Your Say The let us down over college fees

I usually read the politicscolumn and think Janet Battye gave a distorted picture of reality. I supported the Lib-Dems but was disgusted when Nick Clegg broke his pledge on student tuition fees. It does not seem fair to me when students have to find at least £18,000 more to cover their higher education. The promise of the “greenest government ever” was a load of greenwash and the Green Deal was a massive flop. In Calderdale, there has been little improvement attributable to Calderdale MBC. I try to keep my energy consumption down and it would be interesting to know what our local leaders do. Hence, the Crossland Challenge. I will donate £10 to Overgate for every councillor in Calderdale, or our two MPs, who has a lower domestic energy consumption. I live in a detached bungalow, the least energy efficient building design, and as an OAP I have to keep warm for health reasons. My energy consumption is 12000 KWh per annum. being carved up into various regional bodies called combined authorities. Currently we have a West Yorkshire combined authority that includes Calderdale, Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees, Wakefield and York, and a South Yorkshire combined authority that includes the Sheffield City region, Barnsley, Doncaster, and Rotherham. These new bodies have a lot of power but local people have no chance to elect politicians directly onto them. Politicians get appointed onto these bodies from the Councils to which they were elected. This creates an undemocratic and piecemeal devolution, what for instance happens to districts like Selby and Harrogate or the Humberside which are left out of the combined authorities? What if you don’t like the politicians running the combined authority, given you don’t get to say who they are? Now we are told in order to be granted any more powers each of these new combined authorities would have to have a directly elected Mayor. This will centralise political power in the hands of one person, rather than distributing it to a wider group of peo- ple with a range of experience and political views. As Liberals we believe power is best wielded when it is devolved to the people. That’s why we would like to see a Yorkshire parliament with similar devolved powers to those of the Scottish Government. In terms of size Yorkshire is very comparable to Scotland, and there is no reason a Yorkshire parliament couldn’t be making decisions about how things are run rather than civil servants and ministers down in London. Such a parliament could be elected on a proportional system as happens in Scotland. This would allow the views of people who vote UKIP, Green and Liberal Democrat to be heard and represented in the new parliament. It would have proper democratic oversight, and allow for proper debate on topics and issues. Yorkshire is a proud and powerful region, and it deserves to have it’s own unified voice and it’s own parliament.