UK Traditional Counties

[Mark]

Before the 1970's things were simple, you had a county council for the county you lived in, then local councils for your local area.

But since then things have gotten messy with unitiary authorities running some metropolitan areas and counties being carved up into smaller chunks.

For example in the North East there used to be Northumberland, including Newcastle, and County Durham, including Gateshead and Sunderland. But it was decided to make a new county of Tyne & Wear out of these which then subsequently split up into a lot of smaller areas, the same thing happened with Darlington etc and the whole thing is a mess.

Wouldn't it just be easier if at least ceremonially we all went back to the original county bounaries, regardless of who empties your bins?

[BDunnell]

Wouldn't it just be easier if at least ceremonially we all went back to the original county bounaries, regardless of who empties your bins?

I don't think so, because in doing that you would be creating an unnecessary new level of bureaucracy.

However, in general I agree with you. The current system is horribly complicated. In truth, electoral boundaries have always been complex, because they do change often and rarely 'coincide' with one another in a sensible way, mainly for historic reasons.

My main difficulty with how things are in this respect concerns the question of whether more power should be devolved to local authorities. If we are to do so in any meaningful way, the authorities taking on powers from Whitehall will have to be of sufficient size in terms of personnel, and be funded to a suitable extent, in order to be able to cope. Probably the best way of doing this is a federal system like Germany's, which was established after the war using the historic state boundaries to create the divisions. Thus, the Länder had the huge advantage of being legitimate in the eyes of the public. As units, they are also large enough to have allowed the creation of truly powerful regional assemblies. Of course, other responsibilities are then devolved to more local levels.

Now, there would be a huge problem doing anything similar in the UK, because of this question of public legitimacy. The local political sub-divisions that we think of in the UK are either Parliamentary constituencies or counties, many of which are not large enough to support a political unit of great size, and thus great power. Larger divisions, such as the constituencies used for the European elections, just aren't viewed as having any legitimacy, hence the lack of support for regional assemblies. Giving more power to cities would be fine for these reasons, but what about the rest of the country? I just don't think it can be done to the extent that would really make a difference in a way that people would view as acceptable.

[Daniel]

I don't think it would work here but I like the system in Australia of Federal>State>Local.

Here where we live they're building a nice big £9 flagship school which is totally unnecessary (pupil numbers are falling!) and who has decided over this? The local government.

So one person or a small group of people have control over such large amounts of money :mark:

At the end of the day if Mark's county wastes money then there's not much I can do and tbh I don't care. But if we were part of the same state then you could complain to a higher authority that my county was wasting the money of our state and perhaps something would be done. But at the end of the day when such a low level government has control over so much money then I think personal opinions and aspirations (oooh we want a flagship school!) come into it.

In Australia councils have much less spending power and I think that's a good thing!

[Drew]

Here where we live they're building a nice big £9 flagship school which is totally unnecessary (pupil numbers are falling!) and who has decided over this? The local government.


Wow, those Welsh sure are spending their money, £9 :p :

I didn't even know anything about it, I guess Devon(shire) and Cornwall are historical boundaries, although I knew alot of Welsh counties are quite new, Gwynedd for example :)

[Daniel]

9 million pound :p

[Rollo]

I don't think it would work here but I like the system in Australia of Federal>State>Local.

In Australia councils have much less spending power and I think that's a good thing!

But at state level who are the authorities who have responsibility for things like roads, rail, hospitals, schools, ie normal infrastructure, they all have to kowtow to the Federal Government to get money. Every State Government in Australia is in debt whilst the Federal Government proudly tells the nations that it's in surplus... by convieniently ignoring the fact that they're the ones withholding funds from the states in the first place.

The council isn't quite congruous to the county in the UK and there simply isn't that intermediate level of government... in theory. I wonder what sort of powers would be divested to "national" governments and who'd be prepared to give them up.

The big question in the UK has always been how much power has been centred in Whitehall versus power to the counties. What happens for instance when you have an anomaly like London which has a population 1/3rd bigger than Wales and Scotland combined?

[BDunnell]

The big question in the UK has always been how much power has been centred in Whitehall versus power to the counties. What happens for instance when you have an anomaly like London which has a population 1/3rd bigger than Wales and Scotland combined?

What's happened, in the shape of the London Assembly creating another tier of government over and above the London borough councils, has in itself created an anomaly. However, I really don't see a way around it, because I don't believe that a proper federal system could ever be established in the UK.