See this summary of a new British government briefing paper. The idea of establishing a legislative body just for England seems to be gaining strength. So does the idea of such a body for Wales. Scotland already has its own legislative body, as does Northern Ireland. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
The *modern* gerrymander ROT started with the formation of the English House of Commons in the 1200s.
The ROT carried into the Brit-American colonies in the 1600s-1700s.
The ROT carried into the 1776 States.
The ROT carried into the 1787 USA Const. – the 3 USA gerrymander systems – H. Reps., Senate, Electoral College.
ROT for a mere 700 plus years. It shows — INSANE annual deficits, INSANE national debts, rotted and dying cities, urban sprawl, etc. etc.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
On the UK federalism stuff –
The Brits claim that the *United* Kingdom has the 4 *nation* parts – England, Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland.
Wales was taken over in the 1500s.
Scotland merged in 1707 after many wars.
N. Ireland is a part of Ireland taken over whenever – with most of Ireland getting OUT the hard way in the Civil War during / after WW I.
i.e. the UK regime is a DARK AGE monarchy / oligarchy regime having NO written constitution.
Just the EVIL rotted monarchs / oligarchs doing their EVIL stuff for centuries.
Wales also has its own parliament, called the National Assembly. However, it appears not to have as much authority as the parliaments of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_for_Wales
FYI Demo rep, the Scottish Parliament was BRIBED into approving of the union with England.
Very good point. 700+ years indeed.
On a lighter note, the 9th USA Parliament has today established a database for all the voters who would like to participate under pure American proportional representation (PR).
We’re using the database for all 50 POTUS candidates on the team, a team which may substantially increase in size leading up to the 2016 POTUS elections:
http://www.usparliament.org/pdc.php
Cody Quirk:
Not questioning whether you are right on wrong on this, but where do you get your information that “…the Scottish Parliament was BRIBED into approving of the union with England.” I could not find anything on Wikipedia to sustain such.
The obvious problem with an English Parliament, is that England is 80%+ of the population. That’s the main objection usually, and the usual sensible retort is to use English regions as the equivalents of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
That seems like a neat solution, until you hit a nasty geographical snag: England does have a relatively strong degree of regionalism, but simply does not neatly break down into workable Scotland-sized-ish units. English regions are an overlapping unholy overlapping contradictory pile of dozens of different divisions used for hundreds of different purposes.
So you’re back to either English Parliament, or you don’t solve the West Lothian question, which is no longer viable.
The partisan angle to all this, is that the Tories could expect to comfortably dominate the English legislature, which would be even more problematic when Labour won nationally but didn’t get the usual unified right to government with little limit that usually goes to the majority in Westminster. Whereas when Conservative won nationally, and also still held England as they surely would, then they would enjoy ‘undivided’ government in the sense of England vs. UK.
Really, it’s a mess all around, and a pretty strong case against devolution was it was initially done in the first place, though it can’t be undone at this point.
“Federalism” is probably an incorrect term in the case of Britain.
In the United States, the sovereignty of the central government is derivative of the States, who have delegated limited authority to the Congress.
A state might delegate or devolve certain of its authority to its counties and cities, but a state would not be described as a federation of counties, and the legislature could always take that authority back.
“Federalism” is the term usually used in British politics to describe the scenario where each of the four countries has its own devolved legislature of equal, wide-ranging domestic powers and Westminster handles the remainder- defense, foreign policy, etc. Your point about sovereignty is correct, but I don’t know that rules out the term federalism or federation. The laws creating the Scottish Parliament is now widely seen as having lowercase-c constitutional status within the British system. It’s effectively entrenched from ever being repealed, anyway, which is the same thing as constitutional law in the UK.
Really, what you’re describing is more just the result of the UK not having a written constitution to formally entrench *any* law, no matter how long-settled or effectively fixed forever, more than a question of whether the UK couldn’t count as a federation but somehow Russia and Germany do, just because it takes a qualified supermajority instead of a simple majority to abrogate some local/regional reserved powers. Very few “federations” grant as many reserved powers to their units as the US does to its states, and even that doesn’t go terribly far these days.
DOI – 4 July 1776 — each of the 13 States became an independent NATION-State — as France, Spain, etc.
The USA regime was created in 1787-1789 by 9 of the then 13 sovereign NATION-States.
USA Const Art. VII —
and has the LIMITED legislative powers – mostly in Art. I, Sec. 8 — which was an upgrade from the 1777 Articles of Confederation.
Regular complete executive and judicial branches were added.
See the 1787-1788 Federalist by Madison, Hamilton and Jay — various versions on the internet.
The *United* in U.S.A. was derived from the United States of the Netherlands regime.
The UK does have a written constitution its just not codified into something like the us etc has.
Our written Constitution has helped to sustain freedom in this country, even though it has taken some amendments to re-define freedom.
Slowly but surely, the Courts are re-defining what the founding fathers meant. It is one thing for the people to amend the Constitution – whether the amendment is good or bad, but the founding fathers – in my humble opinion – never intended for the Courts to define the Constitution – only to rule to its enforcement.