Political blogs

[Renaud]

I enjoy reading political blogs - they often give inside stories that often don’t make it to the BBCs newsroom. My favourite is by a friend Tim Pendry. (http://asithappens.tppr.info)

A second one that is worth reading is by John Redwood (http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com).

This is a recent blog by John Redwood

The disappearance of England

England is the country that is not allowed to speak its name. It is the country that has to be wiped from maps of the EU.

The UK government was at it again this week in the Commons. I need to tell you as it was little reported, because the Labour spin doctors did not recommend it for news exposure for obvious reasons.

The House was invited to approve members of Regional Committees for England, as part of Labour’s lopsided devolution to Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and “the regions”. Once again England was to be balkanised and obliterated.

This is not an official Conservative site, and I do not seek to use it to retail official Conservative soundbites. Perhaps I may this morning say, however, that I was proud of the Conservative party on this occasion. They have refused to put any member onto these new regional committees, and have confirmed they will cease to exist after the next election if Conservatives have the majority.

They are all part of Labour’s attempt to cover over the chasms in their devolution policy. The decisive rejection of elected regional government in the North East meant the rest of England was never given the chance to tell the government how much we hate the attempts to split England into artificial regions and then to charge us for ever bigger bureaucracies to govern us in this sad condition. Labour thought that maybe setting up regional committees in the Commons would overcome the “democratic deficit”, the lop sided devolution. No chance.

One newspaper did invite me to give a quote they had already made up, to define English nationalism by being anti Scottish. I declined, for that is to misunderstand the nature of the English. Most of us have no wish to define our belief in our country by being unpleasant about the neighbours. For almost two hundred years the English were happy to wave the Union flag rather their own and to sing the UK national anthem when supporting their teams. Labour and the EU have awakened English consciousness to the point where we wave our flag and recognise St George’s day. We still wish to understate, and reject the notion that we must fashion our pride in country out of denigrating others. Lop sided devolution is unfair and is creating ill will within the Union. Regional committees make it worse.

[woolybanana]

I am very fond of Mark Mardell. Very perceptive about Europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/