[Closed] England declares UDI and dissolves the Act of Union

@bencooper I suggested to them that supporting Scotland had nothing to do with logic 😀 if it did we'd all have stopped long ago 😀

Ben - Yes, US is a federal system, but that doesn't necessarily create equality - house of reps is on a population basis, so you could easily lay many of the same arguments that are put at the door of UK parliament, alongside which history has shown us what happens when a majority of states in that federal system decide to ignore and press the clear constitutional sovereignty of the other states 🙂

I object to it because it's a waste of time given that it doesnt remove the input of Scottish MPs from legislation that only effects England. It's a half baked poorly thought out pile of jobbie.

aracer - Member

The trouble is, there aren't any easy solutions to the WL question

Yes there is- it's just that the English have never seemed to want to implement it. Perhaps because a lot of people, like David Cameron, view Westminster as the English parliament? Whatever the reason, it's always been a choice the English have made, to debate provincial matters in the national parliament.

[quote=wanmankylung ]I object to it because it's a waste of time given that it doesnt remove the input of Scottish MPs from legislation that only effects England. It's a half baked poorly thought out pile of jobbie.

Fair enough - that wasn't what your objections appeared to be - I'm surprised to find you agree with me. It's not poorly thought out at all though - there's quite a clear reason behind it when you think through the implications.

@NW - a separate English parliament isn't an easy solution at all. It might be the correct/best solution, but it's far from easy, I chose my words carefully.

Hmm, there was always an alternative - that rather than create an additional layer of representatives in the form of MSP's/ Welsh Executive etc. the Scottish westminster MP's sat alone on Scottish issues (either at Westminster or Edinburgh) English MP's sat alone on English ones, etc. - with the whole house coming together to discuss national issues. That would certainly have maintained the importance of a single local representative for the constituent.

aracer - Member

@NW - a separate English parliament isn't an easy solution at all

Somehow we managed it.

- a separate English parliament isn't an easy solution at all. It might be the correct/best solution, but it's far from easy

IMHO the Tories have masterminded a constitutional fudge/mess , that does not serve the long term interest of the union, to save some money.

* it would depend on what we mean by easy - a heart transplant is not easy but we can clearly do them and we dont decline to perform one because its not easy - I assume this was the way you were using it. It a near sophist point

Or they might have done the minimum practically needed at this point, recognising that there's life in the old EVEL dog yet, that would be far better wrung out in the run up to the next election, when it would be far better to beal Labour and the SNP around the head with.

We come back to the reasonable arguments against then. Where do you locate it? How keen are English people on spending lots of money on another lot of corrupt politicians? Where do you make decisions on things which affect England and Wales but not Scotland? (I know EVEL doesn't fix that one*, but if you're going to do it properly it's an issue which needs fixing so long as Wales is less devolved than Scotland - at the moment it still shares the whole legal system)

Those aren't insurmountable issues, but they're part of what doesn't make it easy. As pointed out numerous times, the population of England is an order of magnitude different to Scotland or Wales, so the English Parliament would be on a vastly different scale to their Parliament and Assembly. I'm certainly not suggesting any of those are reasons not to do it, but it's disingenuous to suggest it would be anywhere near as straightforward to set up as the Scottish Parliament.

Yes, to some extent I am just arguing for the sake of arguing - but nothing we write here will make any difference to the UK constitution. Does anybody really expect to see an English Parliament and/or a Federal UK in their lifetime? The funny thing is, what a large majority of us here (of all shades of political persuasion) would like are things which UK politicians of all flavours aren't keen on.

* well it doesn't really fix anything

Tories have masterminded a constitutional fudge/mess , that does not serve the long term interest of the union, to save

I'm not actually 100% convinced the Tories want to save the Union, there's a part of me that suspects they want to disengage from it in their terms.

aracer - Member
...Does anybody really expect to see an English Parliament and/or a Federal UK in their lifetime?

I do.

Knowing how the UK has always reacted after the event, I expect to see this happen just after Scottish independence.

It will be a belated attempt to prevent the Cornish, Yorkshire and Welsh independence movements achieving the same result as Scotland. 🙂

I would be perfectly happy to see a genuine federal system that included Scotland BTW, so long as there were no unelected representatives.

You lot who voted Yes, but are keen on a proper Federal system - you do realise that it would still be the Federal Government deciding whether or not to have nukes? 😈

I'm genuinely curious what real practical difference it would make for Scotland having a proper Federal system rather than what we have now? Is it just a case of more stuff being devolved? Or is your objection to the current system just the HoL - [url= http://www.donotlink.com/h4r9 ]you're in good company![/url]

It's not poorly thought out at all though - there's quite a clear reason behind it when you think through the implications.

It's the cheapest way of winning lots of Tory votes back from UKIP. "They" would look like even bigger idiots if they tried to introduce an English parliament (with all its related costs). It is probably also partly aimed at increasing support for independence in Scotland - ready for when Osborne takes over and turns into the guy who destroyed the Union.

You lot who voted Yes, but are keen on a proper Federal system - you do realise that it would still be the Federal Government deciding whether or not to have nukes?

One of the main objections to remaining in the UK is that everything is dictate by SE England. Move to a proper federal system, and that steam rollering effect that the SE currently has would be greatly diminished.

What do you mean by the south east 😈 Assuming London and its surroundings, there are about 3 times as many people living within the London metro area than the whole of Scotland. It has almost 25% of the UK population, so any federal system would have to allow for the UKs massively skewed population distribution.

aracer - Member
You lot who voted Yes, but are keen on a proper Federal system - you do realise that it would still be the Federal Government deciding whether or not to have nukes? ...

I think you'd find that the hawks in England would be perfectly happy to have weapons of mass destruction on their doorstep, so no problem moving it.

25% say would be far better than 100%

[quote=wanmankylung ]25% say would be far better than 100%

But it isn't 100% now, and if it is more than 25% then it would still be more than 25% as part of a Federal Government. I'm not sure how you think a Federal Government would be elected - the only logical way is something very similar to how the current UK government is elected. Are you assuming that Scotland would get an equal say with England despite 10% of the population? That's certainly not how it works in the US, where California has 53 seats in Congress and Montana has only 1.

Are you assuming that Scotland would get an equal say with England despite 10% of the population? That's

Eh - no. I'd be assuming that seat were allocated to either similar sized populations, or something similar.

So kind of what we have now, with similar decisions being made on Federal things...

How would this make any difference to Scotland compared to what we have now? Not having a dig at all, it's a genuine question to anybody who might know more about this than me.

Eh? That makes no sense at all.

The average size of Scottish parliamentary constituencies at the moment is 65,475, whereas the average size in England is 71,858

For anyone who has been complaining that within the current system, England dominates any decision, the suggestion that a federal system with seats allocated on a population basis not only continues the exact thing you're complaining about, but in fact makes it even worse!

😕

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