New kid on the blog

With new County Council leader Kay Cutts opening her mouth and putting her well-heeled foot into it on an almost daily basis, there is a welcome addition to the Nottingham blogging crew in the shape of the Reverend Rushcliffe and his Parish of Nottinghamshire blog.

Doing for the administration at County Hall what our friend Nottingham City Council LOL’s does for the City Council, his analysis of the goings on over the river are essential reading for anyone who wants to keep abreast of the pantomime that our local politicians have now become part of.

You can rely on my blogging colleagues and I to bring you the truth, the whole truth… and the secrets, rumours, conjecture and opinion.

Collins consolidates City power

The Evening Post (weeks behind Nottingham bloggers, incidentally) reports that City Council Leader Jon Collins has been appointed Chair of regeneration quango, One Nottingham.

Jon Collins - Considering whether there's any organisation left that he's not leader of?

I’ve already given my views on this in a previous blog so I won’t go on again, but wouldn’t it be more honest if we did away with this notion of ‘partnerships’ (which are supposed to bring public bodies together with local businesses and the voluntary sector in the interests of the city) and just publicly acknowledge the situation that we actually have in Nottingham?  That is, the City Council runs everything and even where it doesn’t appear to (as in the case of One Nottingham until today) it still does in reality.

So let’s stop complaining about Jon Collins being a megalomaniac and just accept that the City Council is in charge and that Councillor Collins and his crew will always get their own way (until we vote them out, of course). We may not like this but at least we won’t be agonising over our democratic processes any longer and hoping for a level of honesty and accountability that the city administration is clearly incapable of.

City retains its pride in Euro elections

Nottingham is quite rightly proud of its multi-cultural population and the degree of cohesion that exists in its communities. The city houses people from many countries of the world and is now home to third and fourth generation familes from Asia, the Caribbean and many other places. It has also made recent immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa welcome. If you visit places like Hyson Green, you can see the effects of this with shops and businesses springing up representing a multitude of nationalities but without any of the obvious friction or animosity that other cities seem to experience.

International tastes in Hyson Green

So it was perhaps not surprising but nevertheless very comforting, to see that the pernicious message of the BNP was resisted in the Euro elections and they only managed to get just over 4000 votes in the city (with the Greens getting 130 votes more). The fact that the Labour party came first and UKIP lost ground are also testament to the continuing nature of Nottingham as a city with a ’social democratic’ base.

Turnout in the city was just over 29%, (against the whole East Midlands figure of 37%), which is a cause for concern but probably represents people’s growing disillusionment with politics in general following the expenses scandal and their confusion and apathy over Europe.

So, with the lowest turnout ever, not particularly a good weekend for democracy across Europe but a result that the city of Nottingham can take some comfort from.

Democratic dilemma

Someone once said that we get the politicians we deserve. It’s obviously true that we get the politicians we vote for and that we can remove them by the same process. That’s democracy… and, leaving aside the debate over proportional representation and other possible reforms of the voting system,  most people think it’s the best method of electing a government and the best political system to live under.

I make these observations only because I’ve been reading some excellent analysis of the BNP on fellow Nottingham blog Bent Society which confirms the very obvious racist intentions of the party and shows their leader Nick Griffin for the fascist extremist he is. All of which you would hope would help people to see beyond their pseudo-respectable patriotic image and discourage anyone from voting for them… wouldn’t you?

That’s what I thought… and then it suddenly struck me that that’s exactly why people vote for the BNP. Their supporters are under no illusion about the party or its leader. They vote for them because they are racists.

Which is scary… and makes you wonder about democracy in general and our political system in particular, if the BNP can be a ‘legitimate’ political party with some chance of gaining seats in the forthcoming European or local elections. I just hope there are still enough decent people in this county – and that they make the effort to vote next week - to ensure that the BNP don’t get a foot in the door in any part of Nottinghamshire.