There are some "localists" that want to split up the country into regions with devolved powers. It was an idea that got soundly thrashed in a referendum. It's a but daft in my opinion and would only lead to yet more yacking by a new layer of self important politicians all squeaking for money by whatever local tribe is involved.
The UK is a small country and in US terms, everything is so close it is essentially local.To justify a call for local autonomous regions differences have to be invented and the tribe announced with a sense of faux-uniqueness. Daft IMHO.
The next few weeks (let's say 100 days) will prove interesting in the UK because a lot of changes are going to be implemented, not least those involving Scotland. There are 3 main areas: 1 A New devolution deal for Scotland 2 Election Boundary Changes (although this is not Scottish specific) 3 Change of voting rules for MPs such that only English MPs vote for things which are specific to England, mirroring those powers which have been evolved to England (parallel stuff there also for Welsh & N.Irish MPs)
The 1st Item is very controversial. Following the Scottish Referendum there was a special Commission (the Smith Commission) which obtained the opinions of all the protagonists in the Scottish referendum to define further powers that could be devolved to Scotland). The results of that were promised to be delivered soon after the start of the current Parliament. So it is not surprising that the Conservatives will be giving the main points of their Bill to enact this new arrangement in the Queens Speech which is the way things are kicked off. The Queens speech is debated by Parliament and is expected to be passed through the House of Commons.
The Bill will follow very shortly afterwards.
An interesting thing about that is since the Referendum, the SNP has continually since then complained that the proposed powers were not sufficient and have asked for what they call FFA (Full Fiscal Authority) which basically means that ALL income derived from Scottish Sources remains in Scotland and all control of financial "levers" as they call it also. Things like defense and foreign policy would remain at Westminster, paid for by donations from Scotland's budget as the Scottish devolved Parliament saw fit.
Read that carefully and imagine this applied to California.
The trouble is that if that were true then Scotland would start immediately with a budget deficit of something like 15b£ (lack of English subsidies and Scotland's share of the Debt interest payments) plus the cost of deficit reduction. In other words they would be broke. So the SNP has withdrawn from that position and want to be funded (i.e.subsidised) for some years until they can achieve self sufficiency.
In the Smith Commission FFA was originally to be discussed but was withdrawn at the request of the SNP.
Now the original concept of the SNP was to first discuss what should be in the Devolution Package until it reached the scope that they want, in the meantime applying pressure against what they hoped would be a minority Labour Government by not supporting Labour Bills unless or until they got their way.
That ruse was rumbled by the UK electorate and the Tories got in with a working majority. People did not want a chaotic Government. That was interpreted by the SNP as being anti-Scottish, but it was not, although it was certainly not SNP friendly.
So, taking the attitude that the Smith Commission had encapsulated an agreed set of measures (as it was by all participants including the SNP) so that all views that the participants wanted to be discussed had been discussed, the Government will be implementing the Smith proposals. There is still room for amendments but it is not in the power of the SNP to block these as it might have been had their planning worked out. There will be pluses and minuses but nothing major I suspect unless the Government wants it.
So it will be interesting to see how the arguments work out. There will be a lot of charges about the wicked Tories betraying the Scots but I think the SNP have a mountain to climb to make such charges stick in Scotland. The Devolution Proposals are far reaching and wont be sniffed at my most Scots when the issues come out during the debates in the Commons.
This post is already long so I won't drone on about the other issues, at least not at the moment.
So UKIP quadrupled their number of votes and got half the number of seats, -1-. In a pure proportional system they would have gotten 82 seats.
I don't understand your 82 seat number. The UK Government has just 550 seats (*). In a proportional system, because of their smaller population compared with the UK, the Scots would have about 8% of that in total, divided proportionately between the different parties there. Of the total electorate the SNP share on that basis was about 35%. How that adds up to seats would depend on how people voted in a PR context, but it would not be 82 seats whicheverwhichway one looks at it.
(*) a too high number in the view of some, including the current UK Government.
You won't be happy, RJ, until we're all senile — like you!
I see we're into very subjective territory here.
What was the subject again?
For some reason I'm reminded of a joke a British Soldier who was interviewed when he got back from Afghanistan - when asked about what went through his mind during a particularly nasty gunfire exchange with the Taliban, he said - "I dunno, I was just glad it wasn't a bullet!".
Vladimir Putin, wanting to get on the good side of voters, goes to visit a school in Moscow to have a chat with the kids. He talks to them about how Russia is a powerful nation and how he wants the best for the people.
At the end of the talk, there is a section for questions. Little Sasha puts her hand up and says "I have two questions. Why did the Russians take Crimea ? And why are we sending troops to Ukraine ?"
Putin says "Good questions..." But just as he is about to answer, the bell goes, and the kids go to lunch.
When they come back, they sit back down and there is room for some more questions, another girl, Misha, puts her hand up and says "I have four questions.
My Questions are - Why did the Russians invade Crimea ? Why are we sending troops to Ukraine ? Why did the bell go 20 minutes early? And where is Sasha?"
I expect you are right about Putin not doing anything wrong constitutionally, but I doubt very much of what he did was in the spirit of the Russian constitution as it was intended, but who really knows.
But one has to judge those by their actions and the results they achieve and frankly under his reign as Russian Supremo he has managed to alienate the West and bring Russia back to a perilous economic state.
My take is that if he had Russia's interest as first priority he would step down and facilitate a fresh start.
Speaking for myself, I would hide away in the social bomb/gas/everything proof shelter which is self sufficient enough to survive a nuclear war and which was thoughtfully built by the Farm's ultra cautious owner, call the police and watch via CTV while the OK Corral scenario was played out above me.
I've been an advocate of closing the border with Alabama for years.
Wondering what Alabama was famous for I came across this site which informed me that Alabama has a monument for "Boll Weevils" and, the rather odd claim that:
"Alabama's mean elevation is 500 feet at its lowest elevation point."
