I wish I was able to contribute more to Yorkshire’s Big Conversation, occurring in the online version of the Yorkshire Post. But Parkside High School for Boys in Beeston, South Leeds, where I spent most of my adolescence gazing out the windows at the green and pleasant Woods of Middleton, dismally flunked its debate and deliberation assessment. The report said something about “loud-mouthed, ill-mannered, know-nothing troglodytes”. And the pupils fared no better.
In fact our head of sixth form and my history teacher bore an uncanny resemblance to the present Jeremy Corbyn. He once sent me for the cane after I’d questioned Bolshevik tactics at Kronstadt (we were doing the Russian Revolution: Lenin and Trotsky were “our friends”, and we don’t criticise friends, Kirby!) School taught me that a smart tongue only leads to a smarting backside. I grew up with dialectical deficiency issues.
Still, as the Yorkshire Post says, the debate has “ignited opinions.”
In my case the touch paper must be a little damp as my opinion barely sputtered out of the milk bottle so it’s helpful that the local newspaper of record can reveal, “There are no certainly shortage of viewpoints on the central question of what form of devolved government would best serve the needs of Yorkshire diverse cities, towns, rural and coastal areas.” The “no certainly shortage” so far consists of the viewpoints of a handful of business people, one MP, a YP pundit (quoting approvingly that great friend of local democracy, Henry Kissinger) and today, intriguingly, an exclusive with Manchester City Council leader, Sir Richard Leese.
Sir Richard reassures his Yorkshire chums that Manchester is “not in the business of being in competition with Leeds and Sheffield.” As he says, “we do that better by working together than actually by taking a very parochial view that we are in competition with each other when in a global economy we are not.” Which is very fraternal, is it not? And three cheers for the global economy which has finally sorted out the intractable cross-Pennine enmity. Fabulous news. Go Manchester!
Sir Richard reveals that he’d been trying to reach a devolution deal with the Chancellor before the general election; “We had been banging on this door for a very long period of time and what happened last year is the door opened,”
All I can comment is that the Chancellor really ought to get a better butler; the present guy seems straight out of The Addams Family. So slow to get to that door. I bet it’s creaky too. Would it be too much trouble to oil the hinges? Is it too much to ask that at least the knocker was polished? The fact that Sir Richard had to bang on the door so many times does suggest that was in disrepair too. Utterly shameful. I only hope that in any Northern Powerhouse worthy of the name the doors to all our most important public buildings will be oiled, polished and painted a good old Yorkshire white… these are the questions yours truly will get answered should the powerhouse ever come to pass. Nobody should have to knock on the door of the Northern powerhouse for a very long period of time before the door is opened.
Then Sir Richard goes on to say, “By and large on the devolutionary trail, you get what you can when you can and to a certain extent post General Election make it more difficult post General Election for any particular party to say we didn’t really mean it after all.”
… And this is where the Big Debate goes whoosh, way above my head and far beyond my understanding. I don’t even know what these words mean anymore.
All I really know, thanks to this debate, “Yorkshire’s Big Conversation“, is that local democracy is way too expensive; the only question worth asking is who could be the leader “with the clout to persuade private firms to relocate here rather than London or Scotland“? (not Manchester, obviously, as the leader of their council just said he wasn’t interested); and what we need is “a streamlined structure … one person heading the board of Yorkshire plc and providing … visionary leadership” who can answer “the Kissinger question”.
Local democracy is “parochialism“.
Yorkshire PLC.
The Kissinger conundrum.
Thanks Yorkshire Post for such an illuminating debate. I feel much better informed…