Bad jokes

+It’s been widely reported that more black Americans voted for Trump (or Republican) than ever before, or at least for 50 years. It rather begs the question whether his popular vote would have been bigger had not State Republican parties done so much gerrymandering to try to stop black voters casting their ballots. Perhaps the gerrymanderers will think twice next time round. But here in Blighty Tory attempts to stop the wrong type of people voting, e.g. by introducing voter i/d could still be beneficial to their cause—it might dampen the turnout for Reform, never mind the Labour Party whose fortunes seem to be heading for a psephological nose-dive without outside assistance.
 
+Labour’s devolution crusade is in full swing, with centralised plans for housing development announced, the abolition of district councils in favour of larger unitary authorities and more executive mayors. When parties talk of power to the people they rarely mean it—with perhaps the big exceptions of e.g. the Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly, etc. National leaders always feel a bit powerless to get their agenda through, so talk of devolution is often just talk. And with the current crop of executive mayors all bar one being Labour, the party has issued instructions about their performance—and ultimately their ability to be reselected. Performance means obedience in this context, remembering the Party’s disgraceful treatment of Jamie Driscoll, former mayor of North Tyneside who had an admirable record of delivery for his constituents but was disbarred from standing again apparently because of the heinous offence of sharing a platform with Ken Loach. In Labour (and Tory) terms devolution means do as we say—at the local level. Local ‘government’ is a misnomer. This wasn’t always the case. Much of our Victorian infrastructure is a legacy of local councils tackling the problems that arose from the rapid urbanisation that took place then. But all those things—water, power, education, even telephones—were stripped from them.