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British politics

Don’t give these “deranged” councillors more power

Canterbury: a pointless plan to reshape it? David Goddard/Getty

Labour’s “interminable plans for constitutional reform” boil down to two things, says Rod Liddle in The Spectator: abolishing the House of Lords and devolving power to “the regions”. But really, we want much, much less authority given to local government. “They should be allowed to empty our bins and that’s about it.” Decentralisation might be “laudable in theory”, but wait until you see “the kind of deranged bastards who will be wielding these new powers”. Take Ben Fitter-Harding, the Conservative leader of Canterbury City Council: he intends to divide the city into five zones, and only allow cars to travel between the zones via a ring road. All this pointless, “fascistic” plan will do is increase carbon emissions, by vastly increasing journey times.

“Now meet Duncan Enright”, a so-called “cabinet member” of Oxfordshire County Council. He has a similar idea for Oxford, but with the addition of “massive roadblocks” to prevent residents straying from their own ghetto. The “goose-stepping social inadequates” who run local councils think they can get away with this stuff for two reasons. First, they noticed how compliant people became during lockdown, and have been itching to introduce similar restrictions ever since. Second, climate change, which they use to justify all sorts of “emergency” measures. “Empty the bins, you say? No, we can’t. We are fighting for this planet’s survival and so you will do as we say. Sod your bins.”