Labour created two classes of MP

So EVEL has passed, I give it a guarded welcome as a milestone on the route to an English Parliament and devolved government.

But just let me answer Labour's pathetic and anglophobic whining - there have been two classes of MP ever since devolution to Scotland and Wales. It is just double speak to try to claim its happening now.

Yes EVEL's a dogs breakfast, but that's how the current political elite treat England.

I look forward to the day England is offered equality of respect to Scotland and Wales, but EVEL is a start. Labour should stop compalining about the process they started and forced on the UK.

So the Conservatives are Scottish (&Welsh) Nationalists but not English Nationalists right ?

Cameron is getting desperate. As evidence you should see the hastily cobbled together English Manifesto launched today.

In short its just an attempt to fool UKIP voters into thinking that #CastIronDave can be trusted, despite all the betrayals of the last 5 years.

But there is also the hypocrisy of the Conservative position. As the James Kirkup in the Daily Telegraph says "David Cameron is today adamant that the Tories are not English nationalists and will never back an English parliament."

Right - but the Conservatives do back the Scottish and soon to be renamed Welsh Parliaments ....

So by the same logic they must be Scottish Nationalists ( don't tell the SNP ).

So in trying to appeal to English voters the Conservatives have yet again insulted our country and our patriotic identity.

I guess we should be grateful that some ground has been ceded - but the depth of the hypocrisy is just staggering.

In truth this is David Cameron's Emily Thornberry English flag tweet moment - only the conspiracy against England amongst the fourth estate will prevent the damage.

Just remember this is yet another example of who and what Cameron and those who support him in the Conservative leadership really are.

They can never be trusted again.

England - betrayed by David Cameron and the Conservatives

Today David Cameron - he of the vow to save his career which has resulted in today's independence sometime latter legislation - is up in Scotland.

There will be more "powers" for the busy body assembly in Edinburgh. "Scotland" wants more powers, but to keep the <s>ability to bleed the English dry<\s> security of the United Kingdom.

In short they have al;ready mentally ceased to think of themselves or talk about themselves as British.

Labour's break up of the UK is all around us. In Scotland every agency you can think of has the word Scotland before it. Charities emphasis that the money the raise will be spend on Scots ( yes even the poppy campaign - how dirty nasty and selfish is that ! ). I had a Christmas card from a charity based in Wales - who's strap line was all the money spent in Wales.

The English by contrast have been happy to see money spent according to need - indeed through the spectacular generosity of the Barnett formula they have hose money North of the border and are rewarded with Luddite socialism by the SNP/Labour/Scots Lib Dems.

When hasn't spoken yet - but we better not leave it too late. We are being taken as fools... by Cameron and the Conservatives.

Selling England by the pound

If you check in here a bit you'll notice I 'be been a bit quiet of late. Pressured of work and stuff I'm afraid. ( Stuff is word the youth of today seem to be deploying on me when I ask impertinent questions like ' what did you do at school today'.)

But that doesn't mean I've forgotten the outrageous move by HM Treasury to have the English underwrite an independent Scotland's debt.

Why have they done this? Especially as its such a weak negotiating position if the break up of the UK goes ahead.

The answer, as with so much else, is short term career interests of the politicians who make up the coalition. They know with the massive super debt that they have been adding to each year that a change in interest rates could save their chances of being richer as govt ministers in 2015.

Their answer, as in so much else, has been to sacrifice English interests.

If Scotland does vote to leave the UK then I think its quite clear that we won't be able to trust those who should be negotiating for England.

PS I'd put a copy of the sleeve for the Genesis album  on here... If you could be sure some copyright troll wouldn't come knocking.

One year to go and its all rather depressing

So in a years time the first of what will no doubt be a series of referenda of Scotland leaving the UK will be just about to close.

Frankly I find the level of the debate that has been reported to the rest of the UK depressing.

It is like your spouse has decided to get an accountant in to figure out if she'll be better of divorcing you, and at the same time has signed up to an on-line dating service to see if the Scandinavian, Irish or lets face it EU model would be better bet.

There is but one rule for the maybe to be dumped partner - say nothing - after all this marriage is all about Scotland.

If you'd been treated like that you'd start wondering how much a divorce lawyer of your own would cost - just to run through the possibilities.

I'm not sure the Union deserves to survive if this is the level of low mercantile debate.

Now I'm not following things too closely right now, so perhaps I'm missing all the positive things about sharing a state and country with England, Wales & so help us all Northern Ireland, but if its happening then its easy to miss.

Listening to the radio this morning interview a group of narcistic teenagers on how they will vote - it was just a cold calculation about narrow selfish advantage ( though one of them needs to be sent to a cult deprogramming rehab to recover from having swallowed the whole Alex Salmond lets pretend economics play book ). Which ballot box option would give them the most 'free' this or salve their conscience by the state doing that. Just depressing, and it shows the total failure of the right to get any of its issues across in Scotland.

In the end this is perhaps the strongest argument for Scotland being cut of from the UK - they really do need to grow up. Perhaps being part of the UK prevents this from happening.

"Its my flag too and I want it back"

The Olympics has been great and Team GB has been in the news just as much as Union flags have been on the streets.

But careless throw away lines like this "Who needs the symbol of the English Defence League and the English football fan?"  in the Telegraph today show some who want to suppress England grasping their chance.

Another year with no English Parliament

I hope you have had a good St George's day.

One day we can do this with an English Parliament and an English Government.

Then we can really have a celebration !

Frank Field on the EU debate and England last night

Its hard to argue with a word here ...

Murdo Fraser is right - but only because appeasement has been followed for so long

For most of my political life I've been a ardent Unionist. I was appalled by Labour's devolution plans and remember telling a church of Scotland minister ( who ran a church in London ) that this would eventually lead to the break up of the UK.

But the move and the subsequent referendum result did not surprise me.

That's as I have lived over 3 years in Edinburgh and Aberdeen just before hand. I had seen the continual appeasement of Scottish Nationalism and its fuelling by Labour as a cheap way to get at "The Tories". The Anglophobia was very evident - though Scotland is a very civilised country and the vast majority of its inhabitants know how to behave and are genuinely warm and welcoming to individuals.

Anglo ignorance was even more rife. I was on my way down to a port facility with a fellow worker when half asked me "why to they all hate us in the south of England ?". I had to explain to him that few people, at that time, in England gave much thought to Scotland, and when they did they thought of positive things. But the Scottish media and all those who hadn't been good enough to make it down south had a vested interest in bringing the rewards up North to Edinburgh.

The appeasement started - British Rail became Scot Rail, British Gas - Scottish Gas. Everything had the work Scot as a precursor.

I can remeber walking past a newspaper stand where the headline from Scotland on Sunday was "What's wrong with the English" - it sold papers.

The response from the Conservatives was initially right ( oppose devolution ) but then the appeasement and triangulation set in. But none of it was any good as the terms of the debate in Scotland had been changed for a generation.

David Cameron showed his ignorance of this with his restatement of appeasement to save the Union trip to Scotland early in his leadership.

No one will ever respect someone or a political party that doesn't respect itself.

British politicians have been trying to buy Scottish loyalty with English money and appeasement of English interests for far too long. Yes they pocket each insane concession and smile, but really they despise the lack of self respect involved.

I have a knighted Scottish relative (by marriage) who has been the head of a very austere UK institution who has started voting SNP. When men like that are willing to vote for separation all seems almost lost, it certainly shows a change of strategy is required.

This is why I support Murdo Fraser's idea of reforming the Scottish Conservatives as a separate party. Devolution has happened, and no one seems to want to make the case to reverse it, so we had better follow its logic.

The UK needs to adopt a federal identity - with an English Parliament and government also, or else it will lose all meaning.

Murdo seems to know this. I fear David Cameron is too lazy to think this all through.

Only an English Parliament and English Government can save the Union

Last week I was at a Conservative political meeting and made the point of just how far English political opinion has moved against the Union being preserved.

It seems that one more round of appeasement may be being planned to solve the problem. Full autonomy for the Scottish government ( a sort of dominion I guess ).

Lets be clear - this will result in just one thing - Scottish independence in a generation, with England left paying for the Welsh and Irish.

There are only two ways to preserve the Union.

1. Reverse Labour's anti-English devolution settlement.
2. Set up an equivalent English parliament and government, with a Union government handling some macro economic issues, defence and foreign policy.

Anything less will mean the end of the Union. Its time for David Cameron to wake up and grasp this. We need to be lead to a new stable constitutional settlement that is just for everyone, or else the Union will just become history.

England this Easter ( a little late)

Having St George's day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday has on this occasion reminding me of the link between being English and my Christianity.

The flag of England is after all a St George's cross.

The quiet sense of being English can almost be cut from the air on that warm Sunday after walking out from Church as many in the congregation head of to their family engagements for that day, in my case being invited round to a friends for a Sunday lunch and the pleasure of watching all our kids play with each other running round the garden and as an extra treat as our hosts have just acquired a young puppy.

Understanding about who we are used to be unspoken. Mainly as the root of our identity in a reformed protestant religion that did not seek to make windows into men's souls was accepted by all.

Some people were different - Catholics, Jewish even other eccentric views like atheists - but the common culture was broadly accepted by all. We had learned of the wars caused by religious intolerance and also those caused by a lack of firmness about religious institutions. England was settled with a common law, common identity and established Church, which tolerated other views and Churches.

England was settled in its Christian culture and identity. Indeed so subliminal was our identity that it hardly needed to be named or addressed - with British and Britain being used interchangeably.

But this is no more.

Two of our main political leaders are atheists, a very strange and un-English religion (oh yes it is a religion) that relies on negative faith.

I fear this years English Easter has really been an Indian Summer of England

The progressives dominated media and political parties, and they hate the England that was on show this Easter. Only things like the AV referendum suggest that the patient isn't ready to have the cultural lobotomy that the progressive elite is, with its radical blood lust, so desperate to carry out.

As an example of England's vivisection by the progressives and their "human rights cult" see Cranmer's post of Catholic Care running into the buffer of our new bigoted orthodoxy.

Perhaps one of the few rays of hope is that some on the Labour side seem to have realised how unpopular this all is, with their Blue Labour ideas. However I can't get excited as I fairly sure its just a cover to get elected, when the jackboots of the Fabians will again march into Whitehall.

The Dutch auction where the English will always lose - a hung parliament

So the BBC is getting all excited about the prospect of a hung parliament ( now why is this so familiar from decades past ? ).

And here the problem - the potential partners for a minority govt and what they want ( almost all of them English money ).

The SNP, Plaid, SDLP, DUP and lets face it the Lib Dems will all be looking to protect their celtic homelands from the finaicial disater that the Celtic Labour party has created of the UK's public finances.

Hence its quite clear if there's a hung parliament its the English who will pay for it as selfish Celts try to hold onto their financial bribes from the centre at the expense of the sick and poor in England.

The NHS does best with Conservative style reforms

We live in a society which has a short memory.

When Labour came into power in 1997 it was on the back of the smear that you had 24hrs to save the NHS ( who can forget that sickening blackmailing PPB with the taxi driver and a father and ill daughter ? ).

Blair and Brown laid into market reforms in the NHS.

They got into power promising to dismantle evil Tory reforms.

And they did - but then Blair noticed something. All the tax payers funded cash being hossed into the NHS ( mostly on salary increases, and as we now know finaced by a debt bubble ) wasn't producing anything. So he started to set up the same structures he'd been denoucing earlier. The NHS went in a very tight, and very expensive circle. ( Much like when Labour destroyed Conservative School reforms only to do the same thing with a different name with Academies ).

However thanks to devolution, which dismantled the NHS into 4 NHS's ( A Scottish, Welsh, Irish and ... well Labour can never manage the word English .. ones ), the celts got off to their own devolved wonderlands before some of the reforms had been re-implemented.

So now we can compare the performance of bloody minded socialist provision against the few reforms Gordon Brown didn't block on his "anything to make me prime minister" sulk over the first ten years of New Labour.

And its not pretty. In short the English NHS wins hands down. There's a lot of socialist and celtic spluttering going on to try and hide this in the media today, but just like the fact that overall NHS productivity has decreased under Labour, the facts can't be hidden.

Just because the budget for the English NHS is ring fenced - doesn't mean that the Conservatives shouldn't get better results for tax payers money with more reform and save and improve many more lives into the bargain.

Thats why if your intrested in the health of the people of England and the English NHS you should vote Conservative. And if your in one of the devolved unreformed socialist luddite parts of the country you might like to think about it also.

Its the only moral choice.

Update: See Alan Cochrane on the performance of the Scottish NHS vs its English equivalents.

Moments of England

Just back from a weekend's camping in Rutland. Here's two pictures that summed up a rather good weekend. ( Only camera phone snaps, but they can be expanded by clicking on them ).

Its the people Gordon Brown can't even bring himself to name who will destroy him

Apparently Labour have just twigged that after destroying education standards, destroying our pensions, selling the country out to the EU, letting our servicemen die due to lack of equipment and till very recently prosecuting them with human rights lawyers may have lost them a little support.

Perhaps selling their children into debt slavery so Labour can have a few more days, and now it is less than 250 days, left in power, has put people off.

Still Gordo would like their votes, but there are two major problems.

1) The Nationalists have eaten Labour's support away in the Celtic heartlands.
2) The people Gordon can't name ( some sort of mental impairment perhaps ) aren't those of middle aspirations, or even middle Britain he so ham fistedly tried to describe yesterday. No, its middle ENGLAND ( the word Brown can hardly bring himself to mention - even if much of his conference speech only impacted the English ).

Middle England has paid for the Scottish Banks, the bloated public sector, suffered as their pensions have been stolen by stealth taxes and been betrayed by Brown's sell out to the EU.

Middle England is going to get its own back - at the ballot box (perhaps after reading the Sun editorial over breakfast on election day ;-) ).

The next speaker must be English

Since Labour's anti-English devolution settlement and its campaign against the identity of England with is EU inspired regional balkanisation campaign England has never been in a position with less natural justice and more exploitation by the other members of the Union.

Its time that a convention was established where, as long as the British Parliament that sits in Westminster is the only Parliament that England has representation in that its speaker should be representing an English constituency.

The role of the speaker is about to get much more important with the next parliament for the English, even if we are to be currently denied our sovereign right and popular wish for our own Parliament - as is granted to all the other peoples of these isles.

The next speaker must be an MP for an English constituency and ideally be English.

And what news of England ?

The budget has been spun, but the news is sinking in. The Scotsman Alistair Darling, with his Scottish boss sitting next to him was careful to mention in his speech that appropriate increases in spending would be made in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the schemes he announced.

But will the cuts be in the same proportion as the Barnett formula demands?

Apparently the Red Book has a lost of efficiency savings by department ( most of them English departments ), so will corresponding decreases in the budgets to the devolved administrations be made?

I'm guessing they won't be made in full. Watch closely.

By the way happy St George's day - the Dragon of New Labour is on its knees - we now need to finish it off.

What about English identity ?

There's a good post over at the Britology blog which explores Is there such a thing as ‘multi-cultural England’?

PS I've been trying to figure out who the Steadfast Trust are and who's behind them. I note the Wikipedia entry got the chop. Anyone know ?

Re: Will Tory government hasten end of United Kingdom?

Alan Cochrane asks this question in todays Telegraph, and I think there's a similar meeting on the Conservative fringe this week.

I post my answer below. Its a view that is just starting to gain some traction as one of Labour's former First Minister's of Scotland has suggested the same thing.

In short we need some thing positive to work towards, that respects the nations of the UK. If we don't offer it then people will eventually chose fission over the Union.

Alan,

I think joining forces with the authors of the Union's break up, ie the Lib Dems and Labour, would just make the SNP more popular. The pendulum always swings and one day its going to trigger the fission of the current Union.

That is almost impossible to avoid - appeasement (devolution) and bribery (Barnett formula) of Scots nationalism hasn't worked.

The only solution is to offer something new and positive.

Could I suggest that its a federal UK, with the home nations treated with equal intuitions and respect. ( Then Scotland will be just like everywhere else, rather than a quasi autonomous region in the waiting room for independence - as Brown and Cameron have it now ).

The signs are that the Conservative party hasn't even started considering these things ( the Clarke report is mindlessly useless ).

Its a shame I was always proud of being British, until it became a way to con the English and appease headbanging nationalists in the Scots Lib Dems, Scots Labour and of course SNP.

Don't mention England

Little Man in a Toque has picked up on the Welsh and Scottish receptions for Olympic hero's, and the predictable absence of any English equivalent.

Personally I think if you go as team GB you should celebrate as that team.

But as usual the BBC commentators, whom I can remember hearing, mentioned athletes as anything but English.