Olympics? Where's they to, my luvver?

[steepholm]

Dozens of Bristol billboards have suddenly sprouted advertisements paid for by the Mayor of London, Transport for London, and the Olympic Committee, informing us that "Certain roads will be affected during the games".

Well, I'd guessed that, but since London is over 100 miles away and no events are being held in Bristol, does it really require an expensive advertising campaign to tell us? (Actually, that's not quite true: the Olympic torch will be snaking its way through the city at some point, but I doubt that's going to cause more disruption than, say, the annual Bristol half-marathon, the St Pauls Carnival, or the occasional protest march, all of which take place quite happily without the need for all the city's hoardings to be booked up.) Now we know where the money went...

Anyway, I was wondering just how far afield the London Olympic street closure posters had reached. Any advance on 100 miles? sheenaghpugh, are you awash with them in Shetland?

Meanwhile, I am meant to be voting soon in a referendum on whether Bristol should follow London's lead in having an elected mayor. So far, I have received no literature or canvas visits from either side, although the local paper is certainly cheerleading for the change. A couple of weeks ago it ran a lengthy piece by Michael Heseltine, urging Bristolians to seize this historic opportunity for a place at the high table of British politics, not to get left behind by the tide of history, to prove itself worth of its glorious heritage, to grab this special offer while it was still in the shops, etc. I am guessing that the same article appeared in other local papers too, with the word 'Bristol' changed for 'Sunderland', etc., because there wasn't a word in it that related to the city specifically.

As readers of this blog will know (c.f. all the reasons why it was imperative we join the Euro lest we get left behind by the tide of history, etc.) I react badly to high-pressure sales tactics, and Heseltine's piece has almost convinced me to vote No. But I'd still be interested in any actual arguments on either side, since I've heard none yet.

I also wonder, only somewhat tangentially: how many directly-elected mayors around the world are women, and is it a significantly higher or lower proportion than mayors elected by councillors (like the female mayor Bristol has now, for example)?

Comments

[kalypso]

At a debate I went to recently one of the arguments advanced by an anti was "And they're nearly all men" though she didn't offer figures. There are certainly women standing, as in London (though the only time any of the three main parties put a woman up there was the first mayoral election in 2000 when Susan Kramer stood for the Liberal Democrats), but I can't remember hearing of any getting elected; I'd be interested to hear of examples.

Every instinct I have is against the idea of elected mayors, and has been since the idea was floated in Manchester in the 1990s. One thing that struck me as sinister then was that there didn't seem to be any way of getting rid of them between elections; if I wanted to get rid of my council leader, I have a rough idea of how I'd go about it (though you may reasonably point out that I have an advantage over the average voter as I'm a member of the same party). Even with a a prime minister there's a mechanism for turning them out. But the councillors can't vote out the mayor however bad they turn out to be.

Essentially, though, I see it as part of the drift (what do I mean "drift", it's a headlong dive) towards the politics of personality cult, where party leaders' wives get more attention than their colleagues, and to hell with the policies. London's now gripped in a ridiculous Ken and Boris pantomime which Boris looks likely to win because a lot of people have decided he's slightly less objectionable as an individual. But I just don't understand this idea that a single person is more effective than a consensus. It keeps reminding me of that passage in Pratchett:

"Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: 'Kings. What a good idea.' Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees."

This mayoral craze is the same thing.

[steepholm]

I'm veering towards a 'No' vote more by the hour. The onus is really on those who want a change to make the case for it, and they just haven't done so, which suggests they're either complacent, contemptuous or incompetent, or some combination of the three.

I love the quotation from Pratchett, though it's sad that it's true.

[colorwheel]

i don't know what your subject line is from, but it reminds of "where to she now?" from gavin & stacey, thus here is a ruth jones to brighten the day.

[steepholm]

Thank you! Ms Jones is always welcome. "Where's it to?" is "Where is it?" in Bristolian (and, I believe points west).

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

We're asking the same question here in Kent and the damn thing's right next door.

We're also getting mighty fed up with Johnson interfering in local politics!

'Lympix? Wossat then?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You're well within the Pale: I'm guessing Johnson sees Kent as part of his bailiwick.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Well Johnson knows what he can do in that case!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

WEll, we didn't get the Heseltine piece here in Cambridge, but I'm not sure we're on the mayor list.
And we don't have any signs about Olympic road disruption, despite being only 50 miles from London.
When I was commuting regularly from Cambridge to Cardiff, the Work In the City, Live in Bristol brigade were a weekly known pain -- hogging space on trains and the roads and generally adopting all the usual Rich and Important entitlement behaviours. Like Northants, parts of Bristol and its hinterland seem in their heads to be London, really. And they're the category that will be benefiting from all the corporate hospitality tickets for the Olympics (and expecting to drive door to door without interference). I would think they're the root of the road signage.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth the list of cities with referenda is: Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield.

You may well be right about the Bristol-London commuters - although in that case they have chosen their hoarding sites badly by putting them in this part of town...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, my poor home town. It doesn't have enough revenue to be wasting it on an elected mayor.
I come from Coventry. My uncle (Bill Sheridan) was its Lord Mayor for a term in the 70s.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There were illuminated signs at intervals along the M1 yesterday urging us to plan our Olympic journeys so we arrive on time.

I don't know anything about them, but Siobhan Benita is running for Mayor of London as an Independent and Jenny Jones is running for the Greens.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Any Olympic journeys I take will be in the opposite direction from London!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As soon as we knew the Olympics would be in London, we knew we would be skipping our regular summer visit to the capital in 2012.

Regarding road closures, being in the Snowdonia National Park, we have no billboards and hence no Olympic poster, but we do have the Olympic torch passing through our tiny town, so there may be some sort of notice in due course. Though as you say, it won't be any more disruptive than things like the Cader Race or the other events that occasionally take over the town square.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I have decided to vote against a Mayor in Coventry. I think it's a distraction and an ego trip. I don't know what you will think but John Harris in the Guardian seemed to make a good case: "two very dangerous factors collide: low and unrepresentative turnouts and powers that can be exercised with surprisingly little scrutiny"

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Quite. It does strike me as being designed by alpha males for alpha males.

[athgarvan.livejournal.com]

This is just local government spending tax-payers' money for "sport"!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

As flies to wanton boys are we to the Olympic gods - they bill us for sport...

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Item 1: One of the two roads providing access from San Francisco onto the Golden Gate Bridge is closed for major construction work this weekend. This is big news in local traffic, and so the fact is being plastered on the highway electronic signs that usually inform us to fasten our seat belts or give the license plate numbers of kidnappers. The problem is, that the messages identify the road by its name (Doyle Drive) which is little-known outside of regular users, and the info is being spread all over Northern California. Our newspaper traffic column included a letter from a man 100 miles away who saw the message and was seized with panic. Doyle Drive? Where's that? Should he be concerned?

Item 2: My municipality, which is a chunk of suburbia with over 100,000 people, recently had a referendum on directly electing our mayor. The argument in favor was that it would put our city in the big leagues, as we say in the US (and give the mayor a doubled, 4-year term so there would be less distracting turnover). However, nobody demonstrated that it would improve the actual functioning of city government, rather the opposite, and the referendum failed.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I sympathize with the Doyle Drive man. Somehow I've got onto a mailing list that's been sending me regular updates about roadworks on the Hammersmith Flyover for the last six months. I suppose if I were to catch a coach into London that might actually affect me, but I'm always caught by surprise.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

In Australia local government tends to have a higher proportion of women than Federal government, historically (but I don't know if that applies to mayors or to local councils as a whole). Right now, I don't think that this is the case, but right now we have our first female Prime Minister. The question is what will happen at the next elections. If Queensland's leading the way then we will go back to a mostly-male Federal system, which would be a great shame.

And, since I'm in the ACT and we don't have local government, we have a line of women the whole way up, for the first time in our history. Katy Gallagher is Chief Minister, Julia Gillard as Pime Minister, Quentin Bryce as Governor-General and, of course, the Queen.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I keep a watchful eye on Julia Gillard, as the first Welsh Prime Minister since Lloyd George (and even he was born in Manchester).

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

We aren't being offered an elected mayor - indeed, we are still campaigning for a Town Council, since Durham City currently has no local government of its own. But the elected mayor of Hartlepool seems to have worked out rather well...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've a feeling that if Ian Holloway ever stepped down as manager of Blackpool, he'd be a shoo in at Bristol.

[owlfish]

Apparently, 17.4% of current US mayors are female.
http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/levels_of_office/documents/elective.pdf

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Interesting! But only 12% in the 100 largest cities, I see. It's noticeable too that while the percentage of women in congress and in the state legislatures has been inching up over the last 30 years, when it comes to statewide elective office it reached its peak at the turn of the millennium, and has been in fairly steep decline ever since. I wonder why that is?

[aryky.livejournal.com]

I had definitely not realized that the mayor of Houston was a lesbian. Cool! I have a good friend who's a lesbian from Houston who likes to challenge people's stereotypes of Texas-outside-of-Austin; I wonder why I haven't heard her mention that before.