A detailed analysis of a variety of the mechanisms being employed to achieve those aims was provided in our e-book Agenda 21: Your Life in Their Hands.
Total control of the levers of power in our cities and regions has been one of the key targets of the internationalists and their collaborators. We provided evidence of this indisputable fact in our in depth Common Purpose Effect series of articles within which we identified and revealed covert networks undermining democracy within our Core Cites and other Local Governance structures.
In 1974 Richard N. Gardner, writing in Foreign Affairs, a journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote
the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion,' to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.
Gardner served as Special Advisor to the United Nations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, as he did in 1972 at the UN Conference on the Human Environment. Gardner is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In recent years there has been a great 'booming, buzzing confusion' around the question of elected mayors in our Cities and Regions.
In this, and the subsequent article, we will examine two current projects which appear designed to assist the globalists achieve their objectives: the Parliament of Mayors Project, and the 100 Resilient Cities Programme.
Recent Pressures To Introduce Elected Mayors
Directly-elected mayors were first introduced by the Local Government Act 2000. In 2012 David Cameron threw his whole weight behind the referendum campaign in favour of elected mayors, saying he wanted a "Boris in every city". Nine cities including Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds and Coventry voted No. The only city to vote yes in its referendum was Bristol.
In 2004 the Bristol Common Purpose group discussed advertising in the Evening Post for an elected mayor and see who applied. Jerry O’Brien, from the Fire Service, came up with the idea. Jerry O’Brien is a Common Purpose Matrix Graduate. Early in 2005 the Evening Post ran the article and also posited a number of potential candidates that included John Savage, George Ferguson and Dick Penny. A Bristol 24-7 article revealed that "Jaya Chakrabarti from Bristol-based digital marketing agency Nameless said an elected mayor would help people engage with local politics." According to her LinkedIn profile Chakrabarti was a "Conspirator for the Bristol Elected Mayor Campaign" between 2010 – 2011 where she "helped to change our part of the world a little with a fantastic band of co-conspirators." Chakrabarti is a Common Purpose Matrix Graduate.
In the end, George Ferguson became the first independent mayor to lead a major city in Britain. He was officially sworn in at a ceremony held at Brunel’s Passenger Shed, Temple Meads on 19th November 2012. We will meet up with him again later in this article.
When announcing a 'devolution revolution' in October 2015 George Osborne observed that
It's time to face the facts. The way this country is run is broken. People feel remote from decisions that affect them. Our cities are held back and there's no incentive to promote local enterprise. It's time we fixed it ... So this is what our plan means. Attract a business, and you attract money. Regenerate a high street, and you'll reap the benefits. Grow your area, and you'll grow your revenue too. Money raised locally, spent locally. Every council able to cut business taxes. This new way in governing our country requires handing power to the people. Let the devolution revolution begin.
So what exactly is the plan? And who are the people to be empowered?
Devolution, elected Mayors and the Budget of 2016
Despite the public having little appetite for the concept of directly elected mayors it appears, following the spring budget, that we will be getting them whether we want them or not. According to George Osborne in his March 2016 budget speech
for the first time, we have reached agreement to establish new elected mayors in our English counties and southern cities too. We’ve agreed a single powerful East Anglia combined authority, headed up by an elected Mayor and almost a billion pounds of new investment. We’ve also agreed a new West of England mayoral authority – and they too will see almost a billion pounds invested locally. And the authorities of Greater Lincolnshire will have new powers, new funding and a new mayor'.
In the Government‟s Unlocking Growth in Cities document, published in December 2011, it states:
leadership and accountability: where cities want to take on significant new powers and funding streams, they will need to demonstrate strong, accountable leadership, an ambitious agenda for the economic future of their area, effective decision-making structures, and private sector involvement and leadership (cities with a directly elected mayor will meet this requirement).
The four local authorities of Bristol, Bath & NE Somerset, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset are required to work together to benefit from the Bristol City Region Deal. No doubt that those who rejected an elected mayor in the Bath & NE Somerset referendum will be asked to vote again.
A regional partnership of those from the public and private sector is the West of England LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership). Board Members include Mayor George Ferguson; Guy Stobart, former Managing Partner of Burges Salmon, a non executive director of LPW (Learning Partnership West) and a long standing trustee of the leadership charity Common Purpose; and James Durie, Executive Director of Bristol Chamber of Commerce & West of England Initiative at Business West. Business West - the Initiative - is a strategic business partner of the Bristol European Green Capital 2015 year. Durie is a Common Purpose Matrix Graduate 2004.
In addition, there would be a “metro-mayor” in the Manchester metropolitan region. It is proposed that the new city state model devolves the £6bn NHS and social care budget in Greater Manchester to the region’s councils and health bodies. Promises to devolve extra powers and additional funding to cities and regions who accept elected mayors might just 'change people's minds'. For example, if the Sheffield City Region, comprising of the nine local authority areas of Barnsley, Bassetlaw, Bolsover, Chesterfield, Derbyshire Dales, Doncaster, North East Derbyshire, Rotherham and Sheffield, has an elected Mayor it will benefit from 'a pot of government money - £30m a year over 30 years'.
What is the Parliament of Mayors Movement?
A planet ruled by cities represents a new paradigm of global governance – of democratic glocalism rather than top-down imposition, of horizontalism rather than hierarchy, of pragmatic interdependence rather than outworn ideologies of national independence.....the foundations for this new world are being erected in our own age as cities collaborate–and citizens communicate–across borders with increasing ease and frequency. What remains is to sense the liberating possibilities of these developments.
Such is the view postulated in If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Benjamin R. Barber. Barber is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Barber is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society in the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the President and Founder of the Interdependence Movement and his recent work has connected him with mayors, political advisers and intercity associations around the world, propelling the development of a Global Parliament of Mayors from theory into practice. He is a Senior Fellow at Demos and President of its CivWorld initiative. Barber is the founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors Movement.
The Executive Director of that "Movement" is Eileen Haring Woods. Originally from New York City, she says she has made London her home for over thirty years. She says she has "a track record of long term client relationships and public / private sector partnerships" and "has been commissioned by local authorities, property developers, Arts Council England, international brands, media groups and the United Nations Environment Programme." As a consultant to Westminster City Council for over ten years, she "provided creative and strategic expertise to a wide range of environment and planning initiatives." When describing 'The Global Parliament of Mayors' in her LinkedIn profile she writes
this networks of networks could incorporate and align the intercity associations currently operating in silos defined by particular domains (e.g., environmentalism, trade, security). [my emphasis]
Those who have read Leadership Training For A Common Purpose will already be aware that Silo-busting is a global initiative promoted by the United Nations Development Group and its UK shill Julia Middleton, CEO Common Purpose.
What does the 'Global Parliament of Mayors' says about it's future Global role?
A series of questions and answers on its' website provides a clue
Question: In a world of nation-states and supranational entities like the EU, will cities have the resources and jurisdictional authority to undertake the difficult work of global governance?
Answer: ...one of the most important aims of a GPM to develop a "right of the city" platform to secure the resources and jurisdictional autonomy necessary to discharging local and global responsibilities.
Question: Can a GPM really be a world government with a command and control architecture?
Answer: No it cannot, and should not aspire to be that. It should be a bottom-up, “soft governance” institution that works through influencing other levels of governance and the civic and private sector with sound policies and effective solutions. Global public opinion must also be its target.
This suggest to me that there will be further 'nudging' towards our acceptance of elected mayors.
Policies and Effective Solutions
A flavour of the "Parliament" can be found within their published document: 'A Declaration of the Rights of the City and Citizens'. The preamble of the declaration sets out what its proponents claim to be the root of the rights of the City. It states that:
The key right of the city, the first listed below, is the right of the city to self-governance, a right that has been historically recognized in documents as old as Magna Carta (whose 800th anniversary is being celebrated this year); in the U.S. Bill of Rights (the Ninth Amendment, citing the people as the ultimate repository of rights, and the Tenth, reserving those powers not explicitly delegated to the Federal Government to the States and the people locally); and in the European Charter and its doctrine of subsidiarity that empowers cities with key rights to governance not dependent on the central government.
They claim that 'cities have a right to self-governance, especially in our 21st century era of interdependence where independent states are failing to solve global problems that threaten not only sustainability and justice, but existence itself'.
If the alarm bells inside your head are not already deafening they soon will be.
The Rights of Citizens
There are only 12 articles of the Declaration that speak of the Rights Of Cities And Citizens. In the interests of brevity I shall comment on only two of them.
Article 4: The right to clean air and water and to a greenhouse environment with minimal (eventually zero) carbon emissions, which translates into the right to take action to assure a safe and sustainable environment, regardless of the action or inaction of other levels of government.
So the future citizen can expect to travel on foot or by public transport only and will be subject to strict, control of all his daily activities in the interest of minimising his 'carbon footprint'. The roll out of SMART utility meters between now and 2020 would appear to be part of this carbon reduction initiative.
If that prospect isn't bad enough article 5 introduces the right to residential dignity. But before lobbying for such a future right just think for a moment about how these globalists define it.
The 'right to residential dignity' is '...the right to identity papers (visas, identity cards)'.
The framers of this declaration appear to have deliberately omitted one of the fundamental pillars of the British Common Law system. The default position has long been settled and means that ‘the state may do nothing but that which is expressly authorised by law, while the individual may do anything but that which is forbidden by law', as per Entick v Carrington (1765).
The requirements of individuals to carry identity cards is one of the key characteristics of totalitarian states and is an imposition that is wholly unacceptable to me. What sanctions could be imposed against those, like me, who choose not to comply?
The city visa or urban ID allows "access to schools, hospitals, transportation and jobs on the condition of law-abiding behavior, for all residents, regardless of their regional or national immigration status or the manner in which they entered the country in which their city finds itself."
So, in the future that is being planned, the only way that you will be able to gain access to services and jobs will be to carry a Permit / ID Card: 'And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark'.
Advisors and supporters to the Global Parliament of Mayors.
Advisors include: Professor Richard Sennett, Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Jeff Sachs, special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University; Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London; Bruce Katz, Brookings Institute; Euan Harkness, Director of Barclays Capital and Tom Cochran, CEO & Executive Director of the US Conference of Mayors.
Supporters include C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group founded by Ken Livingstone, ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability, International Organisation for Migration, The Hague Process on Refugees and Migration, the United Cities and Local Governments, the United States Conference of Mayors, CityNet and The World Cities Culture Forum.
According to Benjamin Barber, speaking at the Fourteenth D T Lakdawala Lecture organized by the Institute of Social Sciences in New Delhi in December, 2015
democratic institutions all over the world are in trouble as an increasing number of people no longer believe in them. In this scenario, cities need to be brought to the centre of the political order.
He added that
Mayors all over world have a common purpose [my emphasis] when it comes to tackling law and order, terrorism and climate change.
George Fergusson, Mayor of Bristol and the Global Parliament of Mayors
Cities Today is a 'global magazine containing analysis, comment and best practices on sustainable urban development, connecting local governments with public and private sector solutions'. It's editorial advisory board comprises the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme, UN-Habitat and city associations ICLEI, C40 and EUROCITIES. In their article First Parliament of Mayors to convene in October, published on 2nd March 2015, George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, a city which is already active in EUROCITIES is quoted as saying that there are other organisations "pushing in the same direction in the lead up to the Paris COP–ICLEI, EUROCITIES, Energy Cities–and we are all coordinating to make quite sure as city organisations that we are endorsing statements rather than competing on statements."
The CitiesToday article also revealed that "Ferguson is organising a special train from London to Bristol to bring mayors from one parliament session to the next. The Mayor of Bristol’s next stop for the Global Parliament of Mayors is to attend the Nobel Laureates’ Climate Symposium in April in Hong Kong where a draft climate manifesto will be developed for discussion and deliberation at the inaugural parliament in October."
Fergusson was the Moderator at a Global Parliament of Mayors Planning Session on the 19th September 2014, where he sat at the top table alongside Benjamin R. Barber.
Inaugural Global Parliament of Mayors
The inaugural Global Parliament of Mayors will convene on the 10th September, 2016 in The Hague. It will establish its governance legitimacy and address an agenda of cross border issues selected by the mayors.
According to Jozias Johannes van Aartsen, Mayor of The Hague:
The GPM will deploy collective urban political power manifesting the right of cities to govern themselves, as well as the responsibility to enact viable, cross-border solutions to global challenges In this era of interdependence, where nation states are increasingly dysfunctional and cities are everywhere rising, the moment has come for cities to take the leap from effective local governance to true global governance.
The Global Compact, Resilient Cities and The Plan for Global Governance
The Compact of Mayors was launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, Michael R. Bloomberg, under the leadership of the world’s global city networks – C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), with support from UN-Habitat, the UN’s lead agency on urban issues. The Compact establishes a common platform to capture the impact of cities’ collective actions through standardized measurement of emissions and climate risk, and consistent, public reporting of their efforts.
The Action Statement of the Resilient Cities Acceleration Initiative lists supporters as
– Committed Countries and partners
– The Rockefeller Foundation
– 100 Resilient Cities pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation
The foundation of resilience in cities lies in the strengthened ability of urban systems and populations to change, adapt, absorb, and learn from the various events and stresses that had adverse consequences to inhabitants, city structure and the environment. Rising to the challenge, cities and local governments around the world have made political commitments at home and abroad through global campaigns such as those launched by ICLEI, United Cities for Local Governments (UCLG), the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and the Making Cities Resilient Campaign (led by UNISDR) and most recently, through the new Compact of Mayors.
'Nudging' Towards City and Regional Mayors
The Daily Telegraph article Voters don't want them, but the march of the mayors is now unstoppable concluded by stating that "England has been denied a debate, and the results of its referendums have been ignored. The march of the mayors is, now, unstoppable. England’s only option is to hope that they work."
The author of that article was Fraser Nelson who is also editor at the Spectator. The Spectator had previously published an article Governments have failed — mayors are the future in which they held George Fergusson up as a shining example of a mayor heralding a brighter future by revealing that:
He has banished cyclist-unfriendly bendy buses, revoked Sunday parking charges, signed off on several new primary schools and implemented a 20mph zone in residential areas. Ferguson has flown around the world to promote Bristol, campaigning for the city to be given the title of European Green Capital 2015.
Conclusion
What this analysis reveals is that in the near future an unwilling British electorate are to have Mayors introduced in every City and "region" of the nation. The evidence suggests that if they are not directly elected they will be imposed by a process of selection and appointment. The colour of the candidates' political allegiance will not matter; they will be bound by the Global Covenant of Mayors and other international agreements. We have witnessed this conjuring trick before, when referenda were held for elected Regional Assemblies. When those votes went the wrong way it became clear that unelected Regional Assemblies already existed.
The drive towards elected UK Mayors represents the rising tide of the benign sounding Global Governance model. This is a UN imposed dictatorship masquerading as part of our National Democracy. As we have consistently pointed out co-conspirators include those trained by pseudo-education political charity, Common Purpose. The future role of mayors will be to protect the global interests dictated by the United Nations Agenda 2030, the UN Agenda 21 on steroids.
In the absence of public consent our Westminster Parliament has already surrendered the majority of its' law-making powers to the undemocratic institutions of the European Union. Delegating its' residual powers to Cities and Regions on condition that they embrace the Osborne promoted 'New City State Model' must surely result in the complete destruction of the United Kingdom as a Westphalian Nation State.
Will the long delayed £3bn refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament begin as planned in 2020? If so, will this signify the abolition of our National Parliament?
See also: The Resilient Cities Programme: Another Threat to Individual Liberties?
