Simon Bale – new boss of yet another one of the city’s ever-multiplying quangos, the Bristol Partnership – breaks cover in the Cancer today to answer a few soft questions optimistically billed as “an interview” by the Cancer’s imaginative subs.
This latest partnership, full of appointed members, is yet another organisation in the city happily taking decisions on our behalf while its members don’t bother with the hassle of actually getting elected by us.
Indeed The Blogger discovered, while reporting on the Labour Party’s flaccid ‘State of the City Debate’ recently, that much of the responsibility for the future political direction of the city seems to have been handed over by our elected councillors to Bale’s unelected and unaccountable body.
Working alongside Bale on this committee are a fairly typical selection of the unelectable, the unbearable and the frankly unbelievable although finding an actual list of them is proving something of a challenge. Take a look on their website. See if you can find out who they are, why they’re there, who appointed them and what the hell qualifies them to decide anything about our city.
None of this seems to bother Bale very much though. “Things are getting more democratic, not less,” he cheerily announces.
“In the old days decisions were made and you would just have to lump it if you were on the receiving end.”
As opposed to now, presumably where you can’t even find out who’s taking the bloody decisions, you can’t vote ’em out if you don’t like it and you just have to er, lump it really if you are on the recieving end.
Brilliant. Progress Bristol style.
No idea on who they are, but they have one of those impenetrable diagrams that confuses more than it clarifies what they actually do:
http://www.bristolpartnership.org/resources/documents/BP%20Key%20Documents/Delivering_Success.pdf
Wasn’t Simon Bale involved in the misnamed “Communities Organised for Greater Bristol” outfit a few years ago?
By the way what happened to them? Where did all their big money backers go?
I think we should be told!
The Bristol Partnership is Bristol’s local strategic partnership – http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/page.asp?id=531
They exist to pool the resources and talents of all sectors – public, private, voluntary and community organisations – to improve the quality of life in cities and tackle big issues that no single body can tackle on its own.
LSPs were introduced in 2001 and exist in 86 cities across the UK.