IN my village, like many others, there's a proposal to erect a mobile phone mast. No-one I know supports the plan, and the mood at a public meeting last year was strongly against it.

Though no official news has come through, rumour has it that an appeal by the company against planning refusal has been successful. If so, the community's view will have counted for nought.

But our village can console itself that this first mobile phone mast will not be followed by others, as often happens. Nor need communities not yet blighted by a mast, or perhaps by one of the 2,000 or so wind farms yet to be built, fear for the future.

For the Government intends to place power in the hands of the people. Darlington MP Alan Milburn, still a close Blair acolyte though no longer in the Cabinet, has been entrusted, with one or two others, to promote this glorious dawn of grassroots democracy.

"The gap between politics and the public is growing,'' says Mr Milburn. Very true. The answer, he reveals, is "subsidiarity, locating power at the lowest possible level". That's where you and I, and all the other little folk, can be found, of course.

To return to my village for a minute. Last month there was another public meeting, this time on the proposed merger of police forces, in our case most likely to create a force covering the whole of administrative Yorkshire and Humberside. No-one spoke up for this or any of the other schemes on the table. The predominant feeling was that, for "local" policing, bigger would mean worse.

This mirrors opinion throughout the country. So, presumably, the merger plans, strongly desired by the Government, as much to push its regional agenda as to combat crime, are now dead in the water.

Great joke, eh? We minions know that the prospect of real power being placed in our hands is non-existent. A signal to what it is more likely to mean is contained in a speech by David Miliband, the local government minister, to a gathering of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations - itself another clue.

Like Mr Milburn, Mr Miliband spoke boldly of creating "a different form of accountability, direct to the citizen rather than via the state". Again identifying "a power gap", he said: "I believe the key is to reform government, to put power in the hands of individuals and communities. I call it 'double devolution' - not just devolution that takes power from central government and gives it to local government but power that goes from local government down to local people, providing a critical role for individuals and neighbourhoods, often through the voluntary sector."

Yes, that's what it's all about: DIY. You want libraries, children's play areas, social services? Get on with it and provide them yourselves. Some communities already do so with policing, and parents have been empowered to provide new schools. That's the model - anything to unburden the Government of responsibility for public services.

Set against what has been a relentless assault on existing local government, now often subservient, or perhaps I should say "subsidiary", to unelected quangos and regional assemblies, the promise of power to the people is just a shoddy, shameful charade.