Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Rotherham - why the New Commissioners are no answer at all -

SilVisionary | 27.02.2015 09:11 | Analysis | Indymedia | Social Struggles | London | World

Rotherham Council is no more; not as an independent, elected local Council serving local people in Rotherham according to democratic standards, aspirations and needs. Rotherham is the latest such Council, to be subjected to Erick Pickles DCLG "intervention". The other Council is London’s Tower Hamlets. There, the number of Commissioners is fewer and their remit less extensive than is shown to be the case on Rotherham. However, the interventions conform the dominant view in Society that local Councils are failing in very serious ways. So what should happen?

Rotherham Council is no more; not as an independent, elected local Council serving local people in Rotherham according to democratic standards, aspirations and needs. Rotherham is the latest such Council, to be subjected to Erick Pickles DCLG "intervention". The other Council is London’s Tower Hamlets. There, the number of Commissioners is fewer and their remit less extensive than is shown to be the case on Rotherham. However, the interventions conform the dominant view in Society that local Councils are failing in very serious ways. So what should happen?

Should more interventions occur?
Should there be fewer Councils, such as appears to be being encouraged by Osborne’s Manchester Area Super Council, with a ‘super mayor’ in the zone accompanied in propaganda of the past week by a £6 Bn starter package to boost the “engine”?
It is worth pointing out that the Labour Party and the Lib Dems have gone along with this move which means that “democracy” “as we have been known to have claimed to have known it”, is being faded out.
Or will these moves in fact bring life to democracy locally, zonally, regionally?
If the evidence of Doncaster is anything to go by, democracy is not being strengthened by the DCLP interventions.
What has been happening is that new layers of highly and additionally publicly paid bureaucrats are being deployed to hide the truth about the massive income and social disparity that has been taking place across England.

The myth boosted and propagated by Gideon Osborne and previous UK Treasury Ministers that “London is an Economic Powerhouse” is also environmentally and socially unfounded and is a lethal lie.
Again, the Labour Party in Parliament and in Office has been as much a party to the perpetuation of this “London s the Economic Power House” myth as the Conservatives.
Both Parties are led by the small number of City of London and London-based Big conglomerates.
London’s ordinary population has been being systematically disadvantaged, additionally deprived, cynically lied to as it is also being comprehensively disenfranchised out of all civic, democracy, social and ethical rights and is subjected to subliminal brainwashing and hoodwinking conducted under the camouflage of publicity propaganda tagged as the “Power House”.

The same will happen in Manchester and there is no sign that any democratic, ethical structure is being planned.

In fact, with a Super Mayor, the immediate adverse consequence will be to create a super dictatorship with corruption exceeding that seen in other parts.

The currently ongoing “trial”, sited in the High Court complex in the Royal Courts of Justice, into allegations of corruption and vote fraud against Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor Lustful Rahman cannot be commented on but the fact that such a situation ahs arisen is undoubtedly a confirmation that moving away from the conventional local democratic model is no way to serve democracy to the local people.

Rotherham may have more detailed lists of failures concerning children but other local councils have as many failures.
Tower Hamlets has been a rotten boro for far longer than Eric Pickles has been an MP.
Yet there has never before been so much in the public domain about Tower Hamlets until the model of local democratic representation was drastically replaced.
That had been done, locally, under the kind of fantasy promises that Osborne has been making about the Super Mayor for Manchester!
None of the Parties has come up with a single narrative for local democracy as in any way central to local service, local accountability, local harmony and local harmony.
Rotherham may be able to generate ‘positive’ headlines, as it has already done this morning (Friday 27 February 2015) when the BBC Breakfast programme featured the children’s’-services head woman as a new starter.

But as the victims in Rotherham know – and as those in Oxfordshire, Rochdale too know- nothing is being done to deal with let alone stop the abuses on these scales or on any scales.
All PR and no local, democratic accountability.

Does Pickles dig any of it?

SilVisionary

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. UPDATES will be posted here regularly to this post — SilVisionary
  2. explanation of rotherham — slightly confused
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech