On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, MIG wrote:

On 31 July, 19:51, "Recliner" wrote:
"MIG" wrote in message



On 29 July, 15:09, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, MIG wrote:
On 28 July, 17:16, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, James Farrar wrote:

The concept of a Mayor is undemocratic and intended to allow
unelected political party officials to override the views of
elected council members (and those they represent) while hiding
behind the figurehead of the Mayor.

When you say 'the concept of a mayor', do you mean 'the
implementation of a mayor as it is in London?'. If so, would you
agree that the implementation could be improved, and if not, could
you explain why you think a mayor is different to a president?

Well, I'm not particularly bothered about what it's called, which is
why I used a capital M to refer to the specific implementation.

I just generally object to representative democracy (which ain't
perfect) being cynically overruled by setting up a system where a
single elected person who can also claim a mandate and hand total
control to his/her own party.

It would be better if there were a council a bit like the GLA but with
real decision-making powers ... you could call it the GLC.

Would that prevent the sort of palace coup that allowed an ambitious
young politician to mount a successful coup against an elected GLC
leader like Andrew Macintosh?-

Wot, by getting elected and winning votes?

What, like how Gordon Brown became Prime Minister?

Both the Westminster and Washington systems of choosing a leader have
their strengths and weaknesses, but it's simply nonsense to say that an
elected mayoralty is an antidemocratic.

tom

--
In my view, this is no different than a parent introducing his child to
Shakespeare (except that the iambic pentameter is replaced by a framework
of profanity, misogyny, substance abuse, violence, retaliation, crime
and infidelity). -- Dad Gone Mad, on rap