Author Archives: Hilary
In Praise Of Politics
The benefits of modern democracy which we in the U.K. enjoy are diminished by the media when they invite us to confuse the real thing with synthetic ‘political entertainment’ concocted by those who then ‘report’ it. At a time when cyncism about politics is rife, people need to know about the realities of political involvement, so they can make informed judgements about whom they wish to support.
I’ve just returned from the Labour Party conference in Manchester. Personally, I was impressed. The Prime Minister and Chancellor each spoke with great authority and conviction about what politics means to and for them, and I think it would be fair to say their orations resonated clearly with what the large majority of those attending believe and were looking to be affirmed.
My belief is that the Labour Party, whatever its blips and foibles, stands for a way of life which is fair, progressive and ambitious for everyone’s future. Other major parties in the U.K. can make their own case, but there is no doubt that those who seriously subscribe to these alternative credos also believe that their politic represents a way of life which makes sense to some people. I am content to acknowledge this – and where necessary to ‘take them on’, as Tony Blair urged in his speech. No doubt willingness to contest the political territory would apply in reverse for other parties, too.
Political debate about the future
The Labour Party national conference is one of the largest and without a doubt one of the most inclusive conferences in Europe. Women and men, first-time attenders and cabinet ministers, delegates of all ages, ethnicities, faiths and walks of life, meet in the course of that event as equals to bring their richly diverse experience and expertise to the issues of the day.
And the same applies to the democratic political process in the U.K. on a wider scale.
The critical point is this. Where citizens are prepared to give their time and other personal resources to engaging in debate about the future of our country (and that of the globe), they should be respected for having the courage and conviction to do so.
Of course there are caveats to this general position. When opposing parties permit the debate to become unpleasantly personal, or when they step outside the boundaries of decency (as for instance the British National Party does frequently) they diminish fundamentally the democratic process and thereby lose the right to respect and engagement in that process.
Synthetic ‘news’
So what do we make of the media coverage this week?
Frankly, it has not so far been consistently of the best. I have no problem about considered critiques, or even criticism, of the political offer – that’s what politics is about – but I have plenty of reservations about lead stories concerning what Cherie might or might not have muttered to herself, or about the future prospects of John Reid and Gordon Brown, following the synthetic televised gruelling of a supposedly ‘representative’ (and, for its purpose, woefully small) focus group.
This is the media making the news, not reporting it…. Not an unusual occurrence, but one which does not deserve the headline reporting these matters were given. There are serious issues at stake, and the wider public needs to know about them. Such trivial issues are entertaining, but they don’t take us very far in understanding what the underlying politics is all about.
Politics as commitment
Perhaps this needs to be said loud and clear: Many people are involved in politics with no expectation of personal reward. Most professional politicians go the extra mile and more (if they don’t, they deserve the abrupt termination of their political careers which is likely to follow).
Politics on the ground comprises hours of envelope stuffing and telephone calls; it requires rainy Saturday mornings in surgeries in what are now called challenging contexts; it involves knocking on the doors of not-always-appreciative strangers; it requires digging into one’s own pocket far more than filling it. And, critically, it demands the courage and conviction to stand up and say what one believes, and to take the reputational consequences.
And, most of all, decent politics at every level is underpinned by hope for the future – the belief that people can be persuaded to one’s view of what could be.
Politics as entitlement
I disagree fundamentally with the politics of the right, but I agree that sometimes the questions posed by right-wing politicians are valuable pointers to important issues which require resolution. I also accept that, within the bounds of decency and respect for other decent people (a requirement of us all), those who promote such right-wing positions have an entitlement to do so.
Political debate from the beginning of time has been the fairest way to decide who has the best ideas about what should happen, and who should be given the power to make that come about.
News, Politics or Entertainment?
If the media want to tell stories about what Cherie might have said to herself, or about a synthetic, manufactured event around the future of Gordon and John, no-one should stop them, self-serving of media pundits and distracting from serious debate though these stories are. Indeed, perhaps we are all complicit in this, at least insofar as the media would say we read this stuff and don’t challenge it.
But let’s at least ask that spurious ‘political’ stories be reported under the heading of Entertainment, not News; and let’s try to ensure that proper political reporting is delivered in ways which mark it out as Politics properly defined.
Politics is a difficult and sometimes even dangerous game; it needs, and democracy itself needs, the best people and the best efforts we can muster – and this in turn requires a modicum of underlying respect for those who still choose to make the effort.
Hope not cynicism
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If there were a better way to run modern societies than democratic politics, someone would have invented it by now. At a time when the victory of cynicism over respect for engagement in the political process has probably never been greater, we, the public, damage ourselves as well as the politicians if we don’t insist at some level that politics is fundamentally about hope for the future; and that political media-created ‘entertainment’ and democratic politics are different things.
The Conference Diversity Index
Conferences involving public funds and public policy are still too often devised and conducted as though the vast majority of the population were white, male, able-bodied and middle class. The time has come to start measuring in some way the extent to which this limited approach offers the general public value for money.
This is the twenty first century. We in Britain live in a democratic and accountable society run, on the whole, by people who are serious about ‘getting it right’.
How come, then, that I find myself so frequently incensed by the line-up and arrangements for public conferences on critical matters? The answer is simple: conferences about pressing civic matters are still very largely (not exclusively) organised and presented as if the entire planet were inhabited by able-bodied white, middle class, men.
Democratic underpinnings?
There are of course many excellent conference speakers and delegates who happen to be able-bodied, white and middle class; but theirs is not the only perspective or understanding which matters. It therefore follows that policy developed largely on the basis of this perspective will probably be weak or even downright unhelpful (and the evidence of this abounds…. just choose your own example.) So check out the next conference on any matter of general public concern:
Does it have significant diversity in its speakers and and their positions? For gender? For age? For ethnicity? For influence?
Is the agenda helpful in terms of recognising and giving weight to the diverse perspectives within its given community of interest? Do the topics listed for discussion demonstrate this clearly? Do they include specific consideration of possible future action on diversity within the theme being considered?
Is it accessible to everyone? Does it offer a significant number of places for sensible prices (say, the cost of two meals, perhaps £20)? Is it near a train station on a main line (especially if it’s more than local in its remit)? Is the venue easy to navigate for those with mobility and related problems? Assuming the issues under consideration are not privileged in some specific way, will the end-point papers be published on a free, publicly accessible and openly advertised website?
Where’s the action towards inclusion?
The Fawcett Society recently calculated that, at the present rate, it will still be four hundred years before men and women are equal in terms of their influence in the corridors of power.
This is simply not good enough. Not at all. Not now, let alone in several hundred years.
I have decided therefore to take one small step for diverse-person-kind, and begin work on a Conference Diversity Index, which will be developed to indicate, however, impressionistically, just how much value and weight might be placed on various publicly funded events about matters of public concern. More diversity of involvement and experience, more value…..
I know a few conferences coming up on Merseyside which may prove to be of interest; and no doubt you know of others.
This is my website version of the article ‘Can I have a speaker that reflects the community? Too white, too male and too posh. It’s time conferences had an injection of diversity’, published in New Start magazine, 27 October 2006, p.11
Hope Street, Liverpool: History And Festivals (1996 – 2006)
The Hope Street Festival in Liverpool, delayed from Midsummer, was on Sunday 17 September. This exciting milestone in Hope Street’s history, introducing of a start-of-season early Autumn ‘Feast’ to go in future alongside the Summer Festival, is however neither the beginning nor the end of the journey.
Liverpool’s Hope Street Festivals And Quarter (1977 – 1995)
The first Hope Street Festival was in 1977, to mark the Silver Jubilee of HM The Queen. The next event, marking the Centenary of the Incorporation of the City of Liverpool, was in 1980. There followed a period of great concern for the cultural fortunes of Hope Street.
During the 19803 and into the ’90s Hope Street’s cultural institutions were in great peril. From this time of peril however, in the early 1990s, emerged a community-led campaign -The Campaign to Promote the Arts on Merseyside (CAMPAM) – to ensure that Liverpool kept its flagship organisations; and from CAMPAM in turn emerged HOPES: The Hope Street Association, the registered charity which was to seek renewal of the Quarter and which was later to resurrect the Hope Street Festivals.
The original Hope Street Festivals were organised in 1977 and 1980 by a group of people who included Stephen Gray OBE and Andrew Burn, then managers at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, as well as the late Adrian Henri, one of the founding Liverpool Poets, and other local artists and restaurateurs such as Berni Start of Kirklands Wine Bar, and Paddy Byrne of the Everyman Bistro.
Talking to people in Liverpool today, many of them recall the 1977 event as tremendously exciting, taking part as school children in one of the most massive pageants imaginable – 17,000 participants enacting eight scenes depicting the four seasons along the length of Hope Street, from one cathedral to the other. (As those then involved will tell you, some children even had to run from one point to another, to enact different parts of the pageant!)
In both 1977 and 1980 there was much support from the business community. The list of sponsors contains names which sometimes take one down memory lane: Leighton Advertising of 62 Hope Street, Modern Kitchen Equipment of Myrtle Street, Ford Dealers J. Blake and Company of Hope Street, , WH Brady of Smithdown Road, Girobank, Littlewoods, Radio City, and Higsons Brewery amongst them, alongside further flung organisations like the Chester Summer Music Festival, Welsh National Opera, Theatr Clwyd and even Decca, who recorded much Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) music during that time… Strange to say, the first three businesses are now lost to Hope Street; but most of the others of course remain as current concerns in Liverpool. As we shall see, it was in part an enthusiasm once more to energise the business community in Hope Street Quarter which led to the resurrection of the Hope Street Festival in 1996.
1977 – The Queen’s Silver Jubilee
The 1977 Festival was centred on celebration of the visit to Liverpool of Her Majesty the Queen, during her Silver Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom. Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen’s Music, wrote a pageant entitled The Valley and the Hill, to be performed in Hope Street on 21st June. (I know; I made thirty children’s ‘sheep’ costumes for the performance, whilst on a teaching practice!) This was recorded in 1983 with a choir of 2,000 local school children and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (my violinist spouse was there…).
The 1980 Hope Street Summer Festival
Then there was another Hope Street Festival in 1980, directed once more by Stephen Gray as General Manager of the RLPS, with his colleague Andrew Burn – again an impressive programme of concerts, talks and other events by leading performers and commentators, including the Allegri Quartet, Christian Blackshaw, John Cage, <a href%3
A Tribute To Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
The black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 – 1912) is known almost exclusively for his large-scale work, ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’. There is however much more to this fascinating man than just one work, including the story behind his very early chamber music works such as the Opus 1 Piano Quintet of 1893.
British Summer Time Draws To A Close
The nights are drawing in, and the debate is beginning once more… Must we really turn our meagrely lit afternoons into even more gloom? Maintaining the extra hour of afternoon daylight year-long, over and above British Standard Time (BST), well compensates most people for even darker mornings, as reports by RoSPA amongst others have demonstrated. The net benefits to the economy, energy savings, health, safety and, for instance, for the leisure industry, would be many.
Already talk is turning to the dreaded day that The Clocks Go Back – this year, Sunday 29 October at 2 a.m, in the U.K.. What daylight we may have enjoyed at 4 p.m. on 28th October will now be our allocation for just 3 p.m. on Sunday 29th; and it will get a lot worse before it gets any better, in March next year, when British Summer Time returns.
Why can’t we just keep to British Summer Time (BST; confusingly the same initials as the 1968-71 trial British Standard Time)? British Summer Time is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) plus one hour. The evidence shows benefits on balance would be an improvement in our overall quality of life. It’s been tried, from 1968-71, and it worked. And that was before issues around energy saving etc were deemed critical as well.
Background information
The background to the current situation, and the cost-benefits for health, safety, environmental sustainability, the economy, leisure activities and much else have had a good airing on this weblog:
The Clocks Go Forward (But Why, Back Again)?
Time is Energy (and Daylight uses Less)
The debate will continue
This is not an issue which is going to go away, so perhaps The Time Has Come for the Big Debate on this? In our eco- and economy-driven age, we can no longer simply do things as fundamental as this in a given way just because it’s the status quo.
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)…..
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
Cars, Motorists And Transport Strategies
The debate about whether there should be a toll on the M62 between Liverpool and Manchester must not be hijacked by the pro-car lobby. There are plenty of reasons to treat the idea of motorway charging cautiously, but fundamental questions around sustainabilty of both the environment and the local economy are the real issues which must be addressed, and soon.
Sometimes car drivers just don’t get it.
There’s a new proposal from the Northern Way people that the M62 between Liverpool and Manchester become a toll road. This is to control traffic flow because already there’s gridlock every morning and evening, and in a few years’ time the situation will become untenable.
Instant response
Within two days the usual voices are being raised in opposition to this idea: It’s a tax on motorists! Another government scam to make us all suffer!
Well, actually, it isn’t. It wasn’t the Government’s idea, and in fact quite a few official responses have been along the lines that this should not happen, rather then welcoming the proposal to impose charges. There’s a big debate going on, for instance, about whether traffic calming measures (c.f. the M25) might work, or whether an extra lane could be added at the critical points along the motorway.
And, of course, there’s legitimate concern, articulated by the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce amongst others, about how putting an extra cost onto the only serious road route between Manchester and Liverpool would be damaging for trade and economic development.
The wider picture
All fair enough, and important considerations in their own right. But have we grasped the wider picture?
The suggestions now being put forward are based on the belief that the feared ultimate gridlock will occur in about fifteen years’ time; and the proposals are deliberately intended to reduce road traffic, despite the squeals of one or two car-driving letter writers in the Daily Post etc about how this is simply a tax on motorists which will do nothing to reduce traffic.
The reality is rather different: It seems we have about a decade maximum to get the balance right, and to work diligently on bringing together Liverpool’s and Manchester’s public transport systems, both the direct links and the ‘tributaries’.
Sustainability is the key
The debate should not be based on the usual car-owner cries of ‘unfair tax’, but rather about the significant issues which the Liverpool Chamber and others have raised, and about how these fit into a long-term strategy for sustainability in our economies and our environment.
If the Northern Way manages to get this discussion going, it will have done us all a favour.
Confident, Competent, Considered? Recruiting The Lay Board Member
Person specifications for ‘Lay’ Public Appointments often require Board candidates to demonstrate ‘confidence’. Increasingly I wonder whether this quality by itself enhances board members’ contribution to the common good. Any confident Lay person might have a clear line and stick to it; but does this benefit the public? Or is it an obstacle to diversity in selection, continuing business as usual?
Perhaps Lay board members, even after they have a competent grasp of ‘the facts’, serve the public interest better when they as people are ‘considered’, rather than just ‘confident’. Involvement in decision-making by Lay board members is about being there in the public interest, not initially about being sure of one’s opinions.
There are people in history who have demonstrated supreme but arrogantly misplaced confidence in themselves; and even now this applies to some of those with the most power. Perhaps that doesn’t matter – it may even be an asset – in the private sector, where the sole aim is often the pursuance of profit. Profit is rarely however the single objective in matters of public interest.
Determination is better
Confidence in my book is an over-rated characteristic. Give me rather a person who can get to the bottom of things and then find a sensible way forward. Someone with determination and an open mind, until the time comes to make that mind up, see things through and deliver.
Certainty is rarely the order of the day in matters which require complex resolution. Underlying principles and leadership, of course; deep conviction that one is always right, no.
Listening is a seriously under-rated skill. Skills in seeking out the factors which drive a situation, and then resolving and moving forward, are also not dramatic front-page stuff; but in our complicated, always evolving world, these are the skills which matter.
Challenging, not confrontational
Perhaps the conviction that confidence is needed for a Lay person on a board is because that’s easy for selectors to deal with.
You can ascertain quickly that someone appears confident.
Ensuring however that potential appointees will, politely but determinedly, seek always to understand where the Board is coming from is a different matter. Your Lay member doesn’t need to be especially confident to do this; s/he just needs to be focused on the job in hand, and to believe it matters enough to persevere and do the task well.
Resolution and progress
That’s a more complicated scenario for others to deal with. I’d suggest however that it’s also the basis for a genuine eventual meeting of minds – which is one hopes what the whole ‘public involvement in policy’ thing is about.
The real requirement of Lay board members must be that they have core and determination, guided by a real intent to deliver
the best. Whether this is exactly the same as being ‘confident’ is another matter, as of course a good Chair – and there are many – understands.
An obstacle to diversity?
Whisper it to the HR people who routinely demand ‘confidence’ in job specs; the considered approach is quite often adopted by competent women. But could this also be said about the super-confident approach? How many women believe they’d fulfil a formal requirement to be ‘confident’?
Given concerns about obstacles to diversity in recruitment, are we on to something here?
What do you think?
Visiting Valencia
Valencia, Spain’s third largest city, offers much more than simply the industrial centre which many imagine. This mediaeval seat of learning and trade has a charm reaching far beyond the attractions of its wide sandy beaches and windswept sea.
Valencia is a wonderful place to visit; history and modernity go hand in hand with a fascinating range of things to do and enjoy. But it remains a city in transition where there’s still scope, as in many other cities ‘on the edge’, for better communication with those who come to enjoy and admire this evolving location. In some ways, however, that’s part of the adventure….
In 2007 Valencia plays host to a world-class event, the America’s Cup; but it also has an exotic living civic history and a rural hinterland, known so far to only a few, which encompasses the Albufera ornithological paradise and the ancient traditions of towns like Sagunt and Xativa.
Valencia, we now know, is The Place for everyone to be seen in 2007. It’s to host the America’s Cup on behalf of Switzerland, and everyone who’s anyone will be there.
Well, that’s next year. In the meantime, we turned up this August (2006) for our holiday, barely aware that the America’s Cup was on the agenda (though, come to think of it, we did have a brief encounter with the run-up to it on a trip to Marseilles last summer).
For us, arriving late on a hot August evening, the attraction was simply that Valencia is a city with history, sun and lots to see.
First impressions
Our rule-of-thumb is that the hotel we choose for our holiday should be near the historic centre of the selected sunny city destination; anywhere near a cathedral is usually a good way to ensure that, especially if the map shows the streets around the hotel as small and windy.
And so we found ourselves, that first evening, sitting in a paved square with its own uplit fountain outside the Astoria Hotel, serenaded by some very business-like passing musicians and enjoying a late meal after our travels. (We subsequently realised that ‘late’ is a different idea in the mind of a Brit from that of Valencians, whose young families dine out at times which seemed exotic even to us as oldies.)
Then next morning we began our annual adventure, to discover as much as possible about our host city whilst taking in the ambiance and enjoying a few of life’s little luxuries. Not hard to do in Valencia!
A city of contrasts
You can read all the guidebooks about a city, but nothing except direct experience takes you to the real thing. One lasting impression we have of Valencia is that it’s amazingly flat and easy to get around. Don’t, whatever you do, take a car – the local parking attendants are very diligent. But do get a street map and some walking shoes; this is easy terrain. Take your time and your ease and savour the freedom to roam which visitors to 
Valencia can enjoy. The mediaeval centre of the city is compact and rewarding for those who linger and explore it.
And do be prepared for surprises. Until you’ve seen it, you truly won’t be able to understand the impact of the Third Millennium City of Arts and Sciences, with the Palau de la Musica, its enormously impressive Science Museum, Congress Palace (still being built) and the wonderful Oceanografic, complete with shark tunnel, flamingos and leaping dolphins.
Nor can you really imagine the exquisite architectural balance of the Plaza de la Virgen which shares the centre of the old city with the Cathedral and other mediaeval buildings.
It’s a meeting point, a perfect setting for a relaxing break or meal and, almost unnoticed, adjacent to the site of roman remains, visible through cleverly placed glass partitions and in one place actually excavated and viewed via a glass-based water feature. Here is evidence before our very eyes of Valencia’s history from Roman times onwards, set with such sense of place that it feels almost unreal.
Valencia is green
Altogether a different experience is the greenness of Valencia. We had heard of the great Turia, the now-dry river bed which surrounds the old city and provides some ten kilometres of leisure space for locals and visitors alike. Walkers, cyclists, footballers (of all ages and both genders), relaxed locals and tourists mix with ease in this enormous space, enriched with much public artwork and trees of every sort, and spanned at many points by bridges ranging in design from the formidably modern to the elegantly ancient.
This is an open space, magnificently appointed, which must surely meet the needs of all who use and visit it – yet it came about only because city leaders feared another mighty flood, such as that in 1957, and so they decided to divert the river proper. Sometimes it is indeed possible to bring about good from catastrophe.
What was less familiar to us was Valencia’s stoutly walled (and thereby almost un-findable) Botanic Garden, which is administered by the University. It’s an oasis of clearly ordered information, calm and dappled light.
And further afield is the huge shallow lagoon of Albufera (we went on the Bus Turistica), just a metre deep for most of its five kilometre diameter, but home to many different birds and host to thousands of visitors who are transported in the traditional flat-bottomed boats of the local people.
Strangely, to most of us from the more Northern parts of Europe, almost none of these amenities has developed commercially. Of course in some ways that’s great, but in other ways not so. You can’t even buy a bottle of water on your trip to Albufera, and locating the entrance to the Botanic Garden is a real challenge – though admirably it was open on a Bank Holiday when everywhere else was closed. (In fact, many things, including – despite the jellyfish sea bathing scare – the main public swimming baths, were closed for the whole of August…)
More architecture
Back exploring the built environment, we were fascinated by the range of styles and shapes of the city. The fifteenth century UNESCO World Heritage site of La Lonja de los Mercaderes is one of the oldest secular institutional buildings (it’s a mediaeval silk trading hall), and just opposite it is the ornate early twentieth century Mercado Central, not to mention the extraordinary Estacion de Nord (sadly next door to the only real blot we saw on the valencian landscape, the Bullring, still put to its original use – though happily functioning as a market whilst we were in town) with its tiled salutation of Bon Voyage on the walls in many languages.
Wider afield
Conveniently, our hotel being just across the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall) from the Estacion de Nord, it was easy to get out of town on the train for the green hills which surround Valencia. Thus we found ourselves taking days out variously in Sagunt to the north and Xativa to the south – both famed for their fortress castles, but both also surprising us with other sights as well.
In Xativa we suddenly encountered an enormous street market – at least a kilometre long, with everything from wonderful dried herbs, to candles, carved wooden animals and (thousands of!) walking sticks – which had encamped for a week, marking the traditional Southern European Feast of the Assumption on 15 August. Here, where we had anticipated just a quiet stroll, were merchants from all over the world, South America, Africa and closer to home, many of them in traditional costume, plying their wares, selling food, playing music and generally in celebratory mode.
And in Sagunt, a place like Xativa which from the railway station seemed unappealing – and was certainly seriously unsignposted – we saw a magnificent open-air opera house, reconstructed in somewhat controversial style on the site of a Roman amphitheatre, overlooking Sagunt’s fabled old town but still far below the castle with its breath-taking vistas across the mountains and plains encompassing Valencia city, and onwards to the sea.
A place to revisit
Valencia is vibrant and varied, a place to return to when one can. Not every aspect of the transition to a modern city has been resolved, as the continuing use of the Bullring in its original role demonstrates, but it is evident that much progress has been made. There were of course things missing on our visit.
Nowhere in the city itself was any music, even small-scale performances (other than enterprising street musicians), to be found during August. Many places provided no clues for non-Spanish / Valenciano-Catalan speakers about how to conduct one’s business – always crucial if serious tourism is to be encouraged. Most tourist information points (even at the train station) were thinly stocked and closed in the afternoons and during festivals, even though thousands of visitors were in town. Signposting is almost non-existent, at least as far as we could see. Public transport remains largely a mystery to us even now, and after about ten at night seems effectively to disappear, which might be thought strange given the late hours kept by the locals.
But on the whole these are not aspects of great cities only now emerging into prominence which don’t also occur elsewhere. They are things which will need to be addressed as Valencia becomes more used to welcoming visitors from far and wide.
Valencia is a city with great promise for future, as well as a fascinating past. If you haven’t been there yet, it should be firmly on your list of places to look forward to.
Elected Mayors, Democracy And The Regional Agenda
The campaign for a debate about elected Mayors promotes ideas of democratic involvement and public accountability. It is for these reasons, not as a short-hand way to achieve city-regions, that this campaign should be encouraged. Even if elected Mayors become the norm, towns and cities will still need major regional input if they are to be effective players within Britain.
It’s not reallly news that some major cities have problems pulling things together to achieve progress; and nor, to be frank, is it news that Liverpool often seems to be amongst that number.
This is why I believe people should support the campaign for a referendum on a Mayor for Liverpool. For the referendum to happen would require 5% of those elegible to vote in the city to support it… not many one may think, but actually quite a proportion to raise in Liverpool, the city with the lowest election turn-out in the country. In my view, almost anything which encourages people in places like Liverpool to think positively about voting is a good thing.
Elected Mayors as housekeepers
It doesn’t however follow that, because moves to consider elected mayors are supported, that wide-ranging powers for such persons should necessarily be the order of the day. Cities like Liverpool need a named ‘responsible person’, who can bang heads together to get things done, and who must be prepared to take the flack if things don’t work. This person could be seen as taking the role of housekeeper, ensuring that things happen as they should, and that, for instance, streets and parks are clean and safe, events occur to schedule and budget, bids and proposals are submitted on time and well prepared etc.
It would be important for an elected Mayor to have defined, and achieved a consensus on, for instance, what is his / her role, and what is that of the City Chief Executive / Directorates, and of elected Councillors.
Not city-regions
Nor should it be assumed that an elected Mayor would take the lead role in the mooted city-regions. There may well be a role for city-regions as sub-regions, but that debate is still emerging and it is not for me convincing. In the end an excessive emphasis on city-regions not only loses the ‘hinterland’ of any metropoils, but also ignores the reality of regional infrastructure.
No toen or city in the UK outside London is on its own large enough to plan major transport, business development, or scientific investment. The things can only properly be addressed at regional level; as indeed they are in most parts of Europe.
Accountability
City regions and their merits or otherwise are a different debate from the current discussion about elected Mayors. If there’s now a decent debate about elected Mayors, that will be a good start. Maybe it will strengthen interest in the democratic process. And if it also encourages the idea that those who claim to give the lead require support, but must also be prepared to account very openly for their performance, that will be an excellent bonus.
Dreaming Realist 