What about England Dave?

It is good to see that David Cameron has honoured his promise and visited Scotland within one week of taking office. It looks like the Scottish parliament is going to get more tax raising power so it can raise more of its own revenue. Hopefully this means they will be less dependant on Westminster and ultimately the English taxpayer.

The new coalition government has also made some promising statements about repealing the despised Barnett formula and there is a prospect of something being done about the West Lothian issue i.e. Scottish votes on English matters in the Commons.

That is all good news.

But whatever way you cut it, the lack of any form of English assembly is still a running sore. We need at least debate on an English parliament and the future of the Union.

It is simply unfair and undemocratic that all the other countries of the UK have their own parliament/assembly and yet the English have nothing.

The counter argument, often given, is that the UK parliament is also the legitimate English parliament. This infers that then the UK is really England plus colonial outposts. That is an idea that most people within these islands of all nationalities would find distasteful. (and quite rightly so)

The English currently have only a subset of the democratic rights inferred on other UK nations. It is easy to believe that this is simply so England can be bureaucratically administered and can then be used as the cash cow to finance profligacy elsewhere.

I appreciate that there are a mass of problems that this new government have inherited , especially related to our ruined economy. They of course, must be addressed urgently and first.

I do hope though, that these current pressing needs are not used as a subterfuge to sweep the English issue under the carpet.