AngryAsWell wrote:Tubby Isaacs wrote:LadyCentauria wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/public-leade ... ster-mayor
Did we cover this? The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (which voted firmly against having a directly elected Mayor only two years ago) is to have a temporary Mayor appointed in January 2015 then elections in 2017. This Mayor will have wider-ranging powers (in theory) than in London, as Health & Social Care will be under his or her control...
What a surprise.
Strategic planning and regional oversight good for everything except Education- which is to be run by private trusts.
I think imposing a mayor on the region is fair enough- it's different to the City of Manchester mayor voted on before. And it's a way to proper devolution in England. But surely the elected mayor has to happen straightaway?
We don't want or need a mayor, the GMCA look after Manchester with no need of a high paid, unelected, money grabbing, Mayoral position. I for one do not want so much power in one persons hands.
This has made me very mad by the way.....
Edit to add
We voted against it, and he has no right to ignore that!
The funding deal is contingent upon having 'mayor'. I personally think it's bullshit, but if Bury's council leader considers it a significant enough deal to get over his previous abhorrence of such a post, then I'm, willing to learn more - that's not shorthand for I'll go with it, you understand.
My opinion is they should divvy up all those funds to the AGMA authorities and just let them spend it, with overview from AGMA. The 10 of them cover 2.5m people so I think the idea of strategic planning might just be on their radar, doncha know? If we don't like the decisions, we vote nearly every year for new councillors and Bob's your uncle, the council leaders (and AGMA reps) change. It all seems so simple when I look at it as a democratic process.
Perhaps we really do need another 10-12% voter turnout for a mayoral vote where about 25% of them will say "Cock off wankers", "None of the above" or "Nigel fur wurld prezidend" before someone in thatLondon finally gets what pisses off up here is new structures and heirarchies that we've neother been asked about nor been consulted upon.
I won't be holding my breath, given where I live.