If an opinion poll finding is intuitively correct to those of us living in the real Britain, then believe it.
If it sounds like something cooked up in, by and for the Westminster Village, then that is because it is. Just compare and contrast Tony Blair's opinion poll ratings back in his Golden Boy days with the number of actual votes that New Labour ever received. "David Cameron", that's all I'm saying.
This is not about whether or not one happens to agree with the opinions expressed. I for one have no difficulty believing in the high level of support for capital punishment, a practice which I regard as utterly abhorrent. I think that an English Parliament is a daft idea, but I fully accept that it is popular. And so forth.
Firmly into the former category falls the poll for the BBC's "discovery" that two thirds of people want out of Afghanistan. Who knew? We all did, of course. Out here in the country from which the first B comes, but to which the BBC now has almost no other connection.
Indeed, for an important set-piece debate on Afghanistan, the BBC could not even be bothered to find a contributor from the anti-war majority.
Or didn't dare.
Brian Hutton has a lot to answer for.
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I received this argument equating an English Parliament with the death penalty from a Tory candidate in 2005 who thankfully did not win. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteDevolution, the way it has been done, was/is a daft idea. The English are not merely being ignored they are being suppressed. English regions are about as popular as giving child-murderers a holiday in Barbados, to resort to your level of argument, but we have newly appointed regional politicians.
What else would we expect from Gordon "MacGabe" Brown?
The English will end this "Union" before the "Union" ends England.
Hi.
ReplyDeleteI know this isn't the main point of your post but do you think the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies are daft ideas too? Or just an English Parliament.
"The English will end this Union", if it ever ends at all. Everyone has always known that.
ReplyDeleteBut only over my cold, dead body.
And only over rather a lot of other people's, too.
At the first devolution referendum in 1979, only 33 per cent of the electorate supported a Scottish parliament. At the second referendum in 1997 it was still endorsed only by a minority of the electorate (1.7 million out of four million). 614,400 people voted No. At no time has devolution ever commanded the support of a majority of the Scottish electorate.
In Wales, half the electorate abstained, only just over half of the rest voted Yes, and the conduct of the whole thing was subsequently criticised by the Neil Commission on Standards.
And in Northern Ireland, a fully armed and highly active terrorist organisation (which regards its own undisbanded Army Council as the sovereign body throughout Ireland) is in a carve-up with a bizarre fundamentalist sect unconnected to mainstream Ulster Protestantism.
But there is no need for an English Parliament, since the Parliament of the United Kingdom reserves the right to legislate, overridingly, in all policy areas throughout the Kingdom. The devolution legislation itself presupposes that this will happen as a matter of course. And so it should.
Anyway, back on topic. I do the Union often enough on here as it is. I won't be letting up anything more about it on this thread. But there will be plenty more threads to come.