So ten cities are voting tomorrow for whether or not to have a mayor. They are: has been granted for referenda to be held in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield. Afaik, Leicester and Liverpool have bypassed the referendum and gone straight for having one.
Is there an advantage to having one over a more anonymous council leader? What does it mean in real terms for a city to have a mayor?
Utter waste of time.
There seems to be a fashion amongst politicians for calls for 'choice', more 'people power', more 'local accountability'. The thing is, there are already multiple layers of local accountability and democracy - parish councils, county councils, MPs, MEPs etc etc but in all but Westminster/General elections no bugger turns out to vote anyway. People already have many ways to have a say how their local communities are run, but are too apathetic to exercise the right.
The danger in having a directly elected mayor, given the generally low levels of turnout at any election, is that it would not be without the bounds of possibility for a fringe group with a small number of highly active supporters, let's say the BNP, to rally enough votes to win. Wouldn't that be peachy.
Oh, and anyway, these mayoral positions won't actually have executive powers anyway, so they'll only be able to offer 'strategy', 'leadership' and 'vision' and no actual policies. Screw that, why don't forget about this latest politicos love-in and concentrate on keeping the libraries and swimming pools open and getting the bins collected.
And don't get me started on elected Police commissioners...
It's a 'no' for me in Newcastle. Pointless waste of money without any real powers.
There seems to be a fashion amongst politicians for calls for 'choice'
Yep, but its all about the appearance of choice rather than real choice, its like a card trick, you only ever choose the card the trikster wants you to choose.
I'm veering towards a "No" in Brizzle too.
They should just pick someone at random from the electoral register. Same for MP's.
Its thrown up an interesting candidate in Salford
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-17695433 ]definitely a 'secuity' firm, and not a protection racket[/url]
I think everyone who's lived in Salford knows who and what Mr Massey is. But if he can mobilise the scrote vote...
I'd never trust anyone called Massey 😉
Massey is Classy, but Zetor are better. 🙂
No mayoral elections here. And I wouldn't want an unaccountable elected dictator.
[i]unaccountable elected dictator.[/i]
Interesting triple oxymoron there...
No mayoral elections here. It seems like a waste of time unless the Mayor can wield real power akin to those in large North American cities. Even the London Mayor lacks power (which given the candidates may not be a bad thing), so I imagine equivalent posts in smaller cities would be even more pointless tokenistic figureheads.
some sort of change is needed - leader of the Council is an internally party politically non elected role - person best at politics rather than policy gets to wield power
- adding an extra layer when you've already got central government and cross county authorities (transport / police /fire /health) won't solve any problems
i'd prefer that the parties are asked to nominate candidates for leader of the council and the appointment would need approval by the electorate on the ballot paper
i'll be voting no - want change but not rhetoric and i suspect no real action