A Mare of a Mayor

As ever, the Bristol Post proves how out of touch it is with the people of this great city by informing us that “Bristol should count its blessings that it has George Ferguson as mayor”. The former Conservative Party chairman Lord Deben (who he?) adds, “After a very long period of appalling local government in Bristol, in which all three parties were involved, the elected mayor of Bristol has made a dramatic improvement”. Whilst I am not arguing that Bristol as been run appallingly over the years, this “dramatic improvement” seems to have passed me by.

So far as I can tell, the buses are still massively overpriced and rarely on time, the Metrobus is still being talked about, it is virtually impossible to park anywhere in the city, the 20 MPH limit has been a farce, City and Rovers do not have new stadia – oh, need I go on?

Well, I’ve mentioned some of the things – there are many more – which have not improved under the dead hand of old Red Trousers, but I read carefully Lord Deben’s comments and he didn’t mention one. And I certainly can’t think of one. Ferguson’s reign, trumpeted by a lazy and docile local media, has hardly been a resounding success; more a collection of soundbites and publicity gimmicks like changing the name of the “Council House” to “City Hall”, presumably so he could make himself appear as important as Boris Johnson.

I bow to no one in my love and admiration for this fair city, even with its chronic traffic problems, it’s lack of decent sporting teams and not even having an arena, but I contend that almost everything that is good about Bristol did not need Ferguson to make it so.

The good people of Bristol, well most of them, are to blame for all this. Not only did they not bother to vote when offered the chance to create an expensive non job on top of the numerous local career politicians they already pay for, they failed to turn out at all in order to vote for anyone other than Ferguson. So they were stuck with him. I count myself lucky to live in South Gloucestershire where we do not have to live under his misrule (and long may it stay that way).

In reality, the mayor can do very little to make positive changes to anything, given the massive cuts to council spending imposed by Whitehall and by the fact that vital services, like public transport, are run for profit. The mayor can make representations to the bus company to say how crap and expensive their services are, but they will tell him, in effect, to go forth and multiply because they are accountable to their shareholders, not the travelling public. But the things where Ferguson could make things better, he’s just made things worse.

I fully expect Ferguson to be returned to office when the mayor’s job is up for election again. That’s usually the way things work these days. Moan, moan, moan about someone’s incompetence and then don’t bother to vote at the election because “politicians are all the same” which is rubbish.