Here we have the police interfering directly with the political structures of the nation and arguing for the reform of our system of local government because he's angry at the way his service has been treated by the national government. Thus, we now see at all levels of our society how economic problems are driving all political and social policy decision-making. Instead of politics being the bedrock of national policy with elected representatives making policy that is supposed to reflect the needs and problems of the polity, we have unelected officials demanding changes to our constitutional structure because they have been subject to a reform which should never have been made in the first place.
In his ‘Representative Government’ John Stuart Mill argues
that
‘The very object of having a local representation, is in
order that those who have any interest in common which they do not share with
the general body of their countrymen may manage that joint interest by
themselves.’
All communities have interests in common that they do not share with other communities. Liberal democracy
requires a system of limited government with defined independent centres of
power. It requires legitimacy and representation and as wide a dispersal of
power as is necessary. Britain is in fact heading in the opposite direction. Centralisation is the foundation of authoritarianism and totalitarianism and a necessary precursor of any totalitarian regime is the elimination of any form of local government.. Centralisation is the response of people who are determined to exercise complete control divorced from any form of democratic accountability. It is the antithesis of devolved and democratic decision-making. The notion that we have too many local authorities is a nonsense, and assumes that there is only one form of management structure that fits all and that decisions made in Glasgow or Edinburgh will meet the needs of, and understand the conditions in, Dingwall, or Stranraer. For example, policing, refuse collection, street cleaning, library provision etc. in Glasgow will be very different from Dingwall or Stranraer. They will impose different priorities and have different costs. You are not comparing like for like, and any claim that the decision-making process is the same for all such communities is simply wrong and ignorant, and any politician claiming that a centralised structure for any such services will adequately meet their needs should be barred from office as he/she is self-evidently an imbecile.
Local government and local services are not called local for nothing. Should they become centralised, they become national and cease to be local. For example, if you create a single emergency service, where will it operate from? Who will finance it and control it, and more importantly, who will select its management and who will hold them to account? The police are the personnel who guard and protect the polis, the local community. A policeman is a man of the polis, and this is not some abstract philosophical point as the origins of the police were to draw people from the local community who knew the community and cared for it. When the police service becomes national and loses its local genesis and a police chief begins to influence the constitutional arrangements in our society on purely economic grounds, our democracy is indeed in dire peril. The continual centralisation tendencies in this country are a grave threat to our rights and our freedoms, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Doktor Kommirat
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