Thursday, 9 February 2012
Redknapp a shoe in?
What happens they offer the job to 'Arry and he insists (as he should) on the right to select his own captain? Presumably the F.A. would then have to withdraw the offer.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
A very prompt and pleasing reply from Helen-Mary Jones AM
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your message.
I am, of course, fully aware of the exact constitutional position, but it is rather hard using the term "the UK parliament legislating on England only matters"' or "the UK government acting on England only matters" each time one has to make a distinction between England only policies and those of devolved governments. English Parliament or English government is useful shorthand.
I cannot speak for other nationalists on this but it is my personal belief that it is most unfair for MPs from Scotland to vote on matters that have no effect on their constituents and only on communities in England. I will feel the same way about MPs representing Welsh constituencies if the referendum on March 3rd is passed and the National Assembly's lawmaking powers are effectively clarified. In this context I am pleased with the decision of my colleagues in Westminster, the Plaid Cymru MPs who have not spoken or voted on England only matters since devolution. I support the idea of an English Parliament in principal, though I can understand that at this point there would be some difficulty in putting this in to practice because the current model of devolution is so asymmetric, with each of the three devolved administrations having such different powers. Hopefully that will change.
I hope this clarifies position on this matter.
Yours sincerely
Helen Mary Jones AM
Sent from my BlackBerry
Thank you for your message.
I am, of course, fully aware of the exact constitutional position, but it is rather hard using the term "the UK parliament legislating on England only matters"' or "the UK government acting on England only matters" each time one has to make a distinction between England only policies and those of devolved governments. English Parliament or English government is useful shorthand.
I cannot speak for other nationalists on this but it is my personal belief that it is most unfair for MPs from Scotland to vote on matters that have no effect on their constituents and only on communities in England. I will feel the same way about MPs representing Welsh constituencies if the referendum on March 3rd is passed and the National Assembly's lawmaking powers are effectively clarified. In this context I am pleased with the decision of my colleagues in Westminster, the Plaid Cymru MPs who have not spoken or voted on England only matters since devolution. I support the idea of an English Parliament in principal, though I can understand that at this point there would be some difficulty in putting this in to practice because the current model of devolution is so asymmetric, with each of the three devolved administrations having such different powers. Hopefully that will change.
I hope this clarifies position on this matter.
Yours sincerely
Helen Mary Jones AM
Sent from my BlackBerry
Email to David Cameron
Dear Prime Minister,
I note that in your speech yesterday at the Munich Security Conference you stated your view that some young Moslem men "find it hard to identify with Britain... because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity."
I believe that one aspect of this weakening of our collective British identity is the unfair distribution of democracy resulting from an unequal devolution process that gives a degree of independence to some of the nations of the UK while leaving England without a national parliament and subject to legislation made by MPs representing constituencies unaffected by the very legislation they are helping to enact. This has led to a situation whereby many people in England are no longer as willing as they once were to identify themselves as British but prefer to identify as English, a term that for some people has primarily ethnic rather than civic overtones.
Do you agree that an important step towards creating a unified, inclusive, civic British identity would be to end the fragmenting effects of unfair devolution by, at the very least, bringing in legislation allowing only MPs from constituencies in England to vote on matters that are handled by the devolved parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Yours sincerely,
Andrew
I note that in your speech yesterday at the Munich Security Conference you stated your view that some young Moslem men "find it hard to identify with Britain... because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity."
I believe that one aspect of this weakening of our collective British identity is the unfair distribution of democracy resulting from an unequal devolution process that gives a degree of independence to some of the nations of the UK while leaving England without a national parliament and subject to legislation made by MPs representing constituencies unaffected by the very legislation they are helping to enact. This has led to a situation whereby many people in England are no longer as willing as they once were to identify themselves as British but prefer to identify as English, a term that for some people has primarily ethnic rather than civic overtones.
Do you agree that an important step towards creating a unified, inclusive, civic British identity would be to end the fragmenting effects of unfair devolution by, at the very least, bringing in legislation allowing only MPs from constituencies in England to vote on matters that are handled by the devolved parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Yours sincerely,
Andrew
Email to Helen-Mary Jones (deputy leader of Plaid Cymru in the Welsh Assembly and the party’s spokesman on Health and Social Services)
Dear Ms Jones,
Yesterday on Radio 4's 'Any Questions', while discussing the UK Government's proposal to sell much of the woodland overseen by the Forestry Commission to private companies, you expressed your gladness that the Welsh Assembly Government had no intention of introducing similar proposals for woodlands in Wales and then stated that as far as woodlands in England were concerned, this was a matter for 'the English Government'. You used this term, 'the English Government', two or three times in the ensuing discussion.
Obviously you are aware that there is no such entity as the English Government, England being governed by the UK Government through parliament which is made up of MPs from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I am interested to learn whether your reference to 'the English Government' was merely a slip of the tongue, or is this how you and perhaps other nationalists in Wales and Scotland now characterise the UK Government at least as far as its competencies in regard to devolved issues are concerned?
I would also be interested to learn whether you support the idea of a genuine English Government and parliament, made up purely of MPs from constituencies in England, to handle matters of legislation relating only to England.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew
Yesterday on Radio 4's 'Any Questions', while discussing the UK Government's proposal to sell much of the woodland overseen by the Forestry Commission to private companies, you expressed your gladness that the Welsh Assembly Government had no intention of introducing similar proposals for woodlands in Wales and then stated that as far as woodlands in England were concerned, this was a matter for 'the English Government'. You used this term, 'the English Government', two or three times in the ensuing discussion.
Obviously you are aware that there is no such entity as the English Government, England being governed by the UK Government through parliament which is made up of MPs from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I am interested to learn whether your reference to 'the English Government' was merely a slip of the tongue, or is this how you and perhaps other nationalists in Wales and Scotland now characterise the UK Government at least as far as its competencies in regard to devolved issues are concerned?
I would also be interested to learn whether you support the idea of a genuine English Government and parliament, made up purely of MPs from constituencies in England, to handle matters of legislation relating only to England.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew
Saturday, 1 May 2010
In defense of PR
Further to my one-before-last post, in which I advocated voting for the Liberal Democrats in order to help bring about a situation where a hung parliament might lead to the introduction of PR, and in light of the fact that both Labour and Conservative campaigners have been frantically highlighting the perceived dangers of hung parliaments (and therefore, by implication, of PR, which tends to lead to a hung parliament [or, more positively, a balanced parliament]), I intend, in this post, to address the main criticisms that I have heard people make about the concept of proportional representation as a means of electing the national parliament.
Criticism 1: PR is less likely to deliver an overall majority to any party, and therefore leads to coalition governments which are both weak and impossible to vote out.
- One of the advantages that many people claim for the first-past-the-post system is that it usually delivers a government with a majority of seats in parliament, thus enabling it to get its planned programme of legislation enacted into law without too much difficulty. But surely the notion of one party holding a majority of the seats in parliament is only justifiable if that party is supported by the majority of the electorate. If it is not supported by the majority of voters then effectively what we have is a group of people representing a minority of the population, forcing their will onto the majority. That doesn't seem very democratic to me. A coalition government may be weak, in the sense that no one party within the coalition may be able to achieve everything it would like to, and in the sense that its actions must involve negotiation, bargaining and compromise, but that is inevitable in a situation where politicians are representing a public with a diverse range of political viewpoints, and must surely be preferable to one party lording it over the legislative chamber without a genuinely democratic mandate from the voters. Decisions arrived at through negotiation and compromise may even sometimes be better than those which originate with one party and then enjoy free passage through parliament by virtue of a majority. As for the argument, which is sometimes made, that a coalition government can never be voted out, this is only true to the extent that the electorate can never be 'voted out'! A coalition government, elected using proportional representation, needs to hold the confidence of a parliament which reflects the political 'shape' of the electorate as a whole and, unlike the zero-sum game of first-past-the-post elections - where the representatives of one part of the electorate hold total power for a period and then lose all power, to be replaced by the representatives of another part of the electorate - under PR a coalition government, while it may not necessarily be so easy to vote out, will, if it wishes to continue in power, change it's composition to reflect the changing political demographics of the electorate. Of course, if a large enough part of the electorate become completely disenchanted with the coalition government then, following a general election using PR, the new government (whether it was a coalition or not) would, no doubt, look very different to the previous one.
Criticism 2: PR would lead to political stalemates, with governments unable to act because of the lack of a clear parliamentary majority.
- This is really a very similar criticism to the last one and, while it's true that under PR it is often harder to get legislation passed, this is, in my opinion, no bad thing. It is felt by many people that there are already far too many laws on our statute books and, as mentioned in my previous answer, the need for negotiation and compromise is an important way of ensuring that any legislation which is passed is as acceptable as it can be to the public as a whole. In the devolved parliaments and assemblies of the UK the various parties involved in coalition governments are learning to thrash out compromises and come to agreements which, though they sometimes do take a long time to arrive at (eg. the decisions involving the handing over of police powers to Stormont) do, as a result of the compromises involved, tend to have the support of a broader section of the electorate than they would do had they been foisted on the public by a government which, while not being supported by the majority of voters, nevertheless held a majority in parliament.
Criticism 3: PR would allow minority parties, such as the BNP, to hold a disproportionate amount of power.
- It's true that under PR a situation could arise where a minority government might need to strike a deal with an unpopular minority party in order to get a proposed piece of legislation passed through parliament. This does mean that small parties could potentially hold a very small amount of power (though only to the extent that the more mainstream parties would be prepared to compromise with them - the more extreme ideas of parties like the BNP would almost certainly not be up for discussion) but it would not be a disproportionate amount of power. The ability any small party had to influence decisions made in parliament would be in direct proportion to the level of its electoral support, and that is how it should be!
Criticism 4: PR takes away the connection between MPs and local areas as MPs do not represent particular constituencies under PR.
- This is, in my opinion, the strongest argument against PR but also the most easily dealt with. The system of PR which I am most in favour of (and which is, I believe, the one favoured by the Lib Dems) is the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system, which delivers a result which is both proportional in party terms and keeps the connection between individual MPs and local constituencies. For a detailed explanation of how STV works, see here.
In my opinion there are four major democratic deficits facing the people of England today: Firstly, the lack of properly representative democracy in the UK - something that would be remedied by the introduction of PR; secondly, the lack of direct democracy, ie. referenda, when it comes to major constitutional issues (such as the giving away of significant powers to the EU, or issues around devolution within the UK); thirdly, the lack of an English Parliament and the consequent 'West Lothian' anomaly; fourthly, our subservience to the inherently undemocratic European Union. The introduction of PR into the UK electoral system would not only solve the first of these problems but could, perhaps, be an important step on the way to resolving the other three.
Criticism 1: PR is less likely to deliver an overall majority to any party, and therefore leads to coalition governments which are both weak and impossible to vote out.
- One of the advantages that many people claim for the first-past-the-post system is that it usually delivers a government with a majority of seats in parliament, thus enabling it to get its planned programme of legislation enacted into law without too much difficulty. But surely the notion of one party holding a majority of the seats in parliament is only justifiable if that party is supported by the majority of the electorate. If it is not supported by the majority of voters then effectively what we have is a group of people representing a minority of the population, forcing their will onto the majority. That doesn't seem very democratic to me. A coalition government may be weak, in the sense that no one party within the coalition may be able to achieve everything it would like to, and in the sense that its actions must involve negotiation, bargaining and compromise, but that is inevitable in a situation where politicians are representing a public with a diverse range of political viewpoints, and must surely be preferable to one party lording it over the legislative chamber without a genuinely democratic mandate from the voters. Decisions arrived at through negotiation and compromise may even sometimes be better than those which originate with one party and then enjoy free passage through parliament by virtue of a majority. As for the argument, which is sometimes made, that a coalition government can never be voted out, this is only true to the extent that the electorate can never be 'voted out'! A coalition government, elected using proportional representation, needs to hold the confidence of a parliament which reflects the political 'shape' of the electorate as a whole and, unlike the zero-sum game of first-past-the-post elections - where the representatives of one part of the electorate hold total power for a period and then lose all power, to be replaced by the representatives of another part of the electorate - under PR a coalition government, while it may not necessarily be so easy to vote out, will, if it wishes to continue in power, change it's composition to reflect the changing political demographics of the electorate. Of course, if a large enough part of the electorate become completely disenchanted with the coalition government then, following a general election using PR, the new government (whether it was a coalition or not) would, no doubt, look very different to the previous one.
Criticism 2: PR would lead to political stalemates, with governments unable to act because of the lack of a clear parliamentary majority.
- This is really a very similar criticism to the last one and, while it's true that under PR it is often harder to get legislation passed, this is, in my opinion, no bad thing. It is felt by many people that there are already far too many laws on our statute books and, as mentioned in my previous answer, the need for negotiation and compromise is an important way of ensuring that any legislation which is passed is as acceptable as it can be to the public as a whole. In the devolved parliaments and assemblies of the UK the various parties involved in coalition governments are learning to thrash out compromises and come to agreements which, though they sometimes do take a long time to arrive at (eg. the decisions involving the handing over of police powers to Stormont) do, as a result of the compromises involved, tend to have the support of a broader section of the electorate than they would do had they been foisted on the public by a government which, while not being supported by the majority of voters, nevertheless held a majority in parliament.
Criticism 3: PR would allow minority parties, such as the BNP, to hold a disproportionate amount of power.
- It's true that under PR a situation could arise where a minority government might need to strike a deal with an unpopular minority party in order to get a proposed piece of legislation passed through parliament. This does mean that small parties could potentially hold a very small amount of power (though only to the extent that the more mainstream parties would be prepared to compromise with them - the more extreme ideas of parties like the BNP would almost certainly not be up for discussion) but it would not be a disproportionate amount of power. The ability any small party had to influence decisions made in parliament would be in direct proportion to the level of its electoral support, and that is how it should be!
Criticism 4: PR takes away the connection between MPs and local areas as MPs do not represent particular constituencies under PR.
- This is, in my opinion, the strongest argument against PR but also the most easily dealt with. The system of PR which I am most in favour of (and which is, I believe, the one favoured by the Lib Dems) is the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system, which delivers a result which is both proportional in party terms and keeps the connection between individual MPs and local constituencies. For a detailed explanation of how STV works, see here.
In my opinion there are four major democratic deficits facing the people of England today: Firstly, the lack of properly representative democracy in the UK - something that would be remedied by the introduction of PR; secondly, the lack of direct democracy, ie. referenda, when it comes to major constitutional issues (such as the giving away of significant powers to the EU, or issues around devolution within the UK); thirdly, the lack of an English Parliament and the consequent 'West Lothian' anomaly; fourthly, our subservience to the inherently undemocratic European Union. The introduction of PR into the UK electoral system would not only solve the first of these problems but could, perhaps, be an important step on the way to resolving the other three.
Friday, 30 April 2010
Money too tight to mention
I don't follow the news as closely as I perhaps should these days, much of my time being taken up with work and family commitments, so I'm probably displaying huge political ignorance here, but there are some things that have been puzzling me as I think about the issues involved in this election campaign.
As a country, we owe huge amounts of money; according to some of the panel on this week's question time the national debt amounts to the equivalent of £90,000 for each household in Britain, or £1.1 million for each day since the birth of Christ!
Whenever he's questioned about the financial mess we are in and the consequent need for public spending cuts and savings (the scale of which, many commentators say, are currently being hidden from the electorate by the three main parties) Gordon Brown shrugs off any personal blame by pointing out that we are in a global financial crisis which originated in America and affects the whole of the worldwide economy (as he did, for example, on tonight's interview with Jeremy Paxman).
But wasn't the global financial crisis originating in America originally referred to as a 'credit-crunch'? And didn't it largely consist of banks losing lots of money through dodgy investments (mainly in the sub-prime mortgage market) and in some cases going out of business, while those that remained batoned down the hatches and became extremely cagey about lending money to businesses? It wasn't about national debt.
So the huge debt we're saddled with is not directly connected to the global financial crisis - unless, of course, it was incurred as a result of the extremely costly bailouts that the government so generously undertook to prevent crucial businesses from going bust as a result of the worldwide crunch. But the recipients of those massive bailouts were, almost exclusively, the banks.
In which case, from whom did we borrow these vast sums needed to effect the bailout?
Presumably, from other banks! Ones that, clearly, weren't in such dire financial straits at the time. In which case, why couldn't the struggling banks have just borrowed the money directly from the financially healthy banks? Why did the government (and, ipso facto, the taxpayer) have to be involved at all? And anyway, if these apparently financially robust banks existed, why was it so crucial to the economy that the failing banks didn't go under? Okay, some bank customers might have lost their savings, but the government could far more easily have bailed those customers out rather than racking up huge debts getting the whole banking sector back up and running, fat salaries, hefty bonuses and all.
Anyway, like I said, these are probably stupid questions born of ignorance, but they've been puzzling me so I thought I might as well mention them.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Why I'm going to vote Lib Dem
I'm not a fan of Nick Clegg or the Liberal Democrats. I disagree with many of their policies and particularly with their highly pro-EU stance.
I'm not particularly enamoured of the Labour party either, with their tendency to waste money on quangos, bureaucracy and politically correct causes. And, as a low-paid worker and recipient of Working Families Tax Credits, I don't fully trust the Tories to care about people like me. I originally intended to vote UKIP - not in any expectancy of them winning the seat, but merely as a protest vote against the lack of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Increasingly, however, it's come to feel as if a vote for UKIP could just as easily be interpreted as a protest vote against burkhas or against immigration, and that's not the protest I want to make. As for the English Democrats, I completely support their vision of a Parliament, Executive and First Minister for England but, even if they were standing in my constituency, their small size and low profile would probably put me off through fear of wasting my vote.
But it's precisely because of this last point - the notion that to vote for a small party (ie. any party other than Labour or Conservative or apparently, now, the Lib Dems) is to waste one's vote - that I have decided to vote for the Liberal Democrats; not out of any desire to see that party form the next government but in the hope that, in the event of a hung parliament with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power, they will use that power to push for a system of Proportional Representation to be brought in for future general elections. The introduction of PR would completely change the nature of politics in this country and would break the stranglehold of Labour and Conservative, making room for those who dissent from the views of the major parties to have their own ideas and opinions taken seriously within the political arena.
In other words, people such as myself, who would, all things being equal, be inclined to vote for one of the smaller parties, should, in my opinion, give serious thought to refraining from voting for the natural party of their choice in this election and consider instead voting tactically in order to bring about what would be far more amenable circumstances for said party at the next general election. Call it an electoral investment, with a very worthwhile dividend to be reaped in 4 or 5 years time. A vote for the Liberal Democrats in 2010 could be the springboard for a far more meaningful vote for one of the smaller parties in a few years time.
I'm not particularly enamoured of the Labour party either, with their tendency to waste money on quangos, bureaucracy and politically correct causes. And, as a low-paid worker and recipient of Working Families Tax Credits, I don't fully trust the Tories to care about people like me. I originally intended to vote UKIP - not in any expectancy of them winning the seat, but merely as a protest vote against the lack of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Increasingly, however, it's come to feel as if a vote for UKIP could just as easily be interpreted as a protest vote against burkhas or against immigration, and that's not the protest I want to make. As for the English Democrats, I completely support their vision of a Parliament, Executive and First Minister for England but, even if they were standing in my constituency, their small size and low profile would probably put me off through fear of wasting my vote.
But it's precisely because of this last point - the notion that to vote for a small party (ie. any party other than Labour or Conservative or apparently, now, the Lib Dems) is to waste one's vote - that I have decided to vote for the Liberal Democrats; not out of any desire to see that party form the next government but in the hope that, in the event of a hung parliament with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power, they will use that power to push for a system of Proportional Representation to be brought in for future general elections. The introduction of PR would completely change the nature of politics in this country and would break the stranglehold of Labour and Conservative, making room for those who dissent from the views of the major parties to have their own ideas and opinions taken seriously within the political arena.
In other words, people such as myself, who would, all things being equal, be inclined to vote for one of the smaller parties, should, in my opinion, give serious thought to refraining from voting for the natural party of their choice in this election and consider instead voting tactically in order to bring about what would be far more amenable circumstances for said party at the next general election. Call it an electoral investment, with a very worthwhile dividend to be reaped in 4 or 5 years time. A vote for the Liberal Democrats in 2010 could be the springboard for a far more meaningful vote for one of the smaller parties in a few years time.
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