Balkanising England?

John Redwood was quite right to get up in the House of Commons and denounce Harriet Harman's English regions committees idea. Nobody apart from New Labour apparatchiks, the European Commission and the quango merchants want them.

What Ms Harman is trying to do is stuff a few Labour backwoodsmen onto these committees to run things in defiance of the electorate's wishes. In the "South-West" there is a Conservative and LibDem ascendancy. Labour is the minnow party. In the "South-East", the ridiculous region that goes from Oxford to Dover, the Conservatives overwhelm all other parties. However, just like New Labour say they "won" the last election (with 20% of the total electorate's support!), they are gearing up to run these two regions with gusto.

I hope none of this nonsense comes to pass. We already have ministers for the regions. The one dumped on the West Midlands is Ian Austin. He describes himself as “the West Midlands' man in the government”, but I doubt if he will be terribly effective.

The people of England don't want fake regions. They don't want to be controlled or cajoled. What they want is fairness in government and for England to be one country with its counties, its heritage and its culture. New Labour wants something radically different.

Ken Clarke to propose a dog's dinner for England!

The West Lothian Question has been asked again. The Conservatives are thinking like mad, especially those in the Democracy Task Force set up by David Cameron. But I fear they've failed to make good grades. No straight A's coming from Ken Clarke.

He's implacably opposed to an English Parliament. "We've got one!", he says, meaning the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. This Victorian pile is the British Parliament, build to glorify the political embodiment of the Empire. It is not an English parliament.

So we will get, as The Daily Telegraph reports, a compromise between those who want English votes for English laws and those who would leave things be (undemocratically so, but they wouldn't mind!). Legislation affecting only England, an education Bill, for instance, would receive a second reading by the entire Commons; but its committee stage, where the measure is subjected to line-by-line scrutiny and can be amended, would be for English MPs only. When the Bill came back to the Commons for its report stage and third reading, all MPs would again have a vote. But the Government would be bound to accept amendments agreed by the committee, or risk losing the legislation.

Non-English MPs still having a say. It's the current state of affairs with a dollop of royal Tory icing on top! We would still have two types of MP, still have part-time MPs job-sharing with MSPs, but we'd have the added dimension of report stage and third reading votes becoming rigged.

It's not what I want, and it is probably not what the majority in England want either, if a Newsnight Poll is anything to go by.

Gordon Brown takes Alice's place in Wonderland!

Gordon Brown has come out saying that Labour is "on the side" of the voters. He thinks he has the right policies for the future of the country. At least, this is what he told a meeting of Labour MPs at Westminster yesterday. Jim Sheridan (another part-time member job-sharing with an MSP) muttered at the meeting that former Labour ministers who "gobbed off" to the newspapers should be "injected with rabies". Nice guy you sound Jim! Seen anybody with rabies lately? Not a pretty sight, I'm told.

These people had the affrontery to tell the country that the Tory Party was the nasty party. What hypocrites! This New Labour freak show has brought us to a sorry pass. Far from being on our side, they are all on THEIR SIDE!

The grumpy Brown refused to listen to the public's demand for a referendum on the EU Treaty. He sat around whilst the bald eagle Applegarth was telling us all what a "robust business model" he had created at Northern Rock. He entertained the farcical front that he was in charge of the summer floods. He says the government won't release the wrong prisoners early, but fails to check on who has charge of the keys! The list goes on.

This man, Gordon Brown, is not on the side of the voters. He turns a blind eye to the nonsense over MPs' expenses. The long grass around Westminster has more of his trash in it than at any time in the history of this country.

But the most grating thing is that this man has the brass neck to talk about democracy in other parts of the world, but he has been at the helm of creating an unbalanced constitutional cock-up here. Why should he, a Scots MP (now with hardly any real constituency work to do!), sit in a chamber where his English counterparts CANNOT vote on Scottish devolved matters but he can cause us in England all manner of mayhem without any democratic accountability!

Whatever he thinks, he's definitely not on the side of the voters!

Divide and Rule? Gordon Brown's Britain!

This is a good You Tube presentation from the English Democrats. Our part-time, job-sharing Prime Minister thinks this is all OK. So much for his talk of "Britishness" and constitutional reform! With Jack Straw in charge, it will all end in tears.



Watch it and weep!