Talking to a journalist friend the other day I listened to him bemoaning the fate of the regional press in which he worked and how the industry was in difficulty with falling sales and decreasing revenue. We both agreed that localism was in decline at the expense of the internet and ever more central control by government in all its manifestations.

The turnout in local elections has been pathetic in recent years and the turnout in general elections is heading in the same direction. People feel that it is no longer possible to make a difference with their vote and express their disillusionment by not bothering. This is heard by all party canvassers on the doorstep as they try to persuade people that their vote really will make a difference. Are we who voluntarily work within the system really making any difference ourselves or are the abstainers right?

I believe we have to go back to the poll tax to get to the root of the problem. Margaret Thatcher imposed it in an effort to make local taxation fairer and to make everyone contribute because the old rates system only taxed house owners and tenants leaving millions of people outside its scope. The idea was that by spreading the tax further everyone would pay less.

It was a disaster which I will not go into now, but one of the less remembered effects was that in order to keep the council tax level as low as possible VAT was raised dramatically to compensate for the loss of local revenue. Government then increased its grant to local authorities to compensate. Central government is now responsible for most of the revenue going to local authorities and we have a situation in which only about 25% of council income comes from the replacement council tax.

He who pays the piper calls the tune and 70% of anything important to a local community is funded by the Treasury. Central government has control over all public capital projects, expenditure on education and roads. Have you ever wondered why we have speed bumps everywhere in every town whilst having pot holes all over the place? This is because government tells us how to spend the money.

Every state school head teacher in the country receives literally thousands of missives from government each year telling him/her how to do his own job. This is what happens in a command society controlled from the centre. Local authorities have been disempowered as have schools and their professional staff. We are directed to build travellers’ sites despite the fact that we have no land and no demand for them. The list goes on and on and the reader will no doubt think of a number more.

We have all been disempowered and this is reflected at the ballot box where people no longer vote, other than to get rid of a government they don’t like. The central control has increased whichever government has been in power since Mrs. Thatcher’s time. The Conservative opposition says that it understands the situation and will change it when elected to government and I believe they will try. Will they succeed? Only time will tell. Tony Blair said 12 years ago when he came to power. “We will have a bonfire of the QUANGOS”. Promises, promises. We have more of these undemocratic bodies than ever before.

This brings us back to my opening paragraph. If the people have no power, why should they bother to find out what is happening in the world by buying newspapers? They can watch the television if they wish and get news from the internet but this is not central to their lives. The national press is supported by the local press and if the latter goes so will the former. A free and investigative press is essential in a society which claims to be free and civilised.

Our world will change for the worse unless we get a government which is more hands off and less controlling. We need a government which cedes power from the centre to the periphery. We need a government which cannot be responsible for every bedpan in the NHS, every failed school, every road safety measure and every minor bungle. If a Childrens' Director fails he/she should be sacked by the local authority not by a government minister. These responsibilities must me dealt with at a lower level. This in turn means that some areas will undoubtedly do better then others.

There should be no more talk of post code lotteries. All local authorities will have greater or lesser success than others. If a local authority fails its residents, it should be thrown out by its residents. If people complain of sub-standard services the remedy should be in their hands. This is what democracy is all about and real democracy is the cure for most of our ills and even for those of our newspapers.