by antiaristo » Tue Jan 17, 2006 11:59 am
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Yes, that was a result of The Acts of Union of 1707.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><br>Huh? Are you saying they were <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>created</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> by the Act of Union?<br><br>I thought the Act of Union closed down the Scottish Parliament and merged it with Westminster, and left those other institutions untouched.<br><br>Then Mr Blair comes along and recreates the Scottish Parliament, while leaving the Westminster Parliament (Commons) untouched.<br><br>So Scotland is back to where it was pre Act of Union.<br>Meanwhile England has lost its parliament, and the English institutions are presided over by Scots!<br><br>Perhaps you missed this too<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In Blair’s case he feels a worrying lack of respect for himself, well corroborated in opinion polls, and so he is trying to associate himself publicly with the idea of respect, in an unsophisticated kind of adman dog-whistling. In Brown’s case, he feels a worrying excess of Scottishness, well corroborated in opinion polls, which might well stand between him and No 10, so he is trying equally crudely to make us associate him with Britishness. He is fooling around with our national sense of identity to support his own personal crisis. <br><br>Scottishness is a nail-biting problem for Brown. Generally speaking most people in England quite like the Scots, even though they seem to hate us. Surveys show we find their accents suggest intelligence and reliability. Politically speaking, however, this easy affection is disappearing fast, as Brown is well aware. Devolution in Scotland and Wales — fought for and introduced by new Labour — has much undermined our common sense of Britishness and fostered instead a new and rather irritable sense of Englishness in the South. Meanwhile Scots feel more Scottish and less British than at any time since 1707, according to some surveys, led astray, possibly, by films such as Braveheart. <br><br>More importantly the English public is at last beginning to sit up and take notice of the famous West Lothian question — the problem first identified by the then MP for West Lothian, that Scottish MPs at Westminster can vote and carry the Commons on domestic policies such as education and health that don’t affect them or their constituencies. The government has increasingly relied on the Scottish vote to push through purely English legislation, against English votes, and yet the reverse is not true; English MPs have no say over comparable Scottish affairs. <br><br>This is obviously unfair, as is the fact that more taxpayers’ money goes to Scotland, per head, for public services than in England, following the old Barnett formula. Devolution has only made this long-standing injustice feel worse. <br><br>In response, a feeling of English separatism is growing; the English hardly need Scotland and Wales and would be much freer and richer without them. It is not only those on the far right, now, who complain of the number of Scots at Westminster and their undue influence. Devolution as of now is plainly unjust. Scottish MPs are overmighty and a Scottish prime minister at Westminster, post-devolution, would find himself in a false position. <br><br>Remarkably slowly England’s voters are beginning to wake up to all this. The higher their perception of it becomes, the lower will be Brown’s chances of arriving at long last at the summit of his smouldering ambition. So he has to persuade us somehow that he is not all that Scottish at all. No, he’s British. We’re all British (though this leaves out the awkward position of the Northern Irish, who aren’t exactly British.) He might even fly the Union Jack. But these questions are not going to go away. <br><br>There are ways of resolving them, of course. Why not try genuine devolution? Why not make the Commons English and only English? Why not create a new upper chamber to deal with matters British? But there is no personal incentive for Brown to promote any of that.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>It's from the Times and was reproduced in the Gordon Brown thread.<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessage?topicID=2638.topic">p216.ezboard.com/frigorou...2638.topic</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
