EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

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aggi in reply to @

My experience of dealing with big business is that its horrible almost all the time. Small companies can be great and can be horrible. Maybe my perception is unrepresentative, but if the problem is customer service and the general public's solution is "we need massive corporates" then the general public are a bit weird

I've rarely experienced customer service as bad as when I try and get my local council to do something.

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itsbruce in reply to @aggi

Local government has been under assault for decades, now. Thatcher didn't trust even the Tory councils, so she was a big fan of creating legislation that gave them no choice about what to do while micromanaging (and cutting) their budgets. Successive governments have followed that trend. Blair doubled down on it, taking most decision making out of the chamber and into a smaller, single-party cabinet.

I was working in the voluntary sector back when local councils were effectively compelled to sack most of their staff and outsource. One of the first moves of many councils was to turn to the voluntary organisations they were funding and say "If you want to keep your funding, you have to take on our statutory obligations". Eventually the council leaderships realised that central government no longer cared much if those statutory obligations were honestly met (as long as there was a good cover story), so the funding for the voluntary sector began to dry up as well.

Local government would be a great idea if we still had it. Its slow death has probably played a part in the alienation that led to Brexit.

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