Heaven help Cumbria and North Yorkshire. As the terrible experience of County Durham shows, if a tier of local government ought to be abolished, then it is not District Councils, but County Councils.
The counties that matter for cricket, county shows, and so on, are in any case the historic counties, and many administrative counties have resembled those barely, if at all, since as long ago as 1974, which was before well over half the population was born.
Of that year's entirely new confections of Avon, Cleveland, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Humberside, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, and West Yorkshire, only the third still has a council at all. No one seems to miss the others.
We can make the unitary county council work for us now we've kicked out the old guard.
ReplyDeleteWe owe it to ourselves to try.
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