Devolution Plan Escalates As Every Roundabout Demands Its Own Parliament
A speech on sharing power has inspired a government blueprint in which even traffic islands can legislate on ceremonial paving.
SCOTLAND, By Linda Sources. Prime Minister Andy Burnham went to Scotland to argue for shifting decisions away from Westminster and Holyrood, handing more of them to regions and towns. By lunchtime, the Ministry for Extremely Local Government had taken the idea apart and asked whether towns were actually the smallest workable democracy, or simply the largest thing that had not yet filed a complaint.
Its answer is a new plan. Power would pass through regions, towns, villages, streets, cul-de-sacs, front gardens and eventually individual paving stones. Every level gets a parliament, a ceremonial mace and a committee to settle whether a particular grey is infrastructure or weather.
“We started with a sensible question about who should make decisions,” said Crispin Vale, deputy under-secretary for Microscopic Administration. “Then a roundabout sent in a 14-page consultation response. It had some fair observations about traffic flow.”
“The lampposts have formed a trade union and are refusing to illuminate unrecognised jurisdictions.”
The first elections are due at the newly created Parliament of the Bypass. Candidates will argue over potholes and shrubbery, as well as a proposal to rename the central island “The Honourable Member”. The zebra crossing nearby has set up an opposition group after it was refused speaking rights at a meeting on paint durability.
That was only the beginning. Officials say the arrangement will end gridlock because no decision will travel more than nine metres before meeting another democratic mandate. A regional assembly must ask the town council. The town council asks the lane committee, which asks the residents’ association, which asks the wheelie-bin board before a bin moves more than three feet.
The first crisis arrived when the Parliament of the Roundabout voted unanimously to become a sovereign republic. It then found that every road out was managed by a neighbouring authority, leaving it with no foreign policy. A committee of ornamental shrubs was appointed to sort this out. Two members were later ruled ineligible because they had been planted before the boundary review.
The ministry says everything is proceeding smoothly, though the national map now looks like a plate of spaghetti produced by a committee with firm views on punctuation. “At last, everyone will have a voice,” said Maud Tilling, chair of the Interim Council for Objects With Opinions. “The difficulty is that the lampposts have formed a trade union and will not illuminate unrecognised jurisdictions.”