London Banter - View Single Post - These writhing whales of the road have swung their hefty rear ends round our corners for the final time.

[email protected] · August 2nd 09, 12:24 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article
,
(MIG) wrote:

On 1 Aug, 20:20, Tom Anderson wrote:
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.

The imposition of such systems on local authorities has the intention
of imposing central rule via a single figurehead, disregarding the
wide range of views represented by many tens of councillors (or GLA
members). The chances of effective democracy are slim regardless.

A directly-elected president who did not have to refer to Parliament
would not be a Good Thing. Within their respective scopes, I don't
think that the the US President has as much power as the London Mayor.

The single strongest bit of evidence against UK mayors being properly
democratic is that their major policies and budgets are adopted *unless*
two-thirds of the Council or London Assembly vote against them. So just
over one third of the body supporting the Mayor is all he needs to rule as
they wish.

--
Colin Rosenstiel