Cyclopean 'local' government - UK style

IT'S an acknowledged newspaper fact that columnists don't get to choose their own headlines.

- Chris Game

The final choice is naturally the editor's, because s/he obviously has to juggle the author's words and the available space.

An author's best hope is that the content and thrust of their writing will lead the editor to want to adopt the author's chosen title choice as his/her own, but space is the ultimate determinant.

My first-choice title for this column was 'Cyclopean local government - the end of local democracy' possibly with a question mark suggesting the answer 'Yes!, and single quotation marks around 'local, to signify here not emphasis so much as irony or sarcasm.

For, to summarise: here in Britain we already have, and in England, following last December's devolution White Paper, are about to develop still further, a scale of 'local' government that makes a complete mockery of that term 'local'; and the present Government, with no serious attempt at public consultation, is embarked on increasing that already non-local size still further - to truly Cyclopean dimensions.

And, by introducing this concept, rarely if ever used in modern political debate, both the Post and I will become - well, who knows? - possibly a little bit famous. Here's the reasoning.

First, 'Cyclopean', used in the context of local government. Ancient Greek, pretty obviously, it originally described an architectural style in which the walls, towers and other fortifications of ancient cities like Mycenae (a 70-odd mile day trip SW of Athens) were constructed from massive limestone boulders fitted extremely closely together without apparently having been substantially reshaped and without use of mortar or cement.