Perhaps it’s time to get the Romans in to run our local government... (From Bucks Free Press)

Perhaps it’s time to get the Romans in to run our local government...

10:36am Friday 20th August 2010 in

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THERE’S a classic scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian that brings to mind the work of our local councils.

A group of activists are in a darkened room working out ways to dismantle the ‘Roman imperialist state’ which has taken over their land.

They complain their rulers have bled them dry and they ask what the Romans have ever done for them.

Then one bright spark chirps up: “The aqueduct.”

They all concede that’s true, but then another masked activist mentions the sanitation, and the group accepts that the aqueduct and the sanitation are indeed two good things the Romans have done.

However, then they are reminded of the roads… and then medicine…education…health… wine.

One of the leaders irritably interrupts and says: “All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?”

“Brought peace,” someone else says before being told to shut up.

I was thinking of this scene when I tried to work out last week what our rulers, our local councils in Bucks, have ever done for us.

Now the Romans were the bad guys in an autocracy and we live in a democracy, so the list has got to be good.

Er… this is the best I could come up with:

What Have Our Councils Ever Done For Us:

1. Closed our open air swimming pool;

2. Voted to cull our pigeons;

3. Discussed closing our day centres;

4. Built the ridiculous bus lane on the A40 in High Wycombe;

5. Stood virtually helplessly by (albeit in a very well-meaning way) unable to stop NHS chiefs transferring Wycombe Hospital services to Aylesbury;

6. Spurned the chance to switch off every speed camera in south Bucks, but instead chose to axe one that actually I quite like – the camera by The Rye in High Wycombe.

7. Agreed to giant housing plans, like the one at the Holy Cross Convent site, Chalfont St Peter, that residents don’t want.

8. Left council flats, like the ones in Lane End, empty for five years.

I probably could go on and on, but then a little voice in my sub-consciousness says ‘Eden’ and then another one says ‘waste services’.

Okay, I concede Eden and waste services are good things, but apart from that I’m struggling.

I’m not going to explain further and tell you which of our various councils in south Bucks is responsible for the above list, because frankly no one apart from the politicians cares any more. The very point of this is that the whole system is just too vast and confusing to be really accountable.

Readers may have noticed I have become obsessed in recent weeks with this very subject, and some may be turned off by it because local government by its very nature is quite dull.

But that’s the very reason the system never gets changed because there is no great public pressure on it to change.

However, as councils are forced – through no great fault of their own – to make savage cuts that affect most of our lives, perhaps that pressure now can be brought to bear.

I have been surprised that several well-informed readers have written in to support my view that our cumbersome and bewildering three-tier system has to change and be streamlined into some kind of unitary authority.

So perhaps I’m not prancing in the dark after all. And perhaps as the cuts bite, and the excuses and the hand-wringing becomes progressively more noticeable, the public will rise in numbers to create a clamour for change in Bucks.

Yes, ask yourselves as they close our day centres and tell us there is no money for vital services: what have our councils ever done for us?

Perhaps indeed it’s time to get the Romans in to run our local government.