« Genographic survey results | Main | Steam power anyone? »
July 06, 2005
Devolution - Democratic or Bureaucratic bonanza?
According to the former editor of that eminent purveyor of news North of the Border, "The Scotsman", Mr Blair's "triumph" of demographic reform since 1997 - Scottish and Welsh Devolution - has, to quote Mr Luckhurst verbatim, "created the most bloated public sector in the developed world. And you fools in England are paying for it!" He has written a scathing piece in that right wing paper that Blair's media spinners actually named in an effort to take the sting out of the reports the paper was running, the "Daily Mail".
According to the line fed to parliament and to those of us South of the Border and East of that other border, this would increase democracy and ensure the stability of the Kingdom by creating a "group of equals" among the four nations. He forgot to mention then, and still denies, that it would be the English who would pay for it all the way, and he also quietly tried to break up England into eight so-called "Regions" so that he and his party of gerrymanderers could be entrenched in government by virtue of the sheer demographic breakdown with the rural constituencies lumped in with the mainly Labour voting Urban ones. Smart move, it makes sure you have a built in majority - and the other function of the Regions was to split up the "English" nation so that they can be more easily controlled by the Labour party's Scottish and Welsh majority. Because therein lies yet another rub. Scottish and Welsh constituents now have double representation - and what is worse, not only do they have the power to say how Scotland or Wales will or will not be governed, but they have a voice over English affairs as well. Naturally, the nasty oppressive English may not have any say over their affairs (such as student fees!), but must pick up the bills and pay for their profiligacy with the tax payers money.
One reason this is costing so much is that where we once had one set of paper shuffling civil servants to pay for, we now have four. Where we once had one set of expensive interfering passengers on the parliamentary gravy train - we now have four. Leaving the Scottish Parliament aside for the moment, let us look at the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly. It has a number of "elected" members, who are still drawing their "parliamentary" salaries even though they are not in fact "sitting". The reason for this?
Well, the fact that the imposed Good Friday Agreement - imposed by Blair and his sycophants in revenge for the fact that the Labour Party is totally unelectable in the Province - basically attempted to sell the Unionist population down the river. Blair thought that he and his cronies could get away with doing a deal with Sinn Fein and their terrorist buddies the IRA (as long as Blair was not seen to be actually dealing with the IRA!) which they could then use to make the Unionist side look to be the unreasonable obstacles to peace. Naturally this also meant destroying the extremely effective Royal Ulster Constabulary by imposing the usual "quotas" for recruitment, changing the name and the uniforms, and then planting Sinn Fein (IRA Political Wing) members on the governing Authority which oversees the Force.
Now that it has all gone horribly wrong for him and is demonstrably unworkable, the solution is more regulation imposed from Whitehall - at huge expense - and still more sops to the Sinn Fein terrorists.
Whitehall is no better - Sinn Fein managed to win seats in Westminster in the previous elections - but refused to take the required Oath of Office. Blair's solution? Attempt to remove the Oath (after all his entire Party have perjured themselves in taking it anyway!) and then, when Parliament refused to let him do that (probably for fear of the real constitutional crisis that would cause!) he gave these terrorist representatives office suites in the Palace of Westminster itself where they have access to all the most sensitive communications, all the files, and to the very heart of the nation! They are still there, still refusing to take the Oath of Office and still having ready access to Number 10 while the Unionist side of that debacle are refused access. Blair does not believe in democracy - the Northern Irish population is not, as he supposes, "an oppressed Catholic Republican majority" - these people represent less than 12% of the total population of Northern Ireland - and in the South attract only around 4% of the total vote.
Turning to the Welsh Assembly briefly, a whole new Civil Service has been brought into being in Cardiff to service the "needs" of the Assembly there. So a population of around 3 million Welsh now have around half of all those employed in Wales working for their Assembly. Who pays the bill for the wages? You guessed it - not the Welsh, primarily because they can't raise sufficient tax revenue there to pay for it. Ergo, let the English pay!
Mr Luckhurst's outburst at the folly of it all is most welcome. The tragedy is that, until the English can regain control of their Parliament, resisting the Labour Party's attempts to create Regional Soviets to further split up the English and remove them permanently from power in their own country, nothing is likely to change - and the English taxpayers will continue to pay for the extravagances of the Scottish and Welsh Socialist systems.
The tragedy for all of us is that the belief in the majority of Scottish and Welsh voters that BIG government is somehow much better than freedom of choice and freedom of enterprise will continue to hold this charlatan and his Party in power. Until the English have had enough.
Posted by The Gray Monk at July 6, 2005 10:20 AM