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With the election finally settled, I'd like to gauge the mood of our little world and ask what members feel about genuine political reform.
It seems bizarre to me that Scotland and Wales have their own assemblies, yet England does not: Scotland has its own MPs who sit in a hugely expensive building in Edinburgh and discuss all matters Scottish, Wales has its own MPs who sit in a rather more modest building in Cardiff and talk about Pot Noodles, Rugby and coal mines, whilst England has.........Westminster, at which MPs from Scotland and Wales sit and decide what is the best for England. Northern Ireland, of course, has the Stormont assembly which stumbles from unpredictable to non-existent, and in return the population there votes in MPs who won't even sit at Westminster.
First, is this acceptable? During the recent election campaign the colour map of the UK showed England as overwhelmingly blue, not mirrored anywhere else. Were it not for the Labour heartlands in the North, England would be a vast sea of blue with the odd dot here and there of yellow, green and one or two others. What this effectively means is that the overall Conservative vote of 37% is concentrated almost entirely in just one of the four countries that constitute the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland. Whichever way you look at it, that has to be unfair: from an English perspective, how can it be right that people elected in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have the right to sit in judgement over a country they neither come from nor represent? And, is this injustice not further compounded by the fact that those countries do have their own representatives, without reciprocal representation from England?
Second, and bearing in mind that the nation is bankrupt several times over, do we actually need/can we actually afford all these levels of Government? Given that all the other three countries have their own assemblies, can we not contribute to removing at least a small part of the deficit by stripping away some of the levels of Government which we have at present?
I accept that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are entitled to their own Government, but by the same yardstick, England must be entitled to her own Government as well. If the prevailing mood in the Kingdom is for devolved power, then should we not apply that to all four countries equally, do away with the central Westminster government but keep an upper chamber (not hereditary peers, though) with powers that cover UK-wide matters and elect a UK President (for want of a better word)? That way, the present iniquities end - and I believe we'd save a fortune in the process as well.