Saturday, 17 April 2010

Devolution 1998 – England’s war of 1066 proportions

Devolution forced on the UK by Europe’s regional policies saw the British because of Scottish influence adopt a system of devolution that regionalised the United Kingdom along national boundaries. It was obvious that any devolution that gave political and constitutional recognition along national lines would strengthen a nation’s individual national identity and weaken the British State, so to protect the British identity devolution 1998 denied the English Nation and England itself any political or constitutional recognition.

Pulling out of the EU and abandoning their regional policies or creating a new British federal state, are not options the British are considering. Yet!

After being subdued by a British Government for centuries the Scottish fortunes have now been turned around, and Scotland with its own parliament is now in a much stronger position to gain concessions off the British to prevent the country seeking independence. The British are already showing they are open to this bribery with the most obvious being their refusal to make changes to the Barnet funding formula that gives Scotland £12 billion a year more than England, and the bailing out of Scottish banks which they have promised England will take the brunt of paying for. Just how far the British are prepared to go in this direction could be seen to depend on how long the people of England are going to stand by and let this bribery continue.

By adopting an asymmetrical form of devolution that gave political and constitutional recognition to all UK countries except England, the British have retained the power to manipulate English Domestic policies to their own advantage. The British are using this power to reinforce their identity on the people of England and we are seeing a forceful encouragement of Britishness that wants to break up our country into regions to stop us gaining that unitary political existence and nationhood.







This is England Today


Since 1998 the English have been the only nation in the United Kingdom without a National Parliament and the only nation not able to defend and protect itself against ‘British’ Domestic and EU Polices, giving British Nationalists a free hand to destroy England’s unity and culture by allowing them to break up England into their 9 multicultural ‘British’ Regions, and apply EU laws with impunity.

Since 1998 England has been marginalised by devolution, constitutionally, politically, financially, economically and culturally.

By virtue of their national institutions Scotland and Wales have a distinct and separate political, constitutional existence and nationhood, England however does not constitutionally exist and is being denied its nationhood.

The Devolution Acts of 1998 revoked the Act of Union, revoked the concept of one British Nation with one legislative body of government, and revoked the principle of representative democracy. It unbalanced the Union by placing England, Scotland and Wales each in a different relationship with the Union and each other, and it institutionalised discrimination against the people of England.

The Devolution Acts of 1998 abolished representative democracy as the untouchable 1st principle of government. By what is understood to be the West Lothian issue, British MPs elected in Scotland can be both ministers and legislators,even Prime
Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary in English matters without being answerable in elections for their actions in those matters to ‘any electorate’ either in Scotland or England.

England is being broken up into British Regions and is losing its unitary existence to the disadvantage of the English Nation to whom it denies nationhood and political representation. British nationalists claim that England does not need any separate representation because they say the interests of England are best served by its British MPs; this is an untruth as they could have said the same about the interests of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and there would have been no need for the Devolution Acts of 1998 and the UK could have remained with one united parliament.

It is impossible to see how England can be best served by its British MPs when you consider how the British political system works. The United Kingdom Parliament’s House of Commons is not divided up into four national sectors with British MPs sitting in the sector of the country that elected them, the house divides on party political lines, the government on one side and the opposition on the other. What this means is that England’s elected representative British MPs are always divided and are always under the control of their separate political party whips, and who has ever seen or will see, or can imagine Labour and Conservative MPs sitting in English constituency seats defying their party whips to the extent of combining to defeat and bring down their own respective governments.

With England’s political and constitutional recognition England could decide its own form of local government and would be able to take over the work performed by the regions in the EU, providing England with a stronger unified voice and force than the individual regions in applying for EU structural funds. Currently the regions apply separately for funds and are therefore in direct competition with one another. With London and the South East undoubtedly able to shout the loudest the poorer regions such as those in the North are always in danger of losing out; an English Parliament would therefore not only be a stronger lobbying force in the UK and in the EU but it would be better placed to distribute the funds more evenly across England.

There is nothing to stop an English Parliament from deciding on a regional form of local government, the difference between an English Parliament deciding on the option and a UK British Parliament deciding, is that the first option rightly gives
England and its nation their political and constitutional recognition and the second deny it, disproving again British Nationalist claims that their MPs elected from English constituencies act in England’s best interests.

England is further disenfranchised in representation in the House of Lords, in which members from other countries in the UK and abroad, unaccountable to the English electorate, are able to revise and modify laws that only apply to England, when they can not do so for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

‘The British / Irish Council’ known as the ‘Council of the Isles’ which
promotes the harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of relationships among the peoples of these islands, ( British gibberish) which has representatives from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey and even the Isle of Man, is not allowed an independent representative from England.

Since Labours Devolution Acts of 1998 and their subsequent immigration policies, which included signing up to an EU open border policy, our country has been inundated with people from Europe’s 450 million inhabitants and England our homeland is no longer our own, and with each nation in the EU retaining power over its own citizenship a rogue nation could invite the world's population to our doorstep. By denying England its political and constitutional identity the nation is also being denied its ability to protect its own assets and culture, and the British are exploiting this situation by selling assets that would sustain England’s identity and are fostering a British Multiculturism on England that is encouraging the rise of alien cultures at its nation’s expense.

Compare this with the nations of Scotland and Wales who have recognition and have a parliament with responsibility for their own nation’s education and training programs. While British Multiculturism on England is based around a false premise of Britishness, and encourages cohesion from the outside by downplaying England’s identity, the Scots and Welsh are able to do the opposite and are encouraging cohesion from the inside. Through the school curriculum all children in Scotland and Wales are now being reared and educated to have strong Scottish and Welsh national identities and knowledge of their own individual Scottish and Welsh history and heritage. The British have also given each country a separate TV channel to help them regenerate their old languages, and the Welsh language is now being taught in the schools of Wales. The British have also allowed these nations similar ‘Sports and Art’ programs backed up by other separate television channels, a BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and a BBC Northern Ireland, and they have the added bonus of separate tourist boards who promote their own distinct Scottish and Welsh cultures.

While British Multiculturism is always demoting, a Scottish and Welsh Multiculturism is always promoting, and an obvious difference between the two was seen in the celebrations after the recent Olympic Games. England having won more Gold Medals in this Olympic Games than it had in its entire history in the competition, not only saw its winners denied their English identity in the media, but also saw their entire nation denied separate celebrations by the British on their return. Scottish and Welsh competitors on the other hand were applauded by the media and their nation status made headline news each time a medal came their way. Consider the difference too when the Scottish and Welsh competitors returned home, each nation held their own separate celebrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff with the added bonus of also being allowed to participate in the separate British celebrations in London.

Scotland, Wales, and Ireland are also allowed to promote their own separate identities and culture through labelling, especially food items, a lot of which now sport their national flags. Controversially in England, the ‘Dairy Crest’ company re-branded their ‘English Country Life Butter’ ‘British Country Life Butter’ with British government approval when the French recently acquired the brand outright.

Out of a grand total of 549 British MPs sent to the UK Parliament to represent the interests of the people of England, only 34 of them voted in favour of an EDM that called for England’s St. George to be honoured with a national day’s holiday, yet they knew they had already allowed Scotland a national holiday for St. Andrew’s Day.

Only in England is a false history of a multicultural Britishness being used to deny the people and their children their heritage. Only in England is its nation having obstacles put in its way to prevent its recognition and existence, and only on England are the British pursuing a vigorous policy of Multiculturism that is amounting to the cultural genocide of its standing nation with the introduction of their new licensing laws, health and safety regulations, public order offences, liability insurance requirements,and their political correctness and human rights policies.

Constitutional and political recognition for England would see British Multiculturism replaced with an English Multiculturism like that of Scotland and Wales that could encourage and promote England’s national identity to engage all from the inside, allowing all the people of England with a British qualification to identify with the country in which they live, the very essence of which would unite England’s people under one banner like is happening in Scotland and Wales, and an English Parliament would be the centre of gravity around which all could work together to carve out a new English identity. Britishness would then be promoted throughout the UK in its true category as the requirements and responsibilities of state citizenship.

Devolution 1998 the cause of the UK’s instability was the result of pressure being put on British Nationalists in the UK Parliament by a disillusioned Scotland and a UK Parliament that wanted to comply with the European Union’s Regional Policies that demanded it. If the devolutionary powers given to Scotland had been given to England, the simplest way to avoid a constitutional controversy, England would have received the same powers over its own domestic policies as those listed below and the UK would have held onto reserved issues.

Under the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Parliament can make primary and secondary legislation in Areas not reserved to Westminster or protected from modification.

* Health * Local Government * Social Work
* Education and Training * Housing * Planning
* Tourism * Economic development and financial assistance to industry
* Some aspects of transport, the Scottish road network, bus policy and ports and harbours
* Law and home affairs, inc. most aspects of criminal and civil law, the prosecution system and the courts
* The Police and Fire Services * Natural and Built Heritage * Sports and the Arts
* The Environment * Agriculture, forestry and Fishing
* Statistics, public registers and records

Other Advantages gained by the Devolved Nations

* MPs in their own parliament and separate MPs of their own at Westminster
* A Secretary of State in the Cabinet
* A Grand Committee made up of all of their MPs
* Their own Select Committee at Westminster to deal with their own affairs
* They can speak up for their own nations in Europe and help shape UK- EU policy
* Have the benefit of Statutory Instruments (UK laws) to be studied by their own institution
* The Scottish and Welsh Development agencies deal direct with their own executives so can tailor things on a national rather than a regional basis
* Although the devolved nations MPs at Westminster have had their workload drastically reduced they have had no pay cut (99% of constituent’s problems now being dealt with by their own parliamentary MSPs)

Similar powers have been given to Wales with the only exception being it has yet to be given jurisdiction over Primary Legislation.

You don’t have to be the brain of Britain to realise that when the UK’s British Government talks about any of the above institutions, appoints Ministers over them, and passes laws on them, that what they say and do can only apply to England, yet the media are aiding and abetting the government by not making this clear to the English general public.

UK Parliament controlled ‘Reserved Responsibilities’

* The Constitution * Defence and national security * Fiscal, economic and monetary system
* Trade and Industry, including competition and customer protection
* Transport (not particular to Scotland) including railways, transport safety and regulation
* Social Security * Employment * Equal opportunities
* Medical ethics: abortion; human fertilisation and embryology; genetics; xenotransplantation and vivi section
* Broadcasting * the Civil Service * Immigration and Nationality
* Foreign Affairs * Energy: electricity, coal, gas, nuclear energy


You don’t have to be the brain of Britain either to realise that the UK Parliament’s ‘Reserved Responsibilities’ and their sovereign powers are wanted and are gradually being surrendered by the British to the EU. Giving up your sovereign rights means you are handing over the supreme and indisputable power to rule on those rights to the EU, and how far the British are prepared to go down that path depends on the whims of which political party is in power in the UK Parliament, and not its UK subjects who are being denied a referendum on the issue. If the
EU gains enough power the UK will be at its mercy, England therefore needs its political and constitutional recognition now before that point is reached in order to defend itself against British MPs who have proved themselves unworthy of our trust, and have shown that they are prepared to put their own interests and those of their party before England’s.

Looking at the UK list of powers devolved to Scotland and Wales, by far the most important thing every person living in England should be aware of and realise, is that the list is a list of national powers, powers given to the national parliaments of Scotland and Wales who appoint their own ministers over them, they are national institutions.

While Scotland and Wales have national institutions and can control their own policies nationally across all of their country England can not because England has no unitary existence. If we look at the health services we see that England is heading in the direction of privatisation by being subjected to a Health Service that is not a National Health Service in the sense of the word at all, but a British based regional system of Primary Care Trusts and Foundation Hospitals. Half of English hospitals are already out of Ministerial control and it is said all will be by 2012; we must not forget that this situation has been forced on England by Scotland’s elected British MPs against the wishes of those British MPs representing England after rejecting the system for their own Scottish nation. It must not be forgotten that it is these Scottish MPs that destroyed the English National Health Service and forced it into the regional based British Health Service we have now.

England’s regional based Foundation hospitals have been given huge sums of tax payer’s money by the British and conduct their own affairs free of British interference and are allowed to adopt differing policies and priorities in order to meet British set targets. They are run like businesses and are free to use the market as they see fit which is creating huge differences of care across England known as the post code lottery, which wouldn’t happen in a national based system. We are even seeing some of these hospitals paying for and building their own hospitals in other countries, outside of the EU too, and it is also being reported that they are selling first class drugs intended for English patients abroad for profit, while English patients go short or receive the cheaper options.

The NHS of Scotland and Wales provides equality of care for all of their people regardless of what part of their country people live in, and care is not dependent on a post code lottery; their hospitals do not have the same restraints put on them as those in England have because they are all under ministerial control and subsidised by the English tax payer. Besides receiving a huge grant from the British Government to run their own affairs the National Parliaments also get additional payments every year made to them because the funding formula called Barnet is based on England’s expenditure, in Scotland’s case alone this formula lets the British give Scotland an extra £12 billion per year more than they give England, which they use to bolster their own welfare system.

A National Parliament’s first priority is to the nation it serves and Scottish and Welsh national achievements since devolution are things England can only dream about and some are listed below.

*Free Prescription charges
*Free Eye Tests
*Free Dental Check Ups and reduced charges
*Free personal Care in Residential Homes - even if their people cross the border into England
*Free School Milk - Better school meals being provided because they are given double England’s subsidy
* The seriously ill are able to receive drugs that are denied to English patients even if their patients are in an English hospital
*Trainee nurses are kept on an extra year after qualification so that they have the necessary experience to get jobs in the private sector should there be no jobs in their NHS
*No Hospital Car Parking Charges
*No Wheel Clamping allowed anywhere in the country
*A fully funded Air Ambulance Service
*No Bridge tolls
*Higher wages to teachers and smaller class sizes in schools
*Their own Students in Universities have fees waived until they are earning over £25,000 per year and no top up fees are paid. (English Students pay £3000/year + in top up fees and leave with debts of £20,000)
*Council Tax frozen 2008, 2009, and probably 2010 has only risen 40% since 1997 (England’s council tax has risen 100% over the same period and increases every year)
*Every young woman between the ages of 20 and 25 is invited for a cervical smear test - in England you have to be 25, by then it is too late for any girl unfortunate enough to get it at a younger age like Jade Goody did.

Continuing on the list we can see that the British recognised nations have responsibility for their own housing, planning, and environmental policies, the British can’t force their ECO Towns on Scotland or Wales, or force the extension of airports which they are able to force onto England. Their own Agriculture and Fisheries departments are seeing national governments make sure their farmers get their subsidies on time while the British keep English farmers waiting, some in the mean time going bankrupt, and the Scottish Fisheries Dept has already made a cut in English fishing quotas along the East Coast. The list goes on, and in every dept the nations are able to protect their people from the sufferance of the British Domestic policies that can be forced onto England; from ID Cards, to Road Pricing to bin collections, to council tax, to CTV surveillance and speed cameras, the national parliaments decide for themselves what is best for their people and do not have to accept the wishes of the British Government, and invariably do not.

The Barnet Formula mentioned previously is the mechanism that determines the allocation of resources throughout the United Kingdom and has been in place since the 1970s. It is the formula that decides the size of the Block Grants given to the devolved nations and it is based upon England’s expenditure. It was supposed to be “a convergence formula” based on population based changes, but in practice this has not proved to be the case. Government figures show that instead of converging the opposite is happening, and it is clear that the spending per head of population in England is continually lower to that of the devolved nations and the gap is actually widening.

In 2008 spending in England per head of population was £7,121. In Wales it was £8,139 (14% more), in Scotland £8,623 (21% more) and in Northern Ireland £9,385 (32% more) new figures for 2009 England £7535, Scot £9179 Scots get £1644 more. Since the Scottish Parliament was created in 1998 public spending has outstripped tax generated there by 45%, and in addition Scotland’s two flagship banks, HBOS and RBS have been bailed out by the tax payer.

Basically, every extra pound spent by the UK British Government on England projects automatically triggers an additional 10.66% payout to Scotland, a 6.02% payout to Wales and a 2.87% payout to Northern Ireland. So, for example, this means that any capital projects taking place in England are automatically made a total of 19.55% more expensive, because they instantly trigger extra Barnett Formula funding. This is why the proposed Cross Rail project in England means a financial bonanza in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it has been estimated that Scotland alone will receive an extra £500 million pounds. Of course, this is a one-way process, capital projects elsewhere in the UK do not result in a single penny of extra funding for England.

But that is not all, when “uniform” adjustments, are made across treasury departments, for example Health, the same increase when applied to an already larger per capita budget naturally results in an even larger additional payout. In theory, these adjustments can be decreases as well as increases, but of course in practice this doesn’t happen.
For example, one of Gordon Brown’s last actions as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to slash England’s British Health Service capital budget by a third, £2.1 billion taken away from the English whilst the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish budgets remained untouched, and of course, any steps taken to return the money to England’s British Health Service will trigger automatic payouts to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The ‘£3000 top-up’ student tuition fees in England are also counted as additional English public expenditure, (because the extra income is spent by our universities). So by putting the burden of tuition fees on English students British MPs triggered a payout to the nations under the Barnett Formula, helping the nations to give their students free tuition.

The Barnett Formula also ensures that the rest of the UK benefits when England receives European Union (EU) funds. This is because the Treasury regards EU funding as UK expenditure, based on the argument that the UK is a net contributor to the EU and therefore EU grants are just money from the UK taxpayer. A large increase in EU funding to England is reflected in the Department Expenditure Limits (DELs) of the relevant English departments. DELs not only set limits on spending but also determine the assigned budget of the devolved nations in conjunction with the Barnett Formula. Therefore, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive extra funding from the UK Treasury, even though the intention of the EU was to meet the particular needs of England.

The Barnett Formula isn’t just fuelling resentment in England; it is also funding separation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Because unequal, asymmetric devolution that deliberately ignores England’s constitutional and political existence is all about separation.

The Barnett Formula itself is expressively based upon nationality, not need. It is specifically and openly all about handing over money to the nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – money taken in taxes from England.
The argument that these taxes are UK taxes doesn’t hold water. More money is spent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland than is raised in taxes. The shortfall is made up in England and so it is English taxpayers who pay for the superior services elsewhere.

It is true that rural areas are more expensive to provide services to. But most of Scotland’s population lives in the Central Belt, which can hardly be described as “rural.” Glasgow alone has 40% of the Scottish population, and whereas there is an argument to be made for Wales being a poorer area of the UK and thus needing more funding, this cannot apply to Scotland which is recognised as being the third richest of the 12 EU regions.

Why should taxes on the low-paid in places in the North East of England go to support Edinburgh millionaires? The people of the North East are on average 13% poorer than the people of Scotland, but despite this they receive less government spending. Remember, Joel Barnett who devised the funding formula has said recently it was never intended to be the long term answer, and contradicted Gordon Brown by stressing that it was a population based formula not one based on need, that had run its course and was now grossly unfair to England.

This Barnet Formula will not be changed while England has no constitutional and political existence and England will continue to take the brunt of taxes to pay for British incompetence because of the aggressive nature of British Nationalism.

We have recently had a General Election and nothing changes as we hear the Con/Dem British Nationalist parties of Tory and Liberal continuing to trumpet their support for Scotland and have promised even in the midst of the UK’s Billions of debt that there will be no reduction in their nations funding in the short term; it’s England then that is going to take the brunt of cuts in public expenditure and be subjected to British revenue raising budgets.

England’s troubles began in 1997 when a gang of Scottish conspirators and Europhiles were supported by a United Kingdom Prime Minister backed by English elected British MPs who were prepared to sacrifice England and the English Nation that elected them for the glorification of Scotland and their New Labour Party. Tony Blair was the Prime Minister and Gordon Brown headed the long list of conspirators that included Charles Kennedy the then leader of the Liberal Party, Menzies Campbell his successor, and such people as the disgraced speaker Michael Martin and George Galloway amongst them, who had signed an oath in 1989 known as ‘The Scottish Claim of Right’ swearing to put the interests of Scotland before that of any other nation, and in doing so forced UK’s 1998 Devolution.

From this day British MPs elected from English constituencies can not be trusted to put England’s interests before that of their party.

The West Lothian Question

Why should MPs elected by the countries of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland into the British UK Parliament be allowed to debate and vote on policies that only apply to England, when British MPs elected by England to the UK Parliament can not debate and vote on policies that only apply to their countries.

The result of their interference in English legislation has already resulted in England being forced down the road of NHS privatisation with Foundation Hospitals, and also forced our University students to pay Top Up fees, and most recently influenced the stopping of trials by Jury for certain offences.

The English Question

Who rules England – Why should British MPs elected in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland be allowed to be head of English only departments deciding English Domestic Policies when they can not force those same policies onto their own nations that elected them, and one as even made himself Prime Minister.
-----------------------------------------------

England and Englishness are something to be positively proud about. It is the right of the people of England to have their own distinct particular English national identity acknowledged within the UK and the EU as those of Scotland and Wales have been acknowledged in the 1998 Devolution legislation.

The British do not wish to recognise England and Englishness because it gives them a problem with their identity and reduces their power, so they are trying to solve it by supplanting the name Britain for England and forcing an invented indigenous British multi-cultural identity onto the English Nation.

3 comments:

Wyrdtimes said...

Excellent post

Tony said...

Well done John. First class article.

Unknown said...

As a believer in full independence for Scotland and England I read your post with much interest and agree with much of what you say. Unlike you I don't beleive the best solution is to keep the mythical British State together, as this only foments antagonism between our countries. Paradoxically, i beleive full indpendence would bring our countries closer, as the English could then stop moaning about the fantasy that they subsidise the Scots through Barnett and we Scots would have to grow up a bit and take full responsibility for our own affairs.