in Metro areas. For me the evidence is not so clear in more rural regions yet,
Moderate? Ministers now saying they want plans from all 21 counties by mid-Jan.
Planning to scrap some if not the majority of council elections for affected authories via legislation in late Feb.
They do appear to be in an almighty hurry. Which people were expecting based on prior comments, which is why places like Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire abandoned their opposition to mayoralties on the basis it would be pointless to resist (there is token talk of exceptions to various requirements and potential for bespoke arrangements, but it is very clear that is not going to happen in nearly all cases), but it seems overly ambitious to me.
I do love how there is still an effort to pretend this is not being forced on places, but talking about working 'collaboratively' to deliver the ambition of unversal coverage, even though the white paper makes clear you agree it, or it will be done anyway.
However, in order to ensure a complete national layer of Strategic Authorities is in place to devolve further powers to in future, we will legislate for a ministerial directive, which will enable the government to create Strategic Authorities in any remaining places where local leaders in that region have not been able to agree how to access devolved powers...we will ensure that the ministerial directive is used to conclude the process where there is majority support, or the formation is essential in completing the roll out of Strategic Authorities in England
One weird minor aspect of the white paper is intent to remove the ability of 'Strategic Authorities' to call Mayors by another name. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure anyone has done that anyway? I think it may have been a Gove wheeze to give potential to be called Governors or something, given people suggested mayor sounded odd for big rural areas.
I'm hoping for a bit of out-of-the-box thinking. Where I am, it would make sense to combine districts in Hants, Surrey and Berkshire to make a Blackwater area, although it would really need dividing some districts as for example Fleet and Yateley are commuter towns that would sit well within it, but a lot of the rest of Hart is rural Hampshire. So it could be made up of Rushmoor, Surrey Heath and parts of Hart, Guildford and Bracknell Forest (ie Sandhurst). Arguably Farnham as well but they will never wear it
Broadly Redcliffe-Maud's "West Surrey" (centred on Guildford). And the politically unpleasant logic is that even deep rural areas look to somewhere substantial and that's not necessarily the historical county town and it probably is where the bulk of local government should be.
I was more thinking of the liminal areas, although as I said I'd add Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnborough/Aldershot_built-up_area?wprov=sfla1 I don't think any of the towns are really dependant on Guildford and in any case Surrey would still have enough population to have a West Surrey and an East Surrey unitory
Personally I would rather abolish the County Council and keep the District Council.
The government's preferred number of 1/2 a million per unitary does not, unless I'm mistaken, explain why that is more beneficial. Feels very 'plucked out of a drawer in Whitehall', plenty of existing unitaries are not that big.
Also, it makes sense to have different sized councils, so that council officers can learn how to run a small council before moving to a bigger one for career development
Locally our council struggles for money because it's just too small. I think all the Tees Valley ones are too small but except for Stockton I wouldn't want to merge with any of them..
Personally I would rather abolish the County Council and keep the District Council.
The government's preferred number of 1/2 a million per unitary does not, unless I'm mistaken, explain why that is more beneficial. Feels very 'plucked out of a drawer in Whitehall', plenty of existing unitaries are not that big.
Only four out of fifty-six are over 500,000 population.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Most district council employees would become town council employees? You must have some enormous town council organisations round your way, given the scale of district council staff you expect them to take on.
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept. The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23. 5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23 846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23 308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23 104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23 https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
There are multiple town councils and masses of Parish councils in district council areas so district council employees would be split between them to take on their extra responsibilities. District council precept would be scrapped so overall council tax payers would pay 0 extra
Before I die, I hope to see Sturgeon and Murrell in jail. Unfortunately, it’s too late for Salmond to see them in jail.
Hopefully the rest of teh evil barstewards will also join them
Complex financial crimes taking years to investigate and (relatively) small sums, with Sturgeon not even charged yet? I'd expect her in jail about the same time as Trump, that is, never.
Probably before Boris, Sunak, Mone, Harding and Co who spirited away Billions
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
As soon as January, I believe.
So the past 14 years count for nothing
If he hasvto chose a devil to dance with, Chinese far more trustworthy than Trump and Musk.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Most district council employees would become town council employees? You must have some enormous town council organisations round your way, given the scale of district council staff you expect them to take on.
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept. The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23. 5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23 846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23 308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23 104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23 https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
There are multiple town councils and masses of Parish councils in district council areas so district council employees would be split between them to take on their extra responsibilities. District council precept would be scrapped so overall council tax payers would be 0 extra
You are deeply confusing me.
Are you suggesting that towns and parishes would raise their precepts to match the district council amount which will no longer exist, and they could do that without losing popularity somehow? As if residents will perform a mental calculation that they are no worse off, rather than seeing that their local parish precept has gone up by 500% (that is easily possible, with very low starting precepts).
And none of this even touches upon that most parish councils would not want to do that. You must know many parish councils - I am sure some take in more than the bear minimum in precept in order to pay for things in their parish, but plenty others surely do not. I certainly know many like that.
You have a dream for towns and parishes, which is nice, but given they mostly don't take advantage of the powers they already have, it seems unlikely they'd be capable of doing way more than they do now.
I can't find St Nicholas on a roof boss of Norwich Cathedral, though he'll be on a misericord somewhere.
But I did find "Man Fights Dragon", who has a red robe - but if it's anyone it's St George. Not one of the big ones, but my photo quota. Dragons apparently grew a bit between the 15C and the Hobbit.
Father Christmas seems to be 17C in England, around the time of the Republic when traditions were suppressed, at a rapid look.
Thank goodness for the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, when King Charles II restored Christmas, Father Christmas/St Nicholas and theatres and May dancing after the misery of Oliver Cromwell's rule in the one and only Republic of England and Wales we have ever had
It was actually King Charles 1 who signed the first banning of Christmas in 1640 in Scotland and in 1642 in England. We were not yet a Commonwealth, and Oliver Cromwell was otherwise engaged in fighting the civil war.
A lot of anti Cromwell propaganda was spread by monarchist after the Restoration, before the Stuarts were finally booted out.
No it was the Presbyterian Church of Scotland who banned Christmas there in 1640 not Charles I.
The first English ban on Christmas was passed in 1644 by the Roundhead Parliament and as your link says 'In 1645 Parliament introduced a new 'Directory of Public Worship', designed as a replacement for the Book of Common Prayer, setting out a new form of worship for the Anglican church. It said that Christmas, Easter and other such festivals were no longer to be observed with special services or celebrations.'
Protestant Puritans perceived Christmas celebrations as too Catholic
Re the Letby press conference today, a couple of comments:
1) The new team have to keep things on the boil publicity wise in order to be seen to be doing their job
2) I suggest taking no view about the 'expert change of mind' until the expert involved has clearly said the same
3) It is still worthy of note that although the defence in the trial challenged the admissibility and reliability of that particular expert, and made it a ground of appeal, nonetheless they called in defence no evidence at all to rebut what he said at the trial, despite (it is said) having material available
4) Draw no conclusions until the defence failure to call expert evidence is explained.
The commentary on both sides seems to be mixing up two different questions. Did she do it? Was she properly convicted? And you can apply those separately to each death for any number of combinations.
For instance, why the defence took a certain line at trial or did not call rebuttal evidence addresses the question of conviction but not innocence. Likewise it is easily possible that Letby did kill all or some of the babies but that the court's understanding of probability and statistics was low to zero.
I agree with a lot of this; but one qualification on the failure to call defence expert evidence, for which no rational explanation has been offered by the defence or by those who suggest Letby is innocent.
The overwhelmingly probable explanation is that in totality, and when analysed in the light of how it would be cross examined the defence concluded they had nothing safe to use. Either in fact their experts agreed more or less with the prosecution, or if they disagreed would nonetheless have shown in cross examination that Letby was still the killer.
The thought that the defence had decent expert evidence of innocence and didn't use it is not feasible. I draw the obvious conclusion until a better one arises.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
As soon as January, I believe.
Well that will be embarrassing!!
Stop it. I’m splitting my sides. 😂
My mum has bought every ounce of Tory Party spin for the last 3 decades, but not even she is buying this.
What the serious flipperty fuck - as Leon might say.
The Political Party so in bed with Chinese Money and Chinese Spy’s they handed over everything to them, from pub chains to power stations, and helped them get the contracts for surveillance camera’s across our country spying on us, and Chinese supplying both our military and security networks, are trying to make out this exposé of their own behaviour and too cosy relationships with the Chinese government, is a problem for Starmer and Labour?
Personally I would rather abolish the County Council and keep the District Council.
The government's preferred number of 1/2 a million per unitary does not, unless I'm mistaken, explain why that is more beneficial. Feels very 'plucked out of a drawer in Whitehall', plenty of existing unitaries are not that big.
ISTR Redcliff Maud also aimed for that figure, with the justification being around optimising efficiency of service provsion. Feels surprising that the optimum number in 1970 should also be the optimum number in 2020, given the changed role of local government (particularly education) and the change to the nature of work.
Local government reform has always been political. The Redcliffe Maud Commission was set up by the Wilson Government as part of its reform agenda. I was distantly involved as part of the academic research unit headed by Jim Sharpe. The main argument was that the governing structure should be related to under pinning social and economic realities. Hence the concept of city regions based on things like commuting patterns and bus networks. However the Conservatives saw that as the towns taking over their suburban and rural hinterlands and when they returned to power they set up a system of powerful counties and relatively weak districts. Since then there have been attempts to meddle with the system - again often for political reasons ( e.g. the abolition of the GLC). Powerful mayors based in large cities and towns is the latest Labour effort.
Worth pointing out that the drive for powerful urban mayors was an Osborneism.
I wrote a dissertation on local government reform, with a heavy focus on Redcliffe Maud. Even then, my rather weak conclusion was that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. On the continuum of rationalist to romantic, I've swung very marginally to the romantic over the last 30 years. I'd like a local government structure that people can identify with. That doesn't necessarily correspond to commmuting patterns.
What I most want, of course, is an immutable system of sub-national divisions such that I can ask a question like "how many teams from Cheshire have ever played in the football league" without then having to explain what I mean by "Cheshire" (or indeed "the football league"). That doesn't necessarily have to correspond to local government, though there are certain advantages to it doing so. If we have to start again at year zero, so be it. As long as we can then leave it untouched for another thousand years.
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Most district council employees would become town council employees? You must have some enormous town council organisations round your way, given the scale of district council staff you expect them to take on.
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept. The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23. 5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23 846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23 308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23 104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23 https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
There are multiple town councils and masses of Parish councils in district council areas so district council employees would be split between them to take on their extra responsibilities. District council precept would be scrapped so overall council tax payers would be 0 extra
You are deeply confusing me.
Are you suggesting that towns and parishes would raise their precepts to match the district council amount which will no longer exist, and they could do that without losing popularity somehow? As if residents will perform a mental calculation that they are no worse off, rather than seeing that their local parish precept has gone up by 500% (that is easily possible, with very low starting precepts).
And none of this even touches upon that most parish councils would not want to do that. You must know many parish councils - I am sure some take in more than the bear minimum in precept in order to pay for things in their parish, but plenty others surely do not. I certainly know many like that.
You have a dream for towns and parishes, which is nice, but given they mostly don't take advantage of the powers they already have, it seems unlikely they'd be capable of doing way more than they do now.
As overall council tax take would be unchanged yes as Parish and Town councils would just add on the amount DCs previously charged.
Or you could scrap DCs and split responsibilities, so county councils take on Local Plans and most planning and leisure centres and parish and town councils museums and bin collection
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no change.
I would very much like a more uniform approach taken across the UK (or at least England) when it comes to local government. For decades we have just got by with a very big hodgepodge of different systems but if you want to engage people in local democracy I think you need to make it more easier for people to understand what a local council does and how it is constituted and uniformity really helps here. It’s why I’m a little more ambivalent about metro mayors and mayoral systems because they’re all a little different.
And one positive side of the white paper is at least an attempt to make the mayoral system a little more consistent or at least 'off the shelf' and so consistent.
I don't think there's great attachment to local government boundaries, whether that is due to the hodgepodge I am not sure, but it is confusing. And since it was much more confusing historically there is a long trend here towards making things simpler. There are ways to continue local engagement with bigger authorities, including beloved parishes for genuinely local matters.
My concerns still relate to still having two-tier, just at different levels, and that complexity is inherently still there. There's aspirational talk about trying to align public services by areas, mention of fire and police and whatnot, but there are sometimes good reasons other services don't align. The way populations are distributed health services don't align perfectly to ceremonial or administrative counties, so if you wanted to make the NHS line up as well, as was mooted but I don't think is specifically mentioned, you'd probably need to do some principal area boundary reviews as well, and I don't remember the last time we had those.
A county like Wiltshire for example is essentially a doughnut due to the Salisbury Plain, with almost all the major towns around the edges, which makes alignment tricky.
Most voters in my experience have very little idea what councils do, but they take an interest in specific issues. So abolishing one tier seems a good idea, as well as having just one councillor for each ward, but making them properly paid and full-time. In the same way as people do approach their MP on local issues, they can get their heads around a single councillor representing them (for better or worse). At the moment most people treat council elections as a not very interesting opinion poll, but there is definitely scope for someone specifically tasked with representing a local area. It might lessen the burden on MPs, too, who are not best-placed to pontificate on local issues when they should be focusing on national ones.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
As soon as January, I believe.
Well that will be embarrassing!!
Stop it. I’m splitting my sides. 😂
My mum has bought every ounce of Tory Party spin for the last 3 decades, but not even she is buying this.
What the serious flipperty fuck - as Leon might say.
The Political Party so in bed with Chinese Money and Chinese Spy’s they handed over everything to them, from pub chains to power stations, and helped them get the contracts for surveillance camera’s across our country spying on us, and Chinese supplying both our military and security networks, are trying to make out this exposé of their own behaviour and too cosy relationships with the Chinese government, is a problem for Starmer and Labour?
🤣
This will make it much harder to cosy up to China no matter the previous relationship
Chris Patten was scathing about Starmer in his interview on Sky and he knows this subject inside out
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
If shecorns is tim I'll eat my hat. It's leon.
She/he is neither - just a poorly trained Labour intern
You have got a real problem with this poster. You are very hostile. Do you think they were perhaps involved in a curry scandal in Durham in the summer of 2021?
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
If shecorns is tim I'll eat my hat. It's leon.
She/he is neither - just a poorly trained Labour intern
You have got a real problem with this poster. You are very hostile. Do you think they were perhaps involved in a curry scandal in Durham in the summer of 2021?
As far as I am aware, the red coated, bearded, welly wearing chap has always been Santa in the West of Scotland, never Father Christmas. Is that also the case in other places?
My memories of childhood are distant and faint, but I think he was -- this was the late '70s -- Father Xmas and Santa was seen as an Americanism.
For me the definitive guide is Joan Gale Thomas in 'My book about Christmas' first publ 1946, last reprinted 1979. I had it read to me, I once upon a time read it to my children, my children now read it to their children, and so on in perpetuity.
She uses the term Father Christmas throughout, but in an indented note adds: 'Sometimes Father Christmas is called Santa Claus, which means St Nicholas'.
It is steeped in the world of the post war middle class and tells the story and the whole thing wonderfully well.
This fellow who creeps into children's bedrooms with no safeguarding and gives big presents to rich children and nothing to poor children worries me.
Father Christmas sounds like a priest. Santa is an anagram of Satan. It's all a bit worrying.
As far as I am aware, the red coated, bearded, welly wearing chap has always been Santa in the West of Scotland, never Father Christmas. Is that also the case in other places?
My memories of childhood are distant and faint, but I think he was -- this was the late '70s -- Father Xmas and Santa was seen as an Americanism.
For me the definitive guide is Joan Gale Thomas in 'My book about Christmas' first publ 1946, last reprinted 1979. I had it read to me, I once upon a time read it to my children, my children now read it to their children, and so on in perpetuity.
She uses the term Father Christmas throughout, but in an indented note adds: 'Sometimes Father Christmas is called Santa Claus, which means St Nicholas'.
It is steeped in the world of the post war middle class and tells the story and the whole thing wonderfully well.
This fellow who creeps into children's bedrooms with no safeguarding and gives gives big presents to rich children and nothing to poor children worries me.
Father Christmas sounds like a priest. Santa is an anagram of Satan. It's all a bit worrying.
He's a god. They operate by different rules to humans. But not dissimilar rules to each other.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
If shecorns is tim I'll eat my hat. It's leon.
She/he is neither - just a poorly trained Labour intern
You have got a real problem with this poster. You are very hostile. Do you think they were perhaps involved in a curry scandal in Durham in the summer of 2021?
Not really - just making a fair comment
Forgive me BigG., but I would offended to be regularly demeaned for presenting an opposing viewpoint to yourself.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
The problem for Starmer is this has come out just weeks before he was glad handing President Xi and apparently Reeves is visiting China next year
As soon as January, I believe.
Well that will be embarrassing!!
I'm not sure our Chancellor has yet demonstrated she has an understanding of "embarrassment".
She'll certainly never discover the concept of "an embarrassment of riches"...
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Most district council employees would become town council employees? You must have some enormous town council organisations round your way, given the scale of district council staff you expect them to take on.
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept. The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23. 5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23 846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23 308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23 104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23 https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
There are multiple town councils and masses of Parish councils in district council areas so district council employees would be split between them to take on their extra responsibilities. District council precept would be scrapped so overall council tax payers would be 0 extra
You are deeply confusing me.
Are you suggesting that towns and parishes would raise their precepts to match the district council amount which will no longer exist, and they could do that without losing popularity somehow? As if residents will perform a mental calculation that they are no worse off, rather than seeing that their local parish precept has gone up by 500% (that is easily possible, with very low starting precepts).
And none of this even touches upon that most parish councils would not want to do that. You must know many parish councils - I am sure some take in more than the bear minimum in precept in order to pay for things in their parish, but plenty others surely do not. I certainly know many like that.
You have a dream for towns and parishes, which is nice, but given they mostly don't take advantage of the powers they already have, it seems unlikely they'd be capable of doing way more than they do now.
As overall council tax take would be unchanged yes as Parish and Town councils would just add on the amount DCs previously charged.
Or you could scrap DCs and split responsibilities, so county councils take on Local Plans and most planning and leisure centres and parish and town councils museums and bin collection
And you think most parish councils currently charging £10-20 per year, as some do, want to add on the DC amount to their own books, and take action relating to it?
Many councils have a maximum of 5 councillors (the minimum permitted), would that need to be increased through a mass series of community governance reviews? And many struggle to fill that many, hence so many councils not having contested elections. Indeed, it is not unheard of for no-one to put themselves forward at all and reruns needing to be raised. The principal authority can appoint people to serve as temporary councillors, but that is not sustainable, what if nobody or not enough in a village of 200 people wants to sit on the council, who then runs it? You don't have that risk with districts and counties.
Off topic Sky news really annoy me when they flick over to the great Orange one when I'm trying to follow the Letby news conference
Well, I've been wondering if she had the same lawyers the Orange Haired One had, given how peculiar they seem, but I wasn't expecting the link to be that specific.
Trump just announced cut of 2 trillion from federal budget and tax cuts for all
No, he hasn't announced anything more than an intention. Both those things will have to clear Congress. Which given the slim margin in the House, won't be a trivial matter.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
Chill out tim
If shecorns is tim I'll eat my hat. It's leon.
She/he is neither - just a poorly trained Labour intern
You have got a real problem with this poster. You are very hostile. Do you think they were perhaps involved in a curry scandal in Durham in the summer of 2021?
Not really - just making a fair comment
Shecorns88 reminds me of a poster from about 15 years ago called Chamereon, who so despised Tories that he could barely bring himself to post about them without abuse or slander. (At least, that's how I remember his posts). Even his handle was an attemot to crowbar the names 'Cameron' and 'Chameleon' into a portmanteau word. And thus we learned, in effect, nothing more than "Chamereon doesn't like Tories". Though at least with Shecorns 88 we have also learned, surprisingly, of her disdain for Ray Wilkins.
"I believe the U.S. Government knows what the “drones” are and doesn’t wish to clear this up definitively, preferring panic & loss of credibility to disclosure.
That is the least crazy thing that could be happening. And that is totally crazy."
As far as I am aware, the red coated, bearded, welly wearing chap has always been Santa in the West of Scotland, never Father Christmas. Is that also the case in other places?
My memories of childhood are distant and faint, but I think he was -- this was the late '70s -- Father Xmas and Santa was seen as an Americanism.
For me the definitive guide is Joan Gale Thomas in 'My book about Christmas' first publ 1946, last reprinted 1979. I had it read to me, I once upon a time read it to my children, my children now read it to their children, and so on in perpetuity.
She uses the term Father Christmas throughout, but in an indented note adds: 'Sometimes Father Christmas is called Santa Claus, which means St Nicholas'.
It is steeped in the world of the post war middle class and tells the story and the whole thing wonderfully well.
This fellow who creeps into children's bedrooms with no safeguarding and gives big presents to rich children and nothing to poor children worries me.
Father Christmas sounds like a priest. Santa is an anagram of Satan. It's all a bit worrying.
Poor children get presents too, he even visits orphanages and places like Clacton and Stoke and Gorbals
John Rentoul is right. Where is the clamour for ending district councils?
Or they could just merge district councils responsibilities into Town or Parish councils and keep county councils as is which would be far more popular than these new unitaries will be and with stronger local links
Popular how? County councils are not popular, and indeed will cover larger areas than some new unitaries might (eg Surrey County Council is so large it surely will contain at least 2 unitaries, of smaller area and thus stronger local links)
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
County councils are more popular than District councils in my experience and Parish or Town councils more popular than both.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Most district council employees would become town council employees? You must have some enormous town council organisations round your way, given the scale of district council staff you expect them to take on.
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept. The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23. 5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23 846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23 308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23 104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23 https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
There are multiple town councils and masses of Parish councils in district council areas so district council employees would be split between them to take on their extra responsibilities. District council precept would be scrapped so overall council tax payers would be 0 extra
You are deeply confusing me.
Are you suggesting that towns and parishes would raise their precepts to match the district council amount which will no longer exist, and they could do that without losing popularity somehow? As if residents will perform a mental calculation that they are no worse off, rather than seeing that their local parish precept has gone up by 500% (that is easily possible, with very low starting precepts).
And none of this even touches upon that most parish councils would not want to do that. You must know many parish councils - I am sure some take in more than the bear minimum in precept in order to pay for things in their parish, but plenty others surely do not. I certainly know many like that.
You have a dream for towns and parishes, which is nice, but given they mostly don't take advantage of the powers they already have, it seems unlikely they'd be capable of doing way more than they do now.
As overall council tax take would be unchanged yes as Parish and Town councils would just add on the amount DCs previously charged.
Or you could scrap DCs and split responsibilities, so county councils take on Local Plans and most planning and leisure centres and parish and town councils museums and bin collection
And you think most parish councils currently charging £10-20 per year, as some do, want to add on the DC amount to their own books, and take action relating to it?
Many councils have a maximum of 5 councillors (the minimum permitted), would that need to be increased through a mass series of community governance reviews? And many struggle to fill that many, hence so many councils not having contested elections. Indeed, it is not unheard of for no-one to put themselves forward at all and reruns needing to be raised. The principal authority can appoint people to serve as temporary councillors, but that is not sustainable, what if nobody or not enough in a village of 200 people wants to sit on the council, who then runs it? You don't have that risk with districts and counties.
Well of course if they take on some DC services.
The scrapped DC councilor allowances would also be used to fund Parish and Town councillor allowances for the first time, so more would stand as they would get paid for being councillors even at Parish or Town level unlike now
Comments
(Me, I suspect that JFDI is now the way to go. Consultation will lead to mithering for partisan advantage, which is roughly what happened in 1972-4 and again in the mid 1990s. Personally, I would put all the council leaders in a room tomorrow, have a Christmas party in the next room, and tell them that they can start photocopying their bottoms the moment they have a map for their county sorted.)
If the borders are agreed in January 2025, how quickly do electoral reviews happen these days? Especially if existing wards are used as building blocks?
I believe in previous deals there has been formal consultation and, technically, votes in councils to accept, but I don't think they really meet the Gunning principles as far as consultations go.
The manifesto was typical vague fluff which can be used to say pretty much anything - all manifestos usually talk about taking power out of whitehall to give to local areas.
In England, Labour will deepen devolution settlements for existing Combined Authorities. We will also widen devolution to more areas, encouraging local authorities to come together and take on new powers... Local areas will be able to gain new powers over transport, adult education and skills, housing and planning, and employment support. We will ensure those places have the strong governance arrangements, capacity, and capability to deliver, providing central support where needed... Labour will review the governance arrangements for Combined Authorities to unblock decision making.
Electoral reviews should not be an issue, as they can do a quick and dirty one and then revisit - hence why Buckinghamshire started with 147 councillors but is due to have 97 at its second election.
With the LDs holding Oxfordshire, Surrey and a few others and Labour confined to the big city councils like Birmingham and Manchester and the London Assembly
1) England is very highly centralised.
2) We need to devolve power outward to local government.
3) We must therefore impose from the centre a new form of local government on areas, whether they want it or not.
By contrast Labour won the 2022 local district elections clearly and Labour and the LDs won the 2023 and 2024 local district council elections v a Rishi led Tories by a landslide, so when the new unitaries come in she can start afresh and say she is doing better than Rishi rather than worse than Boris at his peak.
And I hate to harp on this point, but just how do you expect a parish council of 150 people to take on district council responsibilities? It remains government policy (until they remember to look at it again at least) to have more parishes emerge, not fewer, so there's not going to a consolidation of them (nor would it even work, given how many and how small many are).
Again, I think there are some real issues with the proposals, and welcome stronger powers for towns and parishes, but hinging opposition to it on the 'popularity' of districts or counties is just laughable in its misunderstanding of how people react to their local councils.
So many people do not know anything about local councils, I've had relatively senior people in local government itself ask if General Elections mean local councils change control as well. The average resident has no chance.
Charlene White to Peston "this is a massive problem for Sir Keir Starmer isn't it"
Cue Peston
2 minutes of anti SKS bull rap, ignoring the pictures on the suspects desk of him with the Camerons and the Mays and Prince Andrew.
Utterly biased, not telling the facts and basically turning it in to another anti Starmer rant whilst completely ignoring the past 14 years and overwhelming failure of security services under Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss.
She uses the term Father Christmas throughout, but in an indented note adds: 'Sometimes Father Christmas is called Santa Claus, which means St Nicholas'.
It is steeped in the world of the post war middle class and tells the story and the whole thing wonderfully well.
Even Santa Claus is less common than he was even 10 years ago. For much longer than that, Christmas trees have been being replaced by what I call "holiday" trees. They look like Christmas trees, but, when you look closely you see that the tree is topped by a snow flake, rather than a star.
The local Google operation has taken that further and puts up what I call "designer" trees, with simple two-color designs.
I think the long-term goal for the "holidays" folks here is to replace "Christmas" with a "Festival of Lights".
(Me? I'll use whichever greeting other people prefer, as long as they are peaceful.)
https://news.sky.com/story/wisconsin-five-killed-including-juvenile-suspect-in-wisconsin-school-shooting-13275031
I don't think there's great attachment to local government boundaries, whether that is due to the hodgepodge I am not sure, but it is confusing. And since it was much more confusing historically there is a long trend here towards making things simpler. There are ways to continue local engagement with bigger authorities, including beloved parishes for genuinely local matters.
My concerns still relate to still having two-tier, just at different levels, and that complexity is inherently still there. There's aspirational talk about trying to align public services by areas, mention of fire and police and whatnot, but there are sometimes good reasons other services don't align. The way populations are distributed health services don't align perfectly to ceremonial or administrative counties, so if you wanted to make the NHS line up as well, as was mooted but I don't think is specifically mentioned, you'd probably need to do some principal area boundary reviews as well, and I don't remember the last time we had those.
A county like Wiltshire for example is essentially a doughnut due to the Salisbury Plain, with almost all the major towns around the edges, which makes alignment tricky.
Most District council employees would become Town council employees with a few joining Parish councils if they were merged with Parish or Town councils.
It would also mean a stronger local council for the one closest to you ie based in your nearest town or village
Especially when some District Councillors double up as County Council.
The Town Council non political do a great job with limited funding, the County Council is doing a decent job and the District Council is full of corruption, thieves and vagabonds.
A previous DC leader clung on through 2 years of corruption, vat fraud and environmental dumping charges, before being found guilty but blowing his own head off before sentancing.
Won't miss the DC and his clan at all
Better still we get a Unitary body.
Under legislation if a new parish is created and has an electorate over 1000 it must have a council, anything between 150-1000 may have a council (if they don't they can always be reviewed later to get one), and those under 150 should not have a council. Some existing parishes have fewer than 150 electors, but still have councils, presumably as they used to have more people in them.
1) The new team have to keep things on the boil publicity wise in order to be seen to be doing their job
2) I suggest taking no view about the 'expert change of mind' until the expert involved has clearly said the same
3) It is still worthy of note that although the defence in the trial challenged the admissibility and reliability of that particular expert, and made it a ground of appeal, nonetheless they called in defence no evidence at all to rebut what he said at the trial, despite (it is said) having material available
4) Draw no conclusions until the defence failure to call expert evidence is explained.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv3jlzme90o
https://www.cromwellmuseum.org/cromwell/did-oliver-cromwell-ban-christmas
A lot of anti Cromwell propaganda was spread by monarchist after the Restoration, before the Stuarts were finally booted out.
Hashtagfivedeechess
I've been slightly distracted by a video about a project in Usonia called the "Montlake Lid and Pedestrian Bridge Grand Opening", where they have spent half a billion dollars to create 3 acres of "green space" and umpteen urban motorways.
It is allegedly "to help everyone get where they need to do", but the fucking thing has open crosswalks across 8-10 lanes of traffic. Of course, connections are strictly limited - it's stuck in the 1950s.
I can't comment on the design of the bridge until the blood pressure has gone back down.
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbasAdObT0I
So I'm going to have the Computer Woman read the white paper to me
At least the Gateshead Flyover is on the way out (did someone comment on that here, or was that elsewhere?).
And you will know mnay parish councils have no staff, or a single full or part time employee in many cases, especially the small ones.
So under your plans the towns and parishes owuld need to dramatically increase their precept to pay for staff - do you think that would affect their 'popularity' at all?
Especially as some big towns in the country bring in millions (104 according to the SLCC), and given the reaction in my county, people do not like that they pay so much to the towns. Raising that at all will not be popular, as many parish councils see keeping precept low as their main goal (much to frustration of unitary cllrs and districts/counties, sometimes0.
There are 10,245 parishes in England, 8,881 of which issue a precept.
The average Band D parish precept is £79.71, an increase of £4.90, or 6.5% from 2022-23.
5,610 councils have precepts exceeding £10,000, down from 5,638 in 2022-23
846 councils have precepts exceeding £200,000, up from 781 in 2022-23
308 councils have precepts exceeding £500,000, up from 281 in 2022-23
104 councils have precepts exceeding £1M, up from 83 in 2022-23
https://www.slcc.co.uk/parish-precepts-2023-24/
But if it is, he'll piss off again when I remind him he owes me a gold sovereign.
For instance, why the defence took a certain line at trial or did not call rebuttal evidence addresses the question of conviction but not innocence. Likewise it is easily possible that Letby did kill all or some of the babies but that the court's understanding of probability and statistics was low to zero.
Should have guessed when reporter turned up to ask the Mayor to see the mass grave.
And "Which one?" comes the reply.
And a happy Christmas to you, your good lady, and family
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unitary_authorities_of_England
Only seven are even within 100,000 of the half million
If he hasvto chose a devil to dance with, Chinese far more trustworthy than Trump and Musk.
Are you suggesting that towns and parishes would raise their precepts to match the district council amount which will no longer exist, and they could do that without losing popularity somehow? As if residents will perform a mental calculation that they are no worse off, rather than seeing that their local parish precept has gone up by 500% (that is easily possible, with very low starting precepts).
And none of this even touches upon that most parish councils would not want to do that. You must know many parish councils - I am sure some take in more than the bear minimum in precept in order to pay for things in their parish, but plenty others surely do not. I certainly know many like that.
You have a dream for towns and parishes, which is nice, but given they mostly don't take advantage of the powers they already have, it seems unlikely they'd be capable of doing way more than they do now.
The first English ban on Christmas was passed in 1644 by the Roundhead Parliament and as your link says 'In 1645 Parliament introduced a new 'Directory of Public Worship', designed as a replacement for the Book of Common Prayer, setting out a new form of worship for the Anglican church. It said that Christmas, Easter and other such festivals were no longer to be observed with special services or celebrations.'
Protestant Puritans perceived Christmas celebrations as too Catholic
The overwhelmingly probable explanation is that in totality, and when analysed in the light of how it would be cross examined the defence concluded they had nothing safe to use. Either in fact their experts agreed more or less with the prosecution, or if they disagreed would nonetheless have shown in cross examination that Letby was still the killer.
The thought that the defence had decent expert evidence of innocence and didn't use it is not feasible. I draw the obvious conclusion until a better one arises.
My mum has bought every ounce of Tory Party spin for the last 3 decades, but not even she is buying this.
What the serious flipperty fuck - as Leon might say.
The Political Party so in bed with Chinese Money and Chinese Spy’s they handed over everything to them, from pub chains to power stations, and helped them get the contracts for surveillance camera’s across our country spying on us, and Chinese supplying both our military and security networks, are trying to make out this exposé of their own behaviour and too cosy relationships with the Chinese government, is a problem for Starmer and Labour?
🤣
Or you could scrap DCs and split responsibilities, so county councils take on Local Plans and most planning and leisure centres and parish and town councils museums and bin collection
Chris Patten was scathing about Starmer in his interview on Sky and he knows this subject inside out
Father Christmas sounds like a priest. Santa is an anagram of Satan. It's all a bit worrying.
She'll certainly never discover the concept of "an embarrassment of riches"...
Many councils have a maximum of 5 councillors (the minimum permitted), would that need to be increased through a mass series of community governance reviews? And many struggle to fill that many, hence so many councils not having contested elections. Indeed, it is not unheard of for no-one to put themselves forward at all and reruns needing to be raised. The principal authority can appoint people to serve as temporary councillors, but that is not sustainable, what if nobody or not enough in a village of 200 people wants to sit on the council, who then runs it? You don't have that risk with districts and counties.
Both those things will have to clear Congress. Which given the slim margin in the House, won't be a trivial matter.
And thus we learned, in effect, nothing more than "Chamereon doesn't like Tories".
Though at least with Shecorns 88 we have also learned, surprisingly, of her disdain for Ray Wilkins.
Trump is on it
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1868703713428455646
"Trump just revealed that the government DOES KNOW where the “mystery drones” are coming from.
Why won’t Biden tell us the TRUTH?"
Would you trust the Dibley Parish Council with serious responsibilities? Could they do it even if you did trust them?
That is the least crazy thing that could be happening. And that is totally crazy."
https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1868671268079407506
The scrapped DC councilor allowances would also be used to fund Parish and Town councillor allowances for the first time, so more would stand as they would get paid for being councillors even at Parish or Town level unlike now