The end of parish-pump politics?

Permabear

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amacachi

What is a parish pump anyway?

Lockstep

Yes, I've definetly noticed the same thing on the ground.

When canvassing before, the default question was "What will he do for me?" or being asked about various local issues like potholes and post boxes. There's still been the odd person asking about medical cards and traffic lights but they seem happy enough to be given the phone number for a local councillor.


This year, I keep being asked about jobs and political reform. It's very energising.

Permabear

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Eliot Rosewater

This change is very welcome. Will it survive the recession? When the "good times" return will people revert to prefering giveaway politicians?

Smeefa

Thank god. That's one of the many things that was wrong with this country - people voting for that td cause he filled in that pothole at the end of the road, not even thinking of the party policies and the bigger picture!

Permabear

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Bottle_of_Smoke

Wouldn't be overly optimistic.

This is most optimistic part:

The importance of selecting a candidate to look after the needs of the constituency has dropped from 39pc in 2007 to 25pc today.

The only way to keep this trend long term is completely reform politics. IE have proper local government. Like look at what local government in Netherlands can do:

Tuesday 08 February 2011

The provincial government of Utrecht on Monday voted against allowing mega factory farms following protests by environmental organisation Milieudefensie and thousands of local people.

A limit to the size of factory farms has now been set at 1.5 hectares and anything over that will not be allowed, reports news agency Novum.

Milieudefensie argued that without a limit, farms would continue to increase in size causing damage to animal welfare, the environment and the landscape. Over 15,000 people signed the organisation's petition.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2011/02/utrecht_bans_mega_factory_farm.php

If local government had powers like that there'd be no point in voting locally for national elections. In a way I sympathise with parish pump voters. The TD is the one with the power, the counciller and the mayor have very minor powers so if you want something done for your area there's not much point contacting your counciller in the current set up.

If a party was to legislate for more powers to local govt we could just abandon constituencies for national elections and let people vote for whoever they want

Lockstep

A lot of the issues people bring up with TDs would be better suited to MABS or a City/County Councillor.

Most of the parish pump work is more knowledge (getting a medical card) than political power.

Permabear

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Flimbos

I'd be delighted to see the end of parish pump politics and certainly have never voted for anyone on this basis.

But we have to ask ourselves why does parish pump politics exist. People have voted for TDs because they could fast-track a local project, or sort out some other local issue that should really be the remit of the local authority.

There are obviously problems in the way over local government system works and this needs addressing.

Lockstep

Permabear wrote: »

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It's very worrying. In a sense, it encourages TDs to maintain this broken system; as long as they're a fixer who people feel is the only way to get things done, the system will never change or be improved.

DWCommuter

A classic example of Parish Pump politics returning a TD is Michael Lowry. The man can do no wrong even when he is, in fact, wrong.
The Healy Raes of this world are a close second. If the son gets in, then Kerry really has taken over from Cork as the peoples republic.:D

But seriously my own interest in politics over the years has always been about the national interest. I agree that local CCs should look after local issues and the Dail should be downsized to concentrate on more than a rapist cat terrorizing Mary's Budgie. But can we really move away from parish pump politics? I know we should.

johnmcdnl

who's going to fix the road beside my house now :mad: county council may start getting their act together if there's less roads and community buildings being built by TDs