You make some very good points and the problem is that devolving “political power” to the local level is no good unless you also devolve tax raising too because otherwise as you point out, games can be played at the local level to embarrass the Government of the day.

Indeed it was such “gamesmanship” that led under Thatcher, to ever greater centralization which remains to this day. It is the same issue of Parents as fundholders with schools, patients with the NHS.

The problem is to devise a suitable funding mechanism that rebates from Central Government a percentage of locally collected taxes back to the appropriate local bodies such as the County Councils in England and the Devolved Assemblies/Parliament.

However that is not a simple thing to do if the public demand a universal standard across the whole of these islands instead of services and indeed salaries, tailored to the local circumstances and needs.

As a friend of mine once remarked on other topics: “The problem is that everybody wants to get to Heaven but nobody wants to die !”

Yes we need savage cuts in public expenditure and Cameron’s chat about more local government may be part of that. Unfortunately, local government has become accustomed to abusing public funding with massive pay awards at executive level and I wonder if MPs can approach the level of comfort enjoyed by these executives even if they abuse their expenses to the limit. I doubt it. These executives are amongst those we must expect to act responsibly and vote for Christmas. Will the honesty demanded of politicians by the public extend to local government, where standards may be justifiably expected to be even lower? I am sceptical.

Party politics has played a part in local government for too long, though I can never understand why anyone would be so stupid as to let that decide who they vote onto their local council. If the local authority is politically opposed to central government, will they impose politically motivated spending cuts to embarrass central government? Yes, as they have in the past.

In the finest meaning or the word, the public are revolting and I think reform goes far further than spending cuts. Blunt honesty and absolute integrity is required. Does anyone offer that? No. What we need is not offered by any established political party, because they are an established political party. That requires the emergence of a new force in British politics. I hope it appears before the public revolution takes inspitration from history.

Someone once said: “What we need most is to want less…” Apparently said by an Athenian some 2000 year BC so no change there then !

I must admit that I don’t fear the ‘pain’ that much, I am more concerned with the lack of progress in facing up to it and I suspect that is true of very many people. I feel that quite a lot of the vitriolic public anger over the MPs expenses has less to do with that and is more concerned about the fear of the unknown.

If they don’t own up to it, to themselves to start with, then the shrinking number of tax payers, not employed by the British State will revolt, emigrate or just give up working, until there are none left. What then?

The Telegraph article was interesting, but you have quoted most of the important bits IMO. I would like to see the actual IMF judgement. You and I remember the IMF’s 1970s judgement of the British economy, no doubt, and the painful measures that we were forced to take.