Sunday, 9 September 2007
Justice For England, Indeed
This is of course absolutely right about education, health, and pensioners. But an English Parliament would just be a distraction from those and other tasks. Instead, the injustices listed here, which are in fact breaches of the Treaty of Union’s guarantee of equal subjecthood throughout the United Kingdom, should be redressed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. That redress could easily be paid for by reductions in the block grant to the Scottish Parliament, which, after all, has fiscal powers of its own, but as yet has never felt any need to use them.
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Equal rights have never really existed in the UK. To give some examples, in Scotland (and I believe Northern Ireland) there has never been the right to choose the right whether or not to be tried by jury. That decision has always lain with the Procurators and the Crown Office.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of course was in pre-devolution Scotland the implimentation of the poll tax in Scotland earlier than England or Wales.
Another example was until recently that people in Northern Ireland did not pay for water services from local government taxation (still based on the old rates system). Hence the noise from there over the so-called water tax.
And maybe one that is distasteful to you. This year is the 40th anniversary of the legalisation of homosexual activity - in England and Wales. Despite his die hard unionism Willie Ross did not introduce a similar act in Scotland to give members of the Scottish gay community the same rights as their English and Welsh compatriots. Funny that. Homosexual activity remained illegal (with pretty draconian punishments) in Scotland till 1980. It was legalised in NI in 1982. Waur was the House of Commons flexing its muscles then?
So much for equality guaranteed by the union David?
"Equal rights have never really existed in the UK. To give some examples, in Scotland (and I believe Northern Ireland) there has never been the right to choose the right whether or not to be tried by jury. That decision has always lain with the Procurators and the Crown Office."
ReplyDeleteBecause the Treaty of Union specifically exempted the Scottish legal system, and indeed the English one, in their peculiarities of this kind. Surely, you of all people would not wish to change this?
"Another example of course was in pre-devolution Scotland the implimentation of the poll tax in Scotland earlier than England or Wales."
Hardly!
"Another example was until recently that people in Northern Ireland did not pay for water services from local government taxation (still based on the old rates system). Hence the noise from there over the so-called water tax."
Yes, I did wonder about that one, I have to say.
"This year is the 40th anniversary of the legalisation of homosexual activity - in England and Wales. Despite his die hard unionism Willie Ross did not introduce a similar act in Scotland to give members of the Scottish gay community the same rights as their English and Welsh compatriots. Funny that. Homosexual activity remained illegal (with pretty draconian punishments) in Scotland till 1980. It was legalised in NI in 1982. Waur was the House of Commons flexing its muscles then?"
Oh, I've never understood how anyone thought that homosexulaity, of all things, could be cured by sending people to prison, of all places. Not properly thought out, I feel.
"So much for equality guaranteed by the union David?"
Yes. The tradition of Lloyd George, Keynes, Beveridge, Attlee, Bevin and Bevan - Welshmen and Englishmen to whose legacy the Scots are so strongly and rightly attached - has always identified the provisions of the Welfare State, workers' rights, progressive taxation, full employment, and the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government, as the entitlements of Her Majesty's subjects as such, who are demeaned as such by being denied them either absolutely, or iniquitously by comparison with each other. The latter is now happening, contrary to very Union itself.