Our long democracy is being undermined

I READ with interest the letter from Mark Whyman (Yorkshire Post, August 22) about the lack of democracy in the changes to planning consultations.

Mr Whyman is absolutely right, but this is only one instance of our long-standing democracy being undermined.

There are two other areas which are giving me a great deal of concern.

One instance is the recent attempts to impose semi- dictatorial elected mayors who would render our elected councillors virtually powerless. Now we are being pushed into electing police commissioners, again making our councillors effectively redundant.

Yes, all-powerful officials such as these may be very efficient but at what price?

Certainly, many of our councils can be extremely annoying and allow things to drag on, but this is what democracy is about. We know our local councillors and we can make our wishes known to them.

How do we tell the police commissioner what we feel? Do we do it via a new bureaucracy which is not answerable to us? I fear we are going down a very dangerous road.

Personally, being faced with a choice between John Prescott and a councillor I know nothing about, I have absolutely no intention of voting for the former as a police commissioner in this grubby process.

If sufficient voters abstain this would be effectively a referendum, which perhaps even this government might take note of.

Yes, democracy can be untidy and not always highly efficient, but I think that is a price worth paying.

Mussolini may have made the trains run on time but he also did a lot of other, far less acceptable things.