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The Green Party and the election of Mayors.
The local elections this year have an added item for people to vote on :Do they want a system of elected mayors for Wakefield? is what they will be asked in a referendum. At this stage this is just about the principle and the system, there are no candidates.
So, where does the Green Party stand on this issue? The simple answer is: we oppose it. And why is that,you may ask? As our policy statement makes clear.( PA 356):-
“The Green Party believes that local authorities run by single party cabinets, or by directly-elected mayors.are not in the best interests of local democracy. They take decision making powers away from councils as a whole and place them in the hands of a few individuals, leading to the disenfranchisement of those councillors who are not in the ruling party and the citizens they represent. We would, therefore, reintroduce the committee system across local government at all levels, which provides for direct member involvement in decision making.”
We also believe that a mayoral contest reduces politics to a “celebrity” competition where issues and policies are seen to be of secondary importance.(You have only to look at the London system to see how that works, with the media reducing everything to a choice between “Boris” and “Ken”.)
If central government wanted local authorities to work more efficiently and effectively, then giving greater powers to councils would be a better way to bring that about. Revenue raising via the council tax is totally inadequate,and leaves councils still seeking well over half its funding from central government, with all the strings attached. How can this be called “accountability”? The ability to raise and spend their own monies is one of the main demands of the devolved parliament/assembly in Scotland and Wales, and rightly so.
The Green Party would seek to empower local councils with the right to raise their own revenues proportionately and effectively.This is true democracy.
Celebrity mayors can represent no- one but themselves,and be unremoveable from office for four years at a time.
So we would urge people to think hard about this,and just vote “No” to elected mayors.
Contact: The Chairman,Wakefield Green Party,
& nbsp; ; Brian Else. at 147,Thornes Lane, Thornes, Wakefield. WF2 7RW
The Letters Editor,
Wakefield Express,
Southgate,
Wakefield.
17th January 2011
Dear Editor,
Ed.Balls,local MP and shadow
chancellor, says in a recent interview
that “It is now inevitable that
public sector pay restraint will have
to continue” He accepts the
flawed logic and the outcomes of the
Coalition government’s programme
of cuts and austerity,and follows the
false premise that job cuts and low
pay will somehow rescue capitalism and
make the bankers and financiers safe
again. Even the various ratings
agencies, those watchdogs of financial
soundness, have issued a warning that
unalloyed austerity is self-defeating,
and will cause the economy to shrink,
not grow.
With the three major
(“grey”) parties following
this disastrous economic course,is
there any hope for an alternative
theory of how an economy should work?
The Green Party went into the
General Election in 2010 with the
policies of the Green New Deal, which
is an alternative to the failed
economics of vulture capitalism. Money
invested in jobs and infrastructure,in
renewable technologies, sustainable
local economies,taxation which is fair
and progressive, supportive systems of
benefits for the poor, and much more,
all form part of this “new
deal”.
Gordon Brown’s
“rescue” of the big
banks was the wrong response to
a failed system of financing. Down-
sizing and remutualisation would have
been the correct way to go. Cutting the
jobs and wages of the
service sector and local government
merely penalises the low-waged
and the very poor, whilst leaving
financiers and bankers free to
enjoy their gross bonuses. Most of
their money will be salted away
abroad,or fed into another
property frenzy.
For too long this country has
suffered a low-wage economy,with
too liitle raised in fair
taxation,and has made matters
worse with wage-freezes and
pension closures, yet the money is
really there all the time. The national
deficit is not insurmountable, and
could be solved by a re-balancing of
the economy, not a reduction in
spending power. The Bank of England
clearly thinks that inventing money (
via “quantative easing”,
or QE) is acceptable in order to stuff
the banks full of money,
but won’t consider priming
the jobs market with green QE via a
Green Investment Bank.
It could all be different if only
people looked to a clear
alternative economic programme
than that propounded by
the likes of Labour’s shadow
chancellor, and the Green Party offers
just that.
Yours sincerely, Brian Else. (Chairman, Wakefield Green Party).
As from: 147, Thornes Lane,
Thornes, Wakefield. WF2 7RW
(tel 01924362950 ) uk
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