The General Election campaign, not formally announced but underway,is being dominated by the personalities (or lack of).
So it matters that the Green Leader had a difficult interview or that senior MPs can offer to trade their services for £5,000 a day but that other (potentially more significant things) issues can be ignored or missed altogether.
An important announcement by the Government some time ago (and backed by the other major parties) was the decentralisation of decision making and budgets to something called the City Region of Greater Manchester.
The language is not as important as the act and the decision that have been made.
All the decisions on policing, fire and rescue, transport, planning and infrastructure will be made by the leaders of the 10 authorities in Greater Manchester. Alongside some decisions on education and training (probably related to skills and apprenticeships).
At some point, possibly 2017 or 2018, an elected mayor will be responsible – a kind of Boris Johnson mark two. And now the Government are saying that all health spending will be devolved too. So goodbye Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). And what about the NHS restructure introduced in 2010? The new addition has major implications for the kind of health service we have, we might want and we might hope for. But that wont be part of the General Election campaign.
The decision to decentralise is a really important and significant one. There is a whole set of arguments which support it and , indeed, it can be seen that it brings decisions closer to where we live.
But not to include it as part of the May 2015 conversation is a big error and misses the trick of connecting policy decisions to the wishes of local communities and thus brings the national (or in this case a kind of regional) to the local.
Its part of the accountability and transparency that makes civic society healthy (or healthier than it is) and we should be asking questions about what this new announcement means. It could be a way of reviving our public and policy conversations.