Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Tag Archives: tony travers

Caroline Pidgeon writes: Setting our cities free from the stranglehold of the Treasury

By Caroline Pidgeon | Tue 23rd July 2013 - 3:00 pm

Reforming local government finance – a phrase that is enough to send many of us to sleep. But put a different way, devolving financial powers to our great cities, allowing local innovation and genuine localism, may keep your interest for longer!

May saw the launch of an excellent policy report called Raising the capital. The report was produced by the London Finance Commission, an authoritative wide ranging group of experts from both inside and outside politics, but crucially including experts from Birmingham and Manchester. The commission was chaired by respected Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged local government finance and london | 15 Comments

Thursday’s extra bonus: the local elections

By Mark Pack | Wed 5th May 2010 - 9:20 am

Put a backbench MP and a ruling group councillor together and they’ll often tease each other about who really has the more power – with the councillor often coming off the better. “I’ll see your ministerial questions and raise you a £500m budget” and so on.

So we certainly shouldn’t forget the other elections on Thursday:

All the seats in the 32 London boroughs
One third of the seats in the 36 Mets
One third of the seats in 20 unitary authorities
Half the seats in 7 district councils
One third of the seats in 70 district councils
Four Mayors

A happy side-effect of the strong general …

Continue reading »

Posted in Local government | 6 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

To paraphrase Shakespeare’ ‘something is rotten in the state of Britain’ (Judy Abel)
Born to be a Refugee… (Dalila Henniche Maali)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Observations of an Expat An Iranian Who’s Who (Tom Arms)
The Independent View: Are mutuals the answer to the water crisis? (People's Commission on the Water Sector)

Advert

Recent Comments

nigel hunter
cHLOE, bLAIR CONTINUED tHATCHERISM. Our industries were 'transferred to China etc, cos they made them cheaper. Result, all the UK has are warehouses to store ...
Hywel
"the cost of a first-class letter has risen by more than 100% in the last five years" Outside of sending leaflets at election time when was the last time peo...
Chloe
Nigel; Every single factory my parents and their families worked in - in my home town has gone . Only to be replaced by low pay , low skill warehouse work on th...
Judy Abel
And yes Brexit took the breaks off the worst excesses of neoliberalism with weaker consumer regulation and less scrutiny of public procurement for example....
Judy Abel
@NigelHunter I agree with every word. Money is leaking out of the economy to narrow private business interests like water through a collander....