New leader of Manchester City Council

Always thought Howard Bernstein pulled the major strings in Manchester rather than Leese.
His Chief Exec role is now is with Joanne Roney. She’s barely in the public eye though.
 
Corky said:
In my experience they have little technical knowledge of the areas (as you would expect), you tell the the issues, the solution and they sign it off after s.151 officer, monitoring officer and relevant directors have all signed off the recommendation.

They may get into a heated debate on stuff like car parking going up 10p or dog fouling, but rarely the important stuff like major capital projects or cuts to services and staff.
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Almost all the councillors I have dealt with, think they pretty much know everything! Inferiority presented as arrogance. In fact, a local authority near me is potentially in hot water as the councillors on planning committee refuse to take the planning advice from officers, a barrister and the planning inspectorate.
 
Manc in London said:
Almost all the councillors I have dealt with, think they pretty much know everything! Inferiority presented as arrogance. In fact, a local authority near me is potentially in hot water as the councillors on planning committee refuse to take the planning advice from officers, a barrister and the planning inspectorate.
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Going against officer recommendations on anything major will just delay the inevitable and get expensive.

In terms of other decisions, the senior officers/management team etc, whatever it is called at each LA, will not allow any proposals to get to a member unless they want to do it. If members come up daft ideas, you point out there is not enough money to provide statutory services, so we can't do anything extra and risk Judicial Review. That is why I question any real decision making power.

Gladly I am not involved in that directly now, I change what I do every couple of years, keeps things more interesting.
 
Rather than work experience, the main entry requirement for anyone aspiring to enter the world of politics these days, either local or national, should be an ability to pass an empathy measuring Voight-Kampff test.

This point is especially important when it comes to those who have previously enjoyed positions of leadership and responsibility in business.

While politics has always attracted its share of dangerous personalities, the dominant neoliberal economic philosophy of the last forty years positively encourages this, based as it is on a flawed view of us humans as a rational but calculating and essentially selfishly motivated, egoistic species: homo economicus.

In such a climate, it is not unreasonable for narcissistic, borderline individuals to crawl out of the woodwork. According to Clive Boddy in his book Corporate Psychopaths, as deregulation in the UK and the US has loosened restraints, monsters with this kind of profile have increasingly been unleashed in the world of business.

A study at the University of Surrey, for example, found that the personality traits of thirty-nine high-ranking managers matched, and even exceeded, the narcissistic, dictatorial and manipulative tendencies typically exhibited by psychiatric patients and psychopaths, all concealed behind a veneer of superficial charm and charisma.

Jeff Skilling, the infamous former CEO of the multinational Enron is one example. A self-declared admirer of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and Herbert Spencer’s phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, Skilling remains notorious for having implemented a ‘Rank and Yank’ appraisal system involving the constant monitoring of employees and the sacking and public humiliation of up to one-fifth of those with the lowest production figures every year.

More examples are described here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ill-occupying-positions-of-power-6282502.html

I am not suggesting that Johnson is a psychopath but he is obviously all about himself and therefore very much a product of our times.

For anyone wishing to delve into this more deeply, Ian Hughes's acclaimed study* Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy is the place to start.

*Steven Pinker rates it highly, as do most reviewers.
 
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Hopefully more investment in Manchester as a whole not just the city centre.


Maybe she will ban the tory conference too
 
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