Author Archive

Andrew Wilson

Andrew Wilson is a member of Same Skies – a network of people coming together to create a hopeful, fair, prosperous and inclusive regional democracy in West Yorkshire and beyond. Same Skies runs a blog of hopeful ideas here https://wesharethesameskiesblog.wordpress.com and can be found on Twitter here  

Devolution. City Deals. Northern Powerhouse. What does this even mean to the average person on the street? Devolution probably reminds most people of Charles Darwin. If not, then it’s something to do with Scotland. City Deals just sound like business as usual. The Northern Powerhouse may be a funk band. If somehow all these big words are about the future of Northern England’s society and economy, about its transport and education and health system, about power and control vis-à-vis Whitehall bureaucracy and the whims of national government, about jobs and infrastructure and other areas where we are spending and raise tax money, then we should be talking about something else. We should be talking about regional democracy – a mechanism …