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B J wrote: "The piecemeal approach to devolution seems to be gathering pace with the announcement about Cornwall following on from Greater Manchester. I'm forming the impression that we'll end up with a load o..."Which will create more fudges and problems, which is what Westminster probably wants. I sympathise with England on this, but if you guys can't sort this out, then why should Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, get it in the neck?
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "You rant is duly noted RMF, but in no way excuses the sheer mendacity of the SNP. They lied about their financial position if they became independent, they lied regarding post independence EU mem..."
There are no English matters, Geoff. There is only the UK. We are all one big happy family :)
That's what Westminster told us (Scotland) everyday for two years.
Geoff seems to be accusing a political party of breaking its promises. Like that's never happened before
English MPs were happy to vote down the SNP's amendments to the Scotland Bill. They can't now complain if SNP MPs vote on an English matter.
The immediate problem has been resolved by the simple expedient of postponing the hunting vote until after EVEL has been introduced. Maybe English MPs are now getting off their arses and sorting it.
I want the foxes to have a vote too. English and Welsh foxes only mind
Marc wrote: "Geoff seems to be accusing a political party of breaking its promises. Like that's never happened before"Yes, but with some parties there is a grain of truth there. No one could accuse the SNP of that.
Marc wrote: "I want the foxes to have a vote too. English and Welsh foxes only mind"Careful - if Scottish grouse and stags get wind of this they might want to vote against being shot.
B J wrote: "The immediate problem has been resolved by the simple expedient of postponing the hunting vote until after EVEL has been introduced. Maybe English MPs are now getting off their arses and sorting it."It's more a case of Dave backing down...again!
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Marc wrote: "Geoff seems to be accusing a political party of breaking its promises. Like that's never happened before"Yes, but with some parties there is a grain of truth there. No one could accu..."
They exist to break up the UK. They've been pretty honest about that from day 1.
I can't see it as Cameron backing down. I find it hard to believe he cares much about this issue and it only got to the stage of another vote because of a campaign by Welsh and Westcountry hill farmers and their MPs that included a successful online petition. It was to be a free vote for Tory and Labour MPs.
B J wrote: "I can't see it as Cameron backing down. I find it hard to believe he cares much about this issue and it only got to the stage of another vote because of a campaign by Welsh and Westcountry hill far..."Free vote? It's turned into a no vote at all.
Many predicted that Cameron should enjoy his victory on May the 8th, because he wouldn't have his troubles to seek with Tory Rebels and civil war on Europe, looming.
I'm quite happy to see him squirm on this.
Geoff, I've just heard on the radio that the SNP MP's were on the receiving end of a well organised campaign against this barbaric hang over from the middle ages, and that was one factor that influenced their decision.EVEL or no EVEL, as MP's they have a duty to represent views expressed to them by the people of the UK, and that seems to be what they have done, however much you dislike them.
R.M.F wrote: "English MPs were happy to vote down the SNP's amendments to the Scotland Bill. They can't now complain if SNP MPs vote on an English matter."That's a very fair point, RMF. English MP's effectively controlling matters for Scotland alone. Who would have thought it?
Will wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "English MPs were happy to vote down the SNP's amendments to the Scotland Bill. They can't now complain if SNP MPs vote on an English matter."That's a very fair point, RMF. English ..."
Certainly not me :)
Will wrote: "Geoff, I've just heard on the radio that the SNP MP's were on the receiving end of a well organised campaign against this barbaric hang over from the middle ages, and that was one factor that influ..."From what I've been reading, even if EVEL, in its current form, was in place, the SNP could still have voted against fox hunting.
And that is what I don't like about politics. The Tories want to relax the law to appease some of their core followers and the SNP make an intervention which is purely tactical.It devalues both sides because they are not making decisions for the good of the state. They are playing games to try to undermine each other. They are both being shallow and opportunistic.
R.M.F wrote: "Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "They exist to break up the UK. They've been pretty honest about that from day 1."Sorry, I stand corrected. They told the truth about that and lied about everything else. And now you know why you lost the referendum, because 60% didn't believe them.
Will wrote: "And that is what I don't like about politics. The Tories want to relax the law to appease some of their core followers and the SNP make an intervention which is purely tactical.It devalues both s..."
Agreed Will.
Will wrote: "And that is what I don't like about politics. The Tories want to relax the law to appease some of their core followers and the SNP make an intervention which is purely tactical.It devalues both s..."
The SNP want to break away from the UK. I doubt the good of the UK state bothers them too much.
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "They exist to break up the UK. They've been pretty honest about that from day 1."Sorry, I stand corrected. They told the truth a..."
What lies?
They said an independent Scotland could use the pound. Which is true - it's an international currency.
They said an independent Scotland could join the EU. Which again is true. An Indy Scotland would be a peaceful democracy. I doubt if the EU would block its entry.
An Indy Scotland would be bankrupt and no more able to follow anti austerity policies than Greece. That's the bit they lied about. Sure, the SNP want to break away from the rest of the UK. And to do that they are voting against a proposal to change the fox hunting laws which apply in England and Wales only. A proposal which does not affect Scotland at all.
So their bid for independence is based on dishonesty and games playing? That doesn't sound like a sound basis for asking the electorate to trust them. One of the accusations leveled against Miliband was that he was not Prime Minister material. And I'm afraid to say that the SNP aren't Government material based on what we have seen so far.
The problem is that the SNP case for independence does not stack up, as Will has already stated. Add into that, that Scotland will not be accepted into the EU without a unanimous yes vote. Spain and France will not vote yes, because that will lead to the Basques demanding the same.The worse part of it is that the SNP is not believed. Until the majority of the people trust the SNP your ambitions towards independence are doomed, no matter how much you play up at Westminster. The more they behave like they do, the more they alienate the people who they want to vote yes next time.
Actually Geoff, I have a different view. The job of the opposition is questioning every last detail of an administrations plans, so that they have to make sure they are on firm ground. The opposiition is to OPPOSE, to make the administration think hard about what it's doing. That is exactly what the SNP have done here, and in this instance for the good of the country and to enormous public support.Plus, Camaron is a canny operator, and he could see that having a substantial number of his own MPs vote against this bararism would not be a good start to his legislative program
Will wrote: "Plus, Camaron is a canny operator, and he could see that having a substantial number of his own MPs vote against this bararism would not be a good start to his legislative program..."I've had a lot of time to think about this and listened to a lot of news broadcasts (sitting in meetings, time on the road and still managed to get a couple of hours on fells above Thirlmere, but was out of the house from 8am to gone 10:30pm so haven't given your discussion above the thought it deserved)
I think Cameron has been a very canny operator.
What was the change he wanted? To bring the law in England and Wales into line with the barbaric practices of Scotland.
And the Scots threatened to stop him.
He couldn't have chosen a more non-threatening issue for the SNP to make a fuss about. They're stopping the English adopting Scots law!
And somehow the supposedly master tactician leading the SNP fell for it.
What he has achieved is greater solidity in his own party over EVEL, and probably greater support in the Lords which was where he was going to have greater problems.
And there's probably more support in England now as well.
Will - the Opposition does have an important scrutiny role. They hold the Government to account and try to ensure that the leading party doesn't introduce bad legislation.But that isn't what is happening in this instance. The SNP are making mischief on a piece of legislation that doesn't affect them. They are not opposing it on scrutiny grounds. They are trying to defeat the Tories on any possible opportunity to try to flex their muscles. If they cause enough mischief they might be able to argue for another referendum. And then another. And another. Until they get what they want.
Will - making mischief is also part of the oppositions job! Especially with a wafer thin majority administration - and it's better for a our democracy that way. Stops complacency.
That sounds like a totally rational analysis to me, Jim.
There is a difference between holding a Government to account and frustrating democratic decisions. The SNP are an immature party who don't seem to know the difference.
That's just rot, Will. The job of opposition is to oppose. That is what democracy is all about. If Camaron thought he could command a commons majority on the vote, he'd have gone for it. He dropped the obnoxious idea because he didn't have the votes in the Commons to win.That IS democracy. As we know it, anyway. The SNP have done nothing illegal, and indeed nothing any other party including the Tories would have done whilst in opposition.
Or is it only frustrating democracy when the numbers don't stack up the way you like?
I honestly and naïvely thought that opposition was a party in waiting, no wonder the country is in such a mess if they routinely sabotage any measure just for the sake of posturing and position. That's more a definition of anarchy than legitimate opposition.
But he wasn't trying to command a majority. It was to have been a free vote for Tory and Labour members. As Jim says, it looks as if Cameron has been clever and the SNP have blundered into a trap.
Will wrote: "An Indy Scotland would be bankrupt and no more able to follow anti austerity policies than Greece. That's the bit they lied about. Sure, the SNP want to break away from the rest of the UK. And to..."
We get it, Will. Nobody in Scotland has ever paid tax, we're third world, we're poorer than Ethiopia, nobody has a job, we steal from England, thousands of Scottish soldiers never died in two world wars, Scotland has done nothing for the Union etc etc :)
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "The problem is that the SNP case for independence does not stack up, as Will has already stated. Add into that, that Scotland will not be accepted into the EU without a unanimous yes vote. Spain a..."Absolutely agree with this. A peaceful, democratic country has no place in the EU.
England does not exist. There is no England. There is no Scotland. There is only the UK. That's the message we in Scotland were bombarded with for two years. EVEL cuts both ways. The usual suspects are moaning about the SNP voting on an 'English only' matter, and yet, hundreds of English MPs voted down the SNP's amendments on the Scotland Bill. English MPs sit on the Scottish Affairs select committee...
It's the usual double standards from English MPs. They want to have their cake and eat it.
I was under the impression that Westminster was a UK PARLIAMENT. As I ranted yesterday, I have zero sympathy for England on this. Your MPs have had FORTY FUCKING YEARS to sort this out. Even if the Celtic nations combine, English MPs still have a FUCKING MAJORITY. Get off your arses and sort this out instead of moaning about it.
You can't say you haven't had the time to create an English parliament or a federal system.
This time I won't apologise for swearing.
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "The worse part of it is that the SNP is not believed. Until the majority of the people trust the SNP your ambitions towards independence are doomed, no matter how much you play up at Westminster. The more they behave like they do, the more they alienate the people who they want to vote yes next time. ."I think that is naive. It absolutely plays to their constituency to give the English a bloody nose, to show Westminster politics as a farce in Scottish terms where they can dance rings around the mainstream parties and make mischief. The English constituency would of course be appalled but I think that only strengthens the Scots' hand even further. It may be a yah boo sucks sort of politics, but then so is PMQs. Anything in Scots' eyes that accentuates the divide between them and The English, Westminster politics and Scottish politics plays into the SNPs' hands.
The Scots are leaving, it is just a question of when and what sort of post-independence relationship and legalities are established.
Jim wrote: "Will wrote: "Plus, Camaron is a canny operator, and he could see that having a substantial number of his own MPs vote against this bararism would not be a good start to his legislative program..."..."
EVEL speeds up the end of the Union. It's a win win for the SNP.
Cameron wants EVEL introduced so that he can repeal a law that prevents cute furry animals from being ripped too shreds. Looks like the SNP have the moral high ground on this one, however Dave tries to spin it.
it's nothing to do with morals. Either you support fox hunting or you oppose it and each will view the other side as immoral. The countryside lobby view us townies as getting involved in something that is none of our business and which we know nothing about in terms of the balance of nature, that they see as us acting immorally. But it's nothing to do with morals when one or both sides in Westminster are using the issue to play a bigger game of political manoeuvring.
Marc, it is not a countryside v townies thing. I live rurally, and don't keep chickens because of the local foxes. I oppose controlling the fox population by having them torn apart by dogs. Jim, anything but a townie, has (I suspect) the same view. Not least because shooting foxes is a more efficient and more effective method of population control.
B J wrote: "But he wasn't trying to command a majority. It was to have been a free vote for Tory and Labour members. As Jim says, it looks as if Cameron has been clever and the SNP have blundered into a trap."Just trying to look at things from a historical perspective, stepping outside any preference or otherwise for any particular party I think it's a more interesting situation still.
Cameron is said to be passionately in favour of keeping the Union. Let's assume that's true because certainly if he wasn't there are a lot of other things he could have done differently.
So what can he do to strengthen the union?
Well it is a total waste of time him trying to do anything in Scotland at the moment.It probably wouldn't succeed anyway.
So what can he do. Well taking the long view, from a Westminster perspective, the SNP are probably at the crest of a wave. After all they can hardly realistically expect to improve their electoral situation in Westminster.
But next year there are the elections in Scotland. Let us assume that the Scots have regarded the Westminster election in much the same light as the English regard European elections.
So how does Cameron act? Well he knows the Scots as a whole don't want independence, they voted against it pretty convincingly. So it is unlikely that Scotland will vote again within this parliament. Not impossible but unlikely.
Well the first thing he needs to do is to stop the SNP 'damaging England' as he would see it, so he needs EVEL. This has the advantage of putting Labour on a back foot and making things harder for them, if only because a lot of Labour MPs can see the fairness and need for some sort of system. Provided he has England secure then all he has to do is wait. It's probably a good idea to give more power to the Scots (because then he can also in all fairness keep back more power to the English and to the Welsh (I've not mentioned NI, but just include as appropriate).
But also the more power the SNP have, the less excuses they have if things to wrong. Ideally for Cameron's purposes he really could do with the Scots election in , say 2018, to give more time for the Scots Parliament to use its tax raising powers to replace money that won't be coming from England but beggars cannot be choosers. They're the cards he's dealt.
Come the next Scots election, it's entirely probable that the SNP do not win a majority. In fact they might lose seats and be forced to go into coalition. Either way, it's unlikely that the SNP are going to win a stonking majority and at that point the legitimacy of their share of the vote in Westminster will be open to doubt, and it's highly likely that parties in Scotland who've done well will be demanding that the SNP in Westminster represent the true will of the Scottish People.
So Cameron just has to sit it out, concentrate on England and wait and see what May brings. It's highly probable that with more powers to Scotland he could see the SNP caught up in Scots politics and be far too busy to worry too much about Westminster. What's going to get interesting is what happens about 2019 when a lot of SNP MPs realise that they're very unlikely to win a second term and have to position themselves for the job market. Getting them to turn up in Westminster at all could be a feat.
But for Cameron he's made a start of clearing the decks. He probably doesn't need to do anything about foxhunting for a while, perhaps not until after the next election. But he'll probably have pacified those who want the vote. They will understand he tried but didn't push it when it was obvious it would lose, so they'll probably accept this for a while. Similarly he can just give the Scots various tax raising powers whilst cutting their grant.
Then he can get on with what is probably to him, the important business of dealing with the EU. This one is going to be really interesting because the Greek question has swung a lot of people who would automatically vote to stay in into the 'let's just leave' camp. In all candor it's unlikely that the EU will make the sort of concessions that would make it worth staying in, I don't think the bureaucracy could countenance them because other countries would want them and the whole thing would start to unravel. But that's the important thing coming up and it's going to keep him busy for the next two years.
Will wrote: "Marc, it is not a countryside v townies thing. I live rurally, and don't keep chickens because of the local foxes. I oppose controlling the fox population by having them torn apart by dogs. Jim,..."Will, I'm not saying I feel that divide, but that is how we are portrayed by the pro-hunting lobby. Going back to the Islington 'Socialist' Blair getting the bill passed in the first placed I suspect
I'm openly an admirer of Tony Ben. (I can picture Will making the devil horns sign as I type this...) He was always suspicious of the EU as he said it failed his tests for a democratic organisation.Who exercises power?
In whose interests is that power exercised?
To whom are they accountable?
How can they be removed?
After watching the behaviour of the EU towards Greece in the last few weeks, those questions are more relevant than ever to our membership of the EU, despite the compelling economic arguments for membership
Will wrote: "Marc, it is not a countryside v townies thing. I live rurally, and don't keep chickens because of the local foxes. I oppose controlling the fox population by having them torn apart by dogs. Jim,..."I'm the same. I live in the countryside, and we keep chickens. Never had any bother from foxes. I fox numbers need to be kept down, a clean kill from a gun, and not a pack of hounds ripping them to bits, is the best way.
Some interesting points, Jim, and I'll counter with my own. It's not plain sailing for Cameron. He's already had 4 defeats in Parliament, and breaking the losing habit is not that easy. That slender majority looks more slender by the day.
At some point, civil war over Europe will erupt within the Tories. They can't help themselves.
The SNP look set to win another landslide in 2016 Scottish parliament elections. With Tory cuts kicking in, and the prospect of Tories winning again in 2020, due to the feebleness of the Labour party, that may be enough to push Scotland out of the Union.
And of course, there is EVEL. EVEL is another nail in the Union's coffin. If you start limiting the rights of Scottish MPs, then people might start to wonder why bother sending them down there in the first place?
And of course, there is the symbolic aspect. The Union is about unity. You start breaking the Union down into its individual nations, and you lose the symbolism.
I'm amazed, but happy, that Unionists have not spotted this erosion of authority.
When the SNP renamed the Scottish executive, the Scottish Government, some years back, I could not believe Westminster let that pass. By calling it the Scottish Government, it sounds as though Westminster is dealing with another sovereign nation...And there you have another example of the Union's aura fading away...
Not happy reading for RMF:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11...
Jim, you are absolutely on the money with your comments.
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Not happy reading for RMF:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11...
Jim, you are absolutely on the money..."
er the way I read that (and how badly written was it btw?) was as I said above. The SNP won't care how hot under the collar Angry from Tunbridge Wells gets, all grist to their independence mill
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The SNP MPs preposterously claim that EVEL will reduce them to second class MPs. English MPs have been second class since devolution ..."
Like I keep saying, not Scotland's problem. The West Lothian question didn't appear yesterday, it has been talked about for the last 40 bloody years!
As always, if English MPs can't be arsed to sort this out, then Scotland shouldn't have to carry the can for this.