REGULAR attendees at football matches will be more than aware of how referees and managers are often subjected to being told from the terraces: You don’t know what you’re doing.

It is a phrase opponents of the Welsh Government – and even some of its supporters – are using to describe the administration’s proposed reforms of local councils.

Minister Leighton Andrews unveiled his White Paper on the future of local government in Wales earlier this week, just a few days after rejecting voluntary merger proposals from councils including Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen.

As I wrote last week, the Williams Commission reported on its proposals for local government reform a year ago.

Now Mr Andrews appears to be taking matters into his own hands.

That’s fine, because that’s his job. There is plenty in the White Paper that makes sense.

Local government in Wales is a bloated institution. We have too many politicians, particularly in Wales, and too many civil servants (particularly at chief executive level) on ludicrously-high salaries compared to the bulk of their workforces.

But the problem I have with much of what Mr Andrews had to say this week is that it is riddled with breathtaking hypocrisy.

The minister wants to see councillors paid less, he wants to see fixed terms for councillors (no more than 25 years) and council leaders (no more than 10 years).

And he wants to see councils that are made up of people who better represent the communities they serve.

All well and good.

But at the same time as saying there should be fewer councillors being paid less to serve their constituents the Assembly (admittedly as an institution rather than a government) is looking to increase the number of AMs and pay them more.

One of the first questions posed by a number of people (including me in a Twitter exchange with Mr Andrews on Tuesday) after the idea of fixed terms was mooted was whether this should apply to AMs as well.

The answer was that the power to change the electoral make-up of the Assembly was not devolved. This is true, but it is also a cop-out.

If Mr Andrews and the Welsh Government believes there should be fixed terms for councillors and council leaders, then that belief should surely extend to the Assembly. They should therefore be shouting from the rooftops that they want such powers to be devolved.

The White Paper says being a councillor should not be a career. Yet the Welsh Government is almost entirely made up of people who have become career politicians.

If fixed terms were applied to the Assembly now, at least two cabinet ministers including the First Minister, would no longer be in office.

Mr Andrews wants to cut councillors’ pay while encouraging younger people, and women in particular, to become councillors.

How can both be achieved?

There must be some reasonable reward for councillors otherwise we will end up with a political system in which only the wealthy can afford to stand for office.

Mr Andrews says the atmosphere in council chambers puts off many people, and again he highlights women, from standing for election. There is some truth in what he says.

But what really puts people off is the party political machine. I know people in their thirties who are councillors but will not stand again because they have been worn down by the machine.

Any reform of local government, if it is not to be yet more window dressing, has to involve reform of the way in which political parties choose their candidates and then whip the life out of them.

Mr Andrews’ White Paper contains some commendable proposals but reforming local government in Wales cannot be a case of ‘do what I say, not what I do’.