Colin Martin, the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for South East Cornwall, has a good article in the Cornish Times.
He writes about how centralised government is in Britain - so much so that even moves towards more devolution are tightly controlled:
For most of this year, Cornwall Councillors have been told that the Government might give us some new powers, but only if we replace the Leader of the Council with a directly elected Mayor.
We have been kept in the dark about what these new powers might be. Most Councillors feel that the public should have the final say about whether to make such a big change, but we don’t even have the power to ask the question without permission from Government!
He also takes the right line on the situation in Scotland:
Last week the Supreme Court in London ruled that the Scottish Government did not have the power to hold a Referendum on Scottish Independence.
So although we pay lip-service to the idea of self-determination, the people of Scotland have to ask permission from the UK Government to be allowed to express their opinion.
Some people North of the border are asking whether they are members of a "voluntary union", or captives being held against their will.
The Conservatives' obsession with elected mayors (and elected P&CCs) is bizarre. It's so un-Conservative to put power into the hands of just one person, rather than to a committee. It's very European - almost Napoleonic - to have commissars and prefects rather than a panel.
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