Note – BBC Bristol haven’t objected yet to me posting short segments of their programmes on You Tube as long as they are attributed; hopefully BBC Sheffield have the same view.
This is a segment of The Toby Foster Bigger at Breakfast Show from BBC Sheffield, in which Toby interviews newly elected Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies (Eng Dem). Please try not to gnaw through your knuckles when listening to this, as it really is quite painful. A full transcript is available at Luke’s Blog, which was originally published at Andy’s Org.
Doncaster, a city large town in the North of England, is one of relatively few local authorities in the country to have a directly-elected political chief executive – a Mayor. This is a good idea, and I prefer this model of municipal government to Bristol’s “cabinet+chief executive” model where an executive cabinet is formed from elected councillors and express their policy through an appointed Chief Executive.
To avoid further confusion – the concept of an elected Mayor is distinct from (e.g.) the civic office of Lord Mayor of Bristol, which in our city performs the honorary role of “first citizen” and the legislative role of chairing meetings of the full council.
Anyhow, on June 4th, the voters of Doncaster elected Peter Davies of the English Democrats. Interestingly the election used the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system, and Mr Davies squeaked through ahead of an independent on the basis of second preference votes. None of the major national parties were even close to being in the running.
Followers of Bristol politics may recall that the English Democrats were the party that hijacked a popular local Facebook group and turned it into a campaigning platform.
The best one can say about this interview – being extremely charitable - is that perhaps Mayor Davies was ill-prepared to discuss detailed policy points. Perhaps he was expecting something a bit more light hearted - "getting fitted for chains of office" and "settling in to the office".
Regardless - the key learning point: there is no such thing as a friendly media interview if you're nominally right of centre. Prepare for the worst.
Some of his points did actually have a reasonable argument behind them. There is a good rationale for getting rid of "diversity" departments, but employment law, contracts of employment and public sector unions all mean that it is not just a case of pointing at people Alan-Sugar-style and yelling "You're fired".
The interviewer also offered a non-sequitur that for a Council to cut in-house translation services "is, under the European Court of Human Rights it’s illegal." But this is simply incorrect. There is no legal obligation from the ECHR or anywhere else to translate routine local authority publications and documents into non-native languages, although there is one relating to criminal charges. Regardless, such a service could be offered more efficiently - on-demand telephone translation or even with Google Translate.
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