Local government should be local, right?
There is also an added local dimension to the party’s campaigning in Havering. Mr Farage has promised an independence referendum on whether the borough should leave Greater London altogether, escaping Sir Sadiq’s control and returning to its Essex roots.
“Sixty years on from the 1965 expansion of London, people here still feel they’re part of Essex,” says Mr Farage after his walkabout. “Go to Chislehurst and they still say they’re part of Kent, and they still write it on their envelopes.
Back to the ancient counties, the boroughs and all. And doesn’t actual democracy mean that the people themselves get to decide such things?
The Metropolitan counties were invented by Heath and Peter Walker. Reason enough for their disbandment, I’d say.
I’m not sure Surrey would like Croydon back, though.
Croydon was a county borough so was only geographically part of Surrey.
Acknowledging that the people of London should get as little say as possible in how the capital is run would be best. I speak as someone who lives in soon to be Green L*mbeth.
Cities are important economic dynamos (none more so than London). You can’t allow the commie idiots that actually live in them to undermine that.
They could try giving everyone who commutes in from the Home Counties a vote in the Mayoral elections. Paint it as giving the vote to economic migrants.
Those in power generally only want to change the way elections are held if it looks like they would otherwise be voted out of power.
Hence the complete absence of any mention of PR from Labour despite it being overwhelmingly voted for by the constituency parties at the 2022 Labour Party Conference…..
And the LibDems have gone remarkably quiet on the subject since the GE when they got 60+ more MPs than Reform on 0.5m fewer votes.
Rather than extend the franchise curtail it. Not 21, not a taxpayer or property owner = no vote. Parasites and scrotes will always vote for handouts.
Spot on Theo
Taking votes away is bad optics. Better to give extra votes to the virtuous – taxpayers and families etc.
How about white male property owners aged between 40 and 70?
If we can just get to Adult Citizen Franchise I’d be satisfied. Wanna vote here? Become a citizen, dammit.
You can’t really blame khan for this. The Mayor of London thing is partly symbolic and really just about transport.
He has no impact on emptying bins in Romford.
The transport thing is a problem. Congestion charges being applied on the outskirts which don’t need it, mind.
Congestion charge was bad enough. Ulez was introduced to pay the govt for its bailout of TfL. He is hated amongst the London cabbies.
Khan is also responsible for the rozzers and closing down police stations.
Needless to say he has filled a lot of non jobs ( Night Tsarina ?) with mates who prove useless.
But yes the main culprits are the councils themselves but that has been the case for decades.
It’s catastrophic. Roughly speaking, I would say congestion zone needs to be the circular roads. Walk around Richmond or Chiswick and traffic is fine. Hammersmith gets heavy.
But Khan is really about the centre bit. Doesn’t give a shit about what the effect is on Richmond.
Any roads-based thing needs to be based on, well, roads. Basing the LEZ on administrative boundaries that slice arbitarily across the road network is insane.
Khan has expanded it to everywhere under his control.
Which causes damage at the margins. There was a time we’d drive to Kensington on a Sunday. Roads ok. Now it’s congestion charge, so we do a trip to somewhere else instead. Fancy cafes in the Cotswolds get some Dosh instead.
Kensington is not in the congestion charge area.
It is in the ULEZ…..
The problem with London transport is a big chunk of travel has gone with WFH. Monday and Friday have fallen.
But I never understand why it’s so cheap. Zone 1 travel on the tube is piss all. It’s about as cheap as a bus in Swindon. They’re all supposedly propping up the rest of the UK, why can’t they pay for their travel?
Zone 1 travellers mostly vote for Sadiq Khan, as do those getting free bus travel.. Anyone living in the City of London is paying more than full cost (yonks ago I worked out that residents in the City paid ILEA *half-a-million* pounds per annum per child educated by ILEA within the City). The people who actually pay taxes don’t get much of the subsidy.
I should have pointed out that one of the biggest reasons for living in the City was/is that one can walk to work (so not use London Transport or BR).
This is part of my thing that the city is going to shit. You used to have quants, software, marketing types, skilled people and a ton of coolies making lunch for them.
A lot fewer software people need to be there. This is reflected in the divergence of rates. That stuff is WFH from Swindon, the whole place is going to try and run on coolies. It’s on. Auto Pilot to being like Escape From New York.
Londoners can fucking pay for it. It costs about the same as a bus in Swindon to ride the tube.
Crossrail wasn’t an utter Terry Fuckwit of an idea, but I don’t think it’s worked out. Mostly it’s just transferred people from other lines. More people using it from Heathrow, fewer Heathrow Express. Because Lizzie line riders aren’t repaying the capital cost directly.
Yeah. Saddo closed our local police station. At the time we had a tory council, MP and government and it stayed closed. Now we’ve got a labour council, MP and government and it’s still closed. Every year we have to pay more to Saddo for police that don’t exist.
Have you heard this conspiracy theory about a uniparty?
In Japan the equivalent of Greater London extends to the equivalent of the Chilterns.
Well, Rutland was resurrected from the grave, so why not Middlesex?
Rutland is about to be re-merged back into Leicstershire. This government’s agenda is clear – fewer, bigger, more distant local councils and fewer local ocuncillors.
Yeah, and bring back Huntingdonshire and the Isle of Ely and the Soke of Peterborough.
I was going to say Bring back Clackmannanshire but apparently they sort-of have. So Bring Back Dumfriesshire!
Why? Tiny local authorities are expensive and involve duplication. That said, here in Suffolk, the three unitary authorities look like a good solution to a non-existent problem of five districts + a county council. Whatever TPTB claim, there will be no savings — none, just costs!
Yup. A waste of everyone’s time, and where we are we’ll get lumped in with Greater Ipswich or whatever it’s supposed to be called. That’ll suck all resources we might expect into the Gippeswyc Gaping Maw.
This is London:
Yibble
It’s in Noak Hill A few miles north of Romford in the London borough of Havering. Don’t know about these days but it used to be a pretty good pheasant shoot.
There’s also a quite wide corridor of agricultural land separates the western border of Havering from the neighbouring London borough of Redbridge right south to Dagenham
If the exercise becomes feasible I would expect that The Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield would free itself from Birmingham in a nanosecond!
I think they should also run on removing Khan’s knighthood – that should never have been issued in the first place