We need an association of members, each paying an annual subscription as the core around which to organise further fund-raising.
Across the historic counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland, each locality's smallest existing or most recent local authority above Parish or Town level, but below County level, should be "twinned" with an authority of comparable population in Scotland, another such in Wales, and a third in London or the South East.
The aim would be for not less than equality between the Northern area and each of its three "twins" in employment, in wages, in incomes overall, and in both spending and outcomes in relation to each of education, training, health, social services, housing, transport, law and order, and culture, media and sport.
In every year when this was the case across all the areas in question, then the monies raised would be divided equally among the offices of all MPs. But in any year when it was not thus the case, then those monies would be divided equally among the members as a sort of dividend.
And something on the same model in the West Country? Good luck to it.
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Let's get this right - you want to ensure equal education and health outcomes exactly across different regions of the country? With no accounting for natural variation? When there are fluctuations within each school, within each class, within each household - you want to demand equality across regions?
ReplyDeleteGood luck with that.
That's right, it's just natural variation.
ReplyDeleteYou really do believe that, don't you? You honestly cannot see how these things are deliberately skewed by government policy, and have been for ever, though never more badly than under a Prime Minister who sat for a County Durham seat and was surrounded by similar carpet-baggers.
Good for you, annnoying them like this. Yes, Yes, Yes, if they want our money, then they have to deliver the goods. This is the best idea I've heard for years.
ReplyDeleteThis only works by requiring both spending and outcomes in Scotland, Wales and the South East to remain as high as they are.
ReplyDeleteYet the result is still this fury, merely at the suggestion that either spending or outcomes in the North and the West might be, not necessarily any higher, just never any lower.
Says it all, really.
I know - we are not allowed to do as well. Not better. Only as well. It's a "natural variation". Isn't it?
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