Comments on: I’ve heard of “think global, act local”

By: ed

ed — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:14:56 +0000

Weird. I was at Oxford with Councilor Thompson. He was Lib-Dem then too. Who decides to become a Lib-Dem when they’re 18? I mean, christ.

By: roac

roac — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:59:28 +0000

it’s rather like saying to someone living in Luton that Edinburgh Castle is on their doorstep.

I looked it up. Google Maps says it’s 342 miles driving distance from the U. of Ariz. to the South Rim.

(Monument Valley—in the picture—is about 430 miles.)

By: Francis Xavier Holden

Francis Xavier Holden — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:05:45 +0000

http://progress-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/melbourne-to-canberra-travel-claim-call-off/

By: Francis Xavier Holden

Francis Xavier Holden — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:05:18 +0000

Councillor “flexibility” is popular here too:

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:21:51 +0000

This is local to me these days as well, and not because I moved to Arizona either. Perhaps we could consider outsourcing politicians to India? I hear you can buy a moderately competent elected official for peanuts.

By: ejh

ejh — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:01:41 +0000

On a smaller scale, but similar and also involving the Lib Dems: see story “Is This Right?” here.

Additional information: Remy Horton is the son of Lib Dem MEP Sharon Bowles who will have known very well that her party was selecting her son as a candidate without telling the electorate the truth about his real place of residence.

Footnote: I am not entirely unrelated to these people.

By: Lex

Lex — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:26:26 +0000

The MP/Councillor/Doctor analogy implicitly reinforced by the ‘surgery’ tag is an interesting example, in its origins, of the British tendency to conflate authority and assistance, though I suspect that the last generation or so has seen that authority dwindle, to be replaced by an equally pernicious idea that such figures can be made to make one’s life better.

By: eszter

eszter — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:20:57 +0000

Obviously not the same thing, but I thought sufficiently on topic to mention here: The mayor of Budapest (for the past 18 years) doesn’t* live in Budapest. Okay, so he lives in the suburbs, not a huge deal (clearly, or he wouldn’t keep getting elected), but given that a sizable portion (>17%) of the country’s entire population lives within the city’s borders, it’s kind of amusing that its mayor doesn’t.

*I’m not sure if this is still the case (I suspect it would be), but it was certainly the case back in the 90s.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:30:58 +0000

I had a brain tumour taken out last year by a 32 year old Green Party councillor last year Did she come in lobotomobile and use an ice pick and a hammer?

By: Chris Armstrong

Chris Armstrong — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:03:32 +0000

I heard of a case recently where a senior council official emigrated to Australia, but was retained on a daily wage by the council so that he could assist in managing the finances while his replacement was trained. There was some public outrage about the squandering of public resources but, once the details were laid out by the council, it looked like reas0nably good value for money and there didn’t seem to be any sense in which the guy’s work was affected by being performed via a laptop on Bondai Beach.

On the other hand, this case makes me feel more uneasy – perhaps I’m a Luddite, but isn’t there something about effective representation that demands the prospect that, should they need to, constituents could meet their representative face-to-face reasonably regularly – and sometimes at short notice? Go on, tell me I’m a Luddite.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:56:43 +0000

Actually the clue is in the quote; a “surgery” is where constituents go to “share their problems” (minor respiraratory ailments, scabies and the like) – it’s from an Old English word meaning “plague house”.

By: Hidari

Hidari — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:20:25 +0000

Barry Freed

Don’t listen to Aaron. It’s an obscure bylaw in England that local councillors have to be able to carry out either twelve minor surgical operations a year or one major operation every two years. It goes back to the days when barbers used to be surgeons, and surgeons used to be local councillors for middle of the road political parties.

It’s quite a controversial tradition, but in practice it all seems to work out ok, generally speaking. It seems political and medical skills are quite transferable. For example, I had a brain tumour taken out last year by a 32 year old Green Party councillor last year and despite her complete lack of medical training so far it seems to have worked out quite aaargaqhlk;kjlxxklohjwerjkjhlkjhalmk,mn,.nxzzzz
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By: Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:02:25 +0000

Apparently surgery is British for "office hours".

By: Barry Freed

Barry Freed — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:45:42 +0000

Cllr Thompson’s monthly surgeries, which allow residents to share their problems, are now being taken over by his two ward colleagues

“monthly surgeries”? I’m American, help me out here.

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:37:27 +0000

We do get more than 300 days of sunshine a year, though.