Imagine you are…
One of the roles of the UCL Conservative Society (as with all young Tory groups) is to help prepare the leaders of tomorrow. We have speakers coming to share their knowledge, we do Port & Policy debates to get members more confident in public speaking and, we go campaigning. All useful skills,but we want to do more. This is where the new website design and format comes in!
So far we have done “5…” and “guess the quotes”. One to help you learn famous quotes (useful for your speeches when in Parliament) and the other to get you thinking about politics and listing your own ideas on subjects. The next part is “UCL speech class” taken from a very good idea the BBC have done.
We want you to write short speeches (around 100 words) pretending you are a politican in a certain situation. We are keeping it short so that you can focus your arguement and not spend too much time on it - time when you could be in the library/pub. I list the first example below - imagine you are that person and write your speech in the comment section below.
Imagine you are…David Cameron giving his 2007 Party Conference speech. In around 100 words try and unite the Party - have fun!
UPDATE: don’t forget that tonight is part 1 of “The Blair Years” on BBC1.
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November 18th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Ladies and Gentlemen, Britain works better when Britons can decide how best to run their own affairs.
Localisation of public services by granting fiscal autonomy to local government is the only way to involve local people in the decision making processes within their own communities.
We should utterly reject central direction of local government and services through the use of unelected quangos, championed by the Labour party!
This theme also applies to business, the increased regulation and taxation of business over the past ten years ‘MUST’ be rolled back, if Britain is to maintain a competitive edge and hold on to it’s brightest and best!
November 18th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
It is impossible to grant fiscal autonomy to Local Gov’t because of the different socioeconomic scales in different authorities. If you want to make a difference to Local Gov’t and really make the system work then the Standards Board should be abolished followed swiftly by the Public Service Board, but not all quangos are automatically bad!
Another idea would be to cut, by about a third, the number of elected Councillors at a District level. Also the Tory Party should not automatically be hostile to Unitary status. We need to have an open mind.
Wait for my next Caerulean article for further ideas to improve Local Government!
November 18th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Stuart T, i totally agree with you about localism, but you ought to bear in mind that the emasculation of local government began under thatcher and continued apace under major, and has got worse under labour. A true localist will only be comfortable in the libdems.
of the 40 acts concerning local governent between 1979-1990, 37 removed power from the local and placed it in the central. business rates were nationalised by thatcher, and it was under her that capping was introduced. major was not much better. as PM he chaired a cabinet meeting on the abolition of local government, as it had effectively become an agency of the central state.
this must all seem a terribly long time ago to you ‘youngsters’ but it believe that it is important to know where have come from in order to understand fully where we are.
blair and brown are instinctive centralisers and believers in the central state. however, there has in the last year or so been some rolling back of the centre, with the local government white paper, the proposed reduction in targets on local government, MAAs and other forms of sub-regional governance. So the picture is more mixed than you might at first think.
Stuart D, it is entirely possible to reconcile greater fiscal autonomy with social harmony across areas of differing ’socioenomic scales’. It happnes across most of the rest of western europe, probably most effectively in germany, where local municipalities and regional ‘land’ raise of majority of their revenue, with Berlin topping up areas as social harmony demands. Greater fiscal autonmy doesn’t mean abandoning places to economic decline, as long as you have equalistaion grants from the centre.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Which makes it a false “autonomy”… It’s just the Central Grant but by another name. It would also require our system to fundamentally change because we have a two-tier system, one acts as a tax collection authority and as such there would need to be a unitary system to make it work or you make both tiers responsible for their own tax collection.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I believe there may have been some confusion caused by my first post, due to the 100 word format of this topic I could not go into too much detail and as such left myself open to misunderstanding.
Firstly by fiscal autonomy I was referring to the ability for local authorities to spend money alloted to them by central government in any way they see fit, this is because of differing socioeconomic factors within differing local authorities. This would encourage innovation of ideas in local government due to the problems facing differing councils, and of course any transfer of good ideas that can be adapted to other local authorities would be encouraged.
Secondly to address Tarquin, I am perfectly aware of developments in local authority funding that occured under Margaret Thatcher. At that time measures such as capping and centralisation of power was nessercary to prevent councils run by the extreme left from fleecing residents.
Now that on the whole most councils are not led by leftist’s it is quite safe to devolve some central powers back to local authorities.
November 19th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Stuart D, it would not be ‘false autonomy’. Currently local governemnt raises only 25% of its revenue with the rest from a central governemnt grant. It is quite feasible to reverse these ratios, as happens in other European countries. The equalisation grant from the centre of approximately 25% - the exact figure would of course vary depending on the local authority - would meet social objectives without compromising local autonomy. Remember, many welfare functions and spending, such as pensions and other benefits, would still be delivered centrally, so it is not as though the centre would withdraw totally from providing for social objectives, even when it only funds 25% of local governemnt revenue.
Stuart T, I agree with you that fiscal autonomy would drive forward the sort of innovation you speak of. Being able to raise their own income would increase local accountability and drive forward innovation even more. For example, a local authority would be encouraged to create a better business environment if it could keep more of the receipts that flowed from such actions. However, the justfication for centralisation that you put forward - which indeed is the default Conservative response to the charge of undermining local democacy - is not a sufficinet justification for what happened. I would counter that we already have (and had) a very good system for dealing with badly run councils. It’s called the ballot box, and voters in Newcastle and Liverpool recently got rid of poorly run Labour-led councils by voting in the Libs. Frankly it is not for a right-wing ideologue in Westminster to decide who or what sort of council I am allowed to elect.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
*ahem*
Men and Women of Britain, in an age where original policy and moral values are in decline, we call upon you, the people, to make the right decision. Not only for yourselves, but your families, your friends, and your fellow Britons.
Our country faces many threats to our traditional values, prosperity and overall way of life. We must unite to conquer yobbishness, the workshy, furhter centralisation of government and inheritance tax.
My friends, the time has come to change the direction of this country - if you want visible change in morals, values and national outlook you know who to vote for. After all, ‘life’s better under a Conservative’.