Like the unelected unaccountable self-appointed oligarchy that is the West of England's Local Enterprise Partnership, if anything, they are signing someone else's cheque.
Hmmm ... As I understand it,
1. once every 4 years we
elect our councillors.
2. The majority group of them get together and choose a leader.
3. The leader chooses a cabinet
4. The cabinet chooses who represents them on the
LEP» 5. The other councils in the LEP area do the same thing
6. The LEP members choose their leader
... so the LEP is accountable back - just that it's through six levels of separation, and answer en bloc with all other issues just once every 4 years.
Would that life were so simple. Bristol, with a population of 500,000 or so, has one member - the red-trousered Mayor himself George Ferguson. It used to be Mark Bradshaw, with whom George seems to have had a falling out over transport or other matters, and I guess he now sees it as too vital a role to delegate. Representing the road-building councils of North Somerset and South Gloucestershire are Cllrs Nigel Ashton and Matthew Riddle respectively, with Cllr Tim Warren shouting on behalf of Bath and North East Somerset.
The other members are Chairman Colin Skellett OBE, Executive Chairman of Malaysian-owned Wessex water, Robert Sinclair,
CEO▸ of Canadian-owned Bristol Airport, Kalpna Woolf, former head of the
BBC» 's Natural History unit, James Durie of Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Business West, Nick Horne, Chief Executive of Knightstone, the housing body, Esther McMorris, Chief Executive of Nine Feet Tall, a management consultancy outfit, John Pritchard, of thoroughly British GKN, Neil Way, MD of family run electrical contractors Jeff Way, and Professor Steve West, one-time podiatric surgeon and now Vice Chancellor of MetroBust cheerleader UWE.
I can vote for only one of these 13 people. Only four are appointed by democratically elected representative bodies. The other nine were appointed by an unknown process - I don't recall any job adverts or terms of employment being advertised. In the highly unlikely event of the four local authorities agreeing on something, they can still be outvoted 9-4.
Bristol has a single vote in 13, yet contributes the greatest amount to the coffers. In MetroBust, for example, North Somerset and South Glos contribute 10% each to the steadily increasing costs not met by central government funds; Bristol ponies up the other 80%.
Tony Benn, bless him, said on such matters "In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: ^What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?^ If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system." The LEP has the power to spend a lot of our money, be it raised from local or central taxation. It was given this power by a previous government. It exercises it in the interests of business first and foremost, with the residents of the area covered included in flawed and biased consultation exercises as an inconvenient chore, needed to tick a box before the money appears. It is accountable to central government for the money it spends. As I didn't have any say in who is appointed to the oligarchy, I assume there is no way of me getting rid of any member other than assassination, which seems a bit extreme, even with MetroBust as a
cassus belli.
Bashar al-Assad may view it as a paradigm of democracy in action. I do not.
