John B wrote:

It's now
become an entrenched myth that Thatcher abolished the GLC purely because
of
Livingstone, but it would have been abolished anyway because of the
opposition of borough councils and the limited services it provided.

Hmm. Central government has the power to restructure local government.
Had the 1980s Tory government been primarily concerned with
administrative efficiency, it would have removed some powers from the
boroughs and some from itself and given them to the GLC (and also
GMCC). Instead, it wiped out that level of government completely.

There's always been major tensions in London local government arrangements
because few people have ever been brave enough to decide for definite
whether London is one entity or several. Hence the awkward models for
London-wide government that produce London wide bodies with a rather vague
"strategic" function and limited powers combined with difficult
relationships with borough councils, but taking powers away from those
borough councils is politically risky - indeed the GLC would never have been
created without agreement that the outer boroughs would retain control over
education (probably the one area where, if the GLC had had control, it could
have made itself more viable). There's the further mess that very often the
source of funding and the results of spending frequently don't directly
overlap and this goes beyond the general problem in local government finance
because geography is a further factor (e.g. "Fare's Fair" not being so great
in Bromley as in Brent).

What powers would you have added to the GLC to make it efficient and viable?