RE: Sir Bill Taylor column: Calling all gloom & doomers! Jeremiahs I recall that Birmingham City Transport buses were always immaculate. Didn’t Birmingham Corporation run a municipal bank?

And was this subsumed into the old Trustee Savings Bank network?

Municipalities were proud of providing core utilities, education and other services that enriched the lives of people in the locality.

Many local authorities were also highly entrepreneurial – municipal trading – with profits or surpluses used within the town or city.

It is interesting to speculate how local government may have developed if municipal trading had been allowed to flourish, but alas a combination of the suspicion and fear of parliament and private vested interests brought the era to a close.

I’m a great fan of the concept of local governance and local government.

Unfortunately the fortunes of local government have been on the wane for the better part of three-quarters of a century.

It’s ironic that at the very point when local authorities finally secure a general power of competence they are so denuded of confidence, their leadership is so battered and bruised and their financial position so perilous they are unable to articulate or map a path forward to arrest their decline, let alone reverse it.

It’s very, very sad. I think that in time historians will conclude transferring things into private ownership and then letting these fall into foreign hands constitutes one of the biggest domestic and economic policy blunders made by the British ruling class.

Kevin (via email)