***Crikey on a stickle-brick – I didn’t see this coming!*** (That said, I want to hear the The Chancellor, Prime Minister, or Deputy Prime Minister confirm this in a statement to Parliament
New White Paper on devolution and the future of local government due in Mid-November
…so says the sadly paywalled article by Heather Jameson of the MJ
As an aside re costs of journalism, I’d like to see a nationwide ‘pay-per-article’ scheme developed – not least for those of us on very low incomes who don’t have institutional access to online journals. It would then be up to individual publishers which articles they wanted to make available. People could ‘top up’ their balance on an ad-hoc basis or automatically per month. Only half the stuff I tend to go for in terms of research for blogposts is niche stuff seldom in the mainstream press.
If it was a wide-ranging review, it would meet the recommendation of the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs which concluded that the system of governance in England needs an overhaul.
It will be interesting to see how wide ranging the Government’s proposals are on devolution – as I had got the impression that it wanted to work within the existing institutional frameworks for their first term rather than go in for major overhauls.
With that in mind, I wrote earlier about what a Greater Cambridge Unitary might be like here. Comments on the metaphorical postcard please!
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on BSky <- A critical mass of public policy people seem to have moved here
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
The Cambridge Town Owl 