Saturday, August 12, 2006

John Snow calls local councillors "monkeys"

In Tony Benn's "Interviewing the Interviewers" this evening, I was surprised to hear John Snow say that local councillors are monkeys to the central government organ grinder. Don't get me wrong, it's true that local government is weak, and in many cases policy is driven from the centre.

However, I think it's wrong to assume that local councillors are some kind of meaningless part of the process. In many cases they serve an important function for their local communities and do real things impacting on real lives in that world outside of Westminster.

I found Benn's programme interesting, I thought John Snow came across as a Westminster Village arrogant smartarse, especially when he said he considered himself of small intellect effectively making him more in line with his viewers.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your identification of Snow as an arrogant "Smart A---" is extremely apt for someone who is no more than a "talking head"

The Daily Pundit said...

Not just a smart arse but a left wing smart arse at that.

Anonymous said...

The programme was interesting and it made me laugh when Benn kept going on about the trade unions as everyone knows they are useless and hold no power in the day to day running of things.

dizzy said...

MCRS - see the tag line on this blog's title? I acknowledge I'm both opinionated and arrogance. Snow on the other hand does not.

dizzy said...

Also, unlike Snow, I'm not the least bit influential.