Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Local difficulties

No blogging yesterday. In part this was due to an ultimately fruitless attempt to speak in the Local Government debate. This is one of the frustrations of conference. You put in a card to speak in a debate and then hope to be called. But as in this case, one can spend hours creating a beautifully crafted speech that is never delivered.

At least the local government paper was referred back, amid severe criticism from various local government figures including our Herts CC Lib Dem group leader Chris White. Regular readers will may remember my previouscriticism of the policy paper.

The amazing thing, though, is that there was no mention in the paper or the debate itself of the notion that decentralisation and local control is a way of improving public services. Back in 2003 when the party approved the Huhne Commission report, this was our big idea. Now it is all but forgotten.

No comments: