At the core of liberal democracy is a belief that individuals should have the greatest possible control over their own lives.  We do not believe central government knows what is best for individuals and communities; we believe individuals and communities know what is best for themselves.  We want people and communities to wield real political power on their own behalf, and this means putting people in a position where they can make decisions about services that affect them.Yet successive Conservative and Labour governments have systematically stripped power from local communities. Local authorities have been suffocated by micro-management from Whitehall.  Endless targets inspections, and instructions from central government to local doctors, police chiefs and head teachers, as well as councils, have ended any local say in what happens in local schools, hospitals or police stations.We believe there needs to be a fundamental change in the relationship between central and local government.  We want to give communities more control over spending in their area, to scrap nationally set targets, and to take power from unelected quangos.It makes no sense that local decisions are taken by distant bureaucrats or politicians who don’t know local services and will never use them. It’s time to trust local communities to take their own decisions again.

Strong and democratic communities
We want to see strong and democratic local government, not having councils treated as local delivery arms of central government, as Labour have treated them.  This means establishing a new relationship between Whitehall and town halls, putting local communities in a position where they can be innovative in responding to the challenges of the 21^st century.

Money is power
If communities are going to be able to address the issues they face, they need to have greater control of what is spent in their area.  That means more of the tax people pay being collected and spent locally.  That doesn’t mean higher taxes, just more of the money people pay in taxes being collected and spent locally.  We also believe taxation should be fair – see the section on Axe the Council Tax for our plans to introduce a Local Income Tax.

Scrapping national targets
We believe local government should spend less effort, time and money demonstrating to central government that it is meeting national priorities, and more time meeting the priorities of local people.  We would also radically reform the current burdensome audit and inspection regime for local government, moving to an intelligent and appropriate regime based on peer reviews.

Taking power out of the hands of quangos and Whitehall bureaucrats
Labour has spent ten years concentrating power in the hands of Whitehall officials and unelected quangos.  We want to reverse this trend.  We would devolve power back down to communities and bring quangos under democratic control.

In the nineteenth century Liberals used local democracy to transform our cities, delivering for the first time clean water and sewerage, public health and education, power and transport. In the twenty-first century we need to strip away central government red tape and unelected quangos and set communities free again, to reinvigorate local services on the front-line and to hold those responsible properly accountable.

American travel writer Bill Bryson has urged the British public to consider the effect of littering on our green and pleasant land. He arrived here from America in 1972 and when he first arrived he said that he was, “smitten by the place”.

He claims that we live a beautiful country; however it is being trashed by a small minority of individuals who routinely trashed it is by people that litter and fly-tip. Bryson throughout the BBC, Panorama Programme ‘Dirty Island’ (which can be seen on BBC iPlayer) talks passionately about how our once green and pleasant land, and he insists we need to reclaim our street, our countryside and open spaces.The American writer is president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) but found while presenting an edition of BBC documentary Panorama that the beauty of the UK is under threat through complacency and laziness.

Bryson also believes change is a possibility and has launched the CPRE’s Stop the Drop campaign (an anti-litter and fly-tipping initiative) to crusade for Britain’s cleanliness.

“Studies show that it’s done by a very small proportion of people, and of the people who litter, high proportions can be persuaded to change their ways, and that’s what gives me hope.”

The film is well filmed and contains some amazing facts, and should make think of problems litter can cause. If you have not seen the film; it lasts for approximately 30 minutes CLICK ON THIS LINK to the visit the BBC iPlayer