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Thanks to Brexit it's also becoming less "United" /s

Wildgoose 3y ago
No, that's thanks to unbalanced Devolution which grants Parliaments and self-government to everyone except the English who are still (over-)ruled by the Union Parliament in Westminster.
- psd1 3y ago
  No, you misunderstand the situation. The electoral system for Westminster makes a handful of constituencies, all in England, the kingmakers, giving the national government a hubris that is not matched by their actual levels of support on the ground. So government is for a subset of the population and the rest can go hang. The deck is stacked. The regional assemblies are limited in power and subordinate to Westminster. Resenting that fact would remain a fringe position if it weren't obvious to all that the double whammy of safe seats in FPTP and the cahoots of the media will keep the tories in power vastly more than out of it, despite electoral results that can credibly be interpreted as regularly expressing a national and multiple regional preferences for anyone-but-the-tories to govern; and also that the tories don't give even the slightest smear of shit about the other nations in the union. But you can grift and shaft the populace indefinitely, in the normal run of things, and get nothing but grumbling. What has really lit the fuse is Brexit, which Scotland most assuredly did not want, and which was imposed on them by the English, and which the English then ballsed up like a classroom of problem children left unattended. Many Scots now see the cost/benefit proposition of the union shifting sharply away from remaining in it. Northern Ireland is probably also feeling aggrieved about Brexit given the fact that Brexit, as implemented by the aforementioned children, trampled all over the Good Friday Agreement, which did more to reduce daily violence than anything since Cromwell; the open border with RoI was a prerequisite for the GFA that we all took for granted; but their will is much harder to read, given the sectarianism still endemic and the challenges of Irish reunification. What certainly doesn't help is the tories getting into bed with the DUP, which I would call a blot on their record if their record were not just blot after blot merging into a uniform superblot, against which unblotted fragments of record are too dim to make out, like stars observed through the smoulder of a recently-burnt-out house. Wales voted for Brexit, the mugs.
  - Wildgoose 3y ago
    I am absolutely understood understand the situation as a former vice-chairman of the Campaign for an English Parliament. And describing a national law-making Parliament such as Holyrood as a "regional assembly" shows that your prejudice blinds you to the genuine issues.

No, that's thanks to unbalanced Devolution which grants Parliaments and self-government to everyone except the English who are still (over-)ruled by the Union Parliament in Westminster.

psd1 3y ago
No, you misunderstand the situation. The electoral system for Westminster makes a handful of constituencies, all in England, the kingmakers, giving the national government a hubris that is not matched by their actual levels of support on the ground. So government is for a subset of the population and the rest can go hang. The deck is stacked. The regional assemblies are limited in power and subordinate to Westminster. Resenting that fact would remain a fringe position if it weren't obvious to all that the double whammy of safe seats in FPTP and the cahoots of the media will keep the tories in power vastly more than out of it, despite electoral results that can credibly be interpreted as regularly expressing a national and multiple regional preferences for anyone-but-the-tories to govern; and also that the tories don't give even the slightest smear of shit about the other nations in the union. But you can grift and shaft the populace indefinitely, in the normal run of things, and get nothing but grumbling. What has really lit the fuse is Brexit, which Scotland most assuredly did not want, and which was imposed on them by the English, and which the English then ballsed up like a classroom of problem children left unattended. Many Scots now see the cost/benefit proposition of the union shifting sharply away from remaining in it. Northern Ireland is probably also feeling aggrieved about Brexit given the fact that Brexit, as implemented by the aforementioned children, trampled all over the Good Friday Agreement, which did more to reduce daily violence than anything since Cromwell; the open border with RoI was a prerequisite for the GFA that we all took for granted; but their will is much harder to read, given the sectarianism still endemic and the challenges of Irish reunification. What certainly doesn't help is the tories getting into bed with the DUP, which I would call a blot on their record if their record were not just blot after blot merging into a uniform superblot, against which unblotted fragments of record are too dim to make out, like stars observed through the smoulder of a recently-burnt-out house. Wales voted for Brexit, the mugs.
- Wildgoose 3y ago
  I am absolutely understood understand the situation as a former vice-chairman of the Campaign for an English Parliament. And describing a national law-making Parliament such as Holyrood as a "regional assembly" shows that your prejudice blinds you to the genuine issues.