Why the Localism Act is shit.

Well, you can get a few insights into the idea of it from this thesaurus entry:

I think that pretty much sums it up.

It's basically part of this "Big Society" crap that our local MP Loughton was getting paid a few grand a month as a consultant for. It pretty much allows central government to wipe their hands of legislation  for local authorities and replace it with a selection of guidelines that are not enforceable and the whole thing is left to "self regulation", which pretty much gives corrupt councils the right to do whatever the hell they want and not have to answer to anyone but themselves.

Obviously Adur Council love this particular bit of legislation, it has allowed them to refuse to publish their pecuniary interests, and gives them the right to investigate themselves, instead of any official independent organisation getting in the way of their imaginative interpretation of these guidelines.

One part of the act, requires "independent" members of the public to be involved, however these "independent" people are selected by the council concerned, strangely enough the same names tend to crop up time and again, and in Adur's case, one of these "independent" people is a director of a business based within the town hall, so you could probably safely assume that none of them are particularly independent.

One further problem with this system, is that members of the public are not permitted to make any form of contact with these supposedly independent people, and all documents passed to them are vetted by the council's legal department first, so this appears to be somewhat opaque rather than truly transparent. In my case, the "independent" person (I think this one was called Tony Case), did not receive the full statement from myself, nor did he receive the recording that clearly shows the breach beyond doubt, and was only made aware of about 25% of one incident reported rather than whole of both. The council's solicitor made sure that the Localism act was abused like a rent boy at a Tory party conference, but that's nothing new for an ADC solicitor, they aren't worried about the truth, they'd rather rely on the assumption that their staff are untouchable and use the holes in the Localism act in order to ensure that they answer to no one. The Fascist Pig Executive Head of legal, Jeremy Cook, even gleefully pointed out that the Localism act was "badly written" and had "plenty of holes", and we all know how much ADC love holes, after all they want us all to live in one, and the majority of them talk out of one.

Essentially what I'm saying, is that independence is relative, and in the case of ADC is usually is one of their relatives.

Viva la revolucion
K