Renewal blogosphere

As we were born yesterday (and, officially, today), we are almost certainly the newest blog in this field. But there are many others worth taking a look at. We on the news desk are big fans of Dermot Finch's blog for the Centre for Cities. 

Dermot, a former Treasury official, is an expert voice on public finance and urban policy. Usually his excellent blog reflects this - but a recent entry features an entertaining article on which Coronation Street characters would vote Tory . He also suggests that Hazel Blears - the breezy motorbike-loving communities secretary who would be MP for Weatherfield were it a real place – would make a great character in the soap. 

Tory mayoralties

Welcome to Regeneration & Renewal's new blog, and thanks for clicking through. We'll be blogging on developments in the sector and are keen to hear your views. Write in below if you've got something to say - good or bad - it's very easy and you don't need to go through a boring registration process.

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The Tories' plans for local government reform have been exercising our minds on the news desk this week. Some of you will have read my article arguing that restricting directly elected mayors to existing city boundaries would be a wasted opportunity. But we like the idea of enforced mayoral referendums - the lesson from Labour's failure to revitalise local government over the last decade is that if one continues to ask local councillors whether more mayoralties are a good idea, one continues to get the same response: No. I was compelled by former local government minister Nick Raynsford's analysis of the Government's inability to get the city-regional mayor model established outside London, but can't help but think his party missed a trick in failing to force referendums on areas, Tory-style. 

The Tories are right that government needs reform. The current system where town halls are led by a committee of part-timers, who select a leader from their own ranks, is deeply flawed. The real losers are us in the regeneration and economic development and transport sectors - we understand that running these portfolios is all about making educated trade-offs. But councils find it hard to make such calls when they are run by a committee of elected members each representing a tiny sliver of a city area. And don't get me started on the amount of urban councils under no overall control - itself a product of the clunky system we operate in England. If one was designing a system to a brief of fostering inertia and indecision one could hardly have hit it better. 

What I don't like about the Tory plans are their slightly worrying foray into the black hole that is direct democracy. We have no tradition of that in this country, and I'm sceptical. I'd rather elect a leader - be it a Ken, be it a Boris - and ask them to make the calls. The Tories are proposing that the public have a referendum on large council tax rises. That just looks like rate-capping by stealth to me. After all, only three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and noes to more taxes. 

What do you think of the Tory green paper? Let us know.