Tuesday 6 January 2009

You Can Pay But We Will Stop You Having A Say

It must come as no surprise to those of us interested in politics and the present system of top-down government, under which we exist, that the quangocrats who benefit from the current undemocratic system don't want real accountability. Lets face it - do turkeys vote for Christmas?

It is outrageous that public money can be used to pay lobbyists to short circuit the little democracy we have left.  All three main political parties are now committed, to varying degrees, to making police more democratically accountable.

Whilst no longer a member of the Conservative Party I do hold in great esteem certain Conservative politicians. At the top of that list (which is extremely short) is Daniel Hannan MEP and Douglas Carswell MP, especially in their 'crusade' for 'real' local democracy. Courtesy of the latter I find that now we have a quango, founded in 1997 and in receipt of large sums of public money, lobbying to stop you deciding police priorities where you live.

The Association of Police Authorities (APA), whose motto is "Giving People a Say in Policing" , has hired lobbyists - Connect Public Affairs - and is using public money to pay for Connect Public Affairs to lobby against the democratisation of Police Authority structures!

The APA are not alone in dishing out taxpayers money either - read this.

This just demonstrates, in my opinion, that the bureaucrats and politicians (with notable exceptions included in which are the two mentioned above) have decided to form an 'alliance' to perpetuate and safeguard their own self-importance within our society.

When viewing the above and coupled with the situation whereby we have local council officials operating a consultancy/recruitment company, one can be forgiven in thinking that the whole system of 'government' in this country is beginning to have a most unsavoury aroma (aka a sort of 'brown' smell) clinging to it!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem is that there are 2 types of quango.

There are those who genuinely do a job that needs (needed?) to be done and have a role and there are those which appear to be self-serving.

Many, like the Human Tissue Authority, have a statutory role created in response to a problem (stolen body parts, transplants of imported tissue 'bought' from living donors etc) and cannot be abolished. Others, like the various equaity bodies created to deal with a problem, are time expired. unions, the courts and private groups monitor the legislation and the equality lobby appears to be creating work to justify its presence.

Quangoes should not be using lobbyists since their annual reports should clearly justify their existence and expenditure and will identify areas of new work (or places where they can reduce work or cease to exist altogether?).