General Chat

Even if you moved the UK Parliament to (say) Manchester everybody outside Manchester would be moaning that Manchester is remote and not catering for their needs.
The problem is with the party political system which centralises decision making and leaves no room for independent MPs to fight the corner for their own constituents.

Trouble with those in power is they do like to use smoke & mirrors ;-)

All the leaders of the 3 main political parties at Westminster have promised to devolve more powers to the Scottish Parliament if Scotland votes No to independence, these include more tax powers, more spending powers, and more powers over the welfare state - that might heal some wounds as far as Scotland is concerned but I think it will open up wounds in other areas of the United Kingdom :-(

I have to agree with Rollo that Westminster is not remote. 300 years ago yes, even 50 years ago in some respects, but today I can email my MP and have him listen ( and respond) to my concerns about many subjects from bees to local budgets.
( There may be remote MPs who do not raise the issues which affect their local constituents but that's a different ball game)

I used to live in Mid Wales, after the National Assembly was established there was an undercurrent of dissent along the lines of, "Why Cardiff? what do they know about life in Wrexham, Porthmadog or Rhyl?" Wherever the centre of government is there will be someone saying "What do they know!"

If Scotland do go ( I don't think they will) and they make a success of it ( I don't they could ) then Wales will want to, certainly if it's down to Plaid Cymru. That too would be a disaster.imo.

the idea that London/Westminster is "remote" is often quoted and as with many daft ideas untrue. We live in an age when quite ordinary people think nothing of jetting off to Bali or Orlando for a break and own holiday homes from the Rockies to Tuscany. London is by far the easiest place to access from all parts of England. In any case the internet has given us low cost instant communication world wide. We live in a global village not villages of mud huts and three days to London! England has never been run in any sort of federal sense for over a thousand years. Labour tried to bring in such ideas in the last govt and they were roundly rejected. The problems of political islands impervious to change responsible to no one are all to obvious in, say, S Yorkshire and Glasgow. It has always been UK policy to allocate funds according to need not the tax base. Thus the Barnett formula is fair. Without it the Highland and. Islands would become a desert and the health problems of GT Glasgow even worse than now. This is also one of the gaping holes in Salmonds nonsense. The W Lothian question suggests that questions about such things as transport education and the NHS in England should be decided only by the English. Problem is the decisions about Hs2, London airports, major universities and the NHS affect everybody in these islands. Federalising the UK is just another way of granting Salmond what he most desires.

I hope not

Was saying to hubby last evening it's like going back in time where each county had its own king and each tried to take over the next county

Very much a backward step in my opinion

Dividing England up into smaller self governing segments would be too inward looking and a nightmare to work out budgets.
There was a referendum suggesting that the NE should have an assembly of some description – the electorate rejected it.
I certainly agree that England as a whole should have some sort of cohesive assembly/government. Originally it would have been best to have it based in Birmingham being roughly in the middle - with Scotland out of the equation, that may no longer by the case.

Westminster is too remote from most parts of England meaning that those who live at the extremities think that they are ignored.

We couldn't afford a new level of civil servants or politicians at the moment, anyway!

Do you think, as a result of the various debates about Scottish Independence, that there will be increased pressure put on central government to devolve more powers to other regions, perhaps even going as far to make these regions - federal states?

The reason I ask this is because I have been following the issue about Scottish Independence quite closely, this issue has raised a lot of question - not just about the future of Scotland.

Reading between the lines, I get the feeling that it is not only Scotland that objects to being told what to do by a central government based at Westminster - it is also people from many other areas of the UK.

So at some point in the future will we see - The United States of Great Britain?