To begin at the beginning

Why do people blog? In my case because I am arrogant enough to believe that people might be interested in my views on local government, or political debate inside the party . I might also sneak in the odd post on West Brom and English Cricket. I want to make the case that local government matters and affects peoples lives in a way that Central Government cannot and I want to argue for an active party whose role is not to be passive spectators as the debate is conducted in the Westminster bubble. Some of you may have spotted the reference to the seminal novel about Local Government "South Riding" by Winnifred Holtby. I may be one of the few who believed that the recent BBC dramatisation spent way too long on the romantic side of the novel and not enough on the Aldermanic Election process! It still however portrayed an optimistic belief that the local democratic process could change lives. In this country, local government is either shown as mindnumbingly bureaucratic or by Norman Wisdom as completely incompetent. At least in the Danish thriller "The Killing" we were deemed worthy enough to be the setting for a complex thriller. We need to open up the process and start to excite people again. We need to be a suitable subject for a thriller too!