Please use your referendum vote to oppose making the mayor here a directly elected office. An elected mayor would be remote, protected by a large PR team and minders and would relate to us by TV sound-bites and it would be hard to see him/her for proper discussion. It is too secretive. Even the present system is poor since all decisions are made by a single politician advised by his/her local government officers. The system doesn’t promote lively democratic debate. We need the old system of committees with power to make decisions and with councillors elected one per ward (with smaller and more numerous wards) and obliged to live in the ward they represent. Then people would actually know their democratic representative personally since they would be a near neighbour. The present system makes people feel that they have no influence on decisions. An elected mayor would make government more distant, not less!
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