Campaign for fair treatment of English
Householders in Scotland will have their council tax bills frozen until 2012 in a £210 million deal funded by English taxpayers.
Nationalist leaders of Scotland's parliament in Edinburgh have pledged to keep council taxes unchanged after scrapping plans for a controversial local income tax.
This latest example of UK "apartheid" means that by the time of the London Olympics, Scottish families will be paying the same amount of council tax as they were in 2007, whereas English council tax bills are set to rise be almost £50 next year for an average property to plug a £2.5 billion black hole in local authority finances caused by the economic downturn.
This decision will fuel resentment south of the border over the way Scotland's devolved government uses subsidies from the treasury to offer sweeterers denied to most of the rest of the UK.
The Scots already get free eye care and dental check-ups, free access to cancer drugs and free care homes for the elderly - now they will get council tax priveleges as well, at English tax payers' expense.
Anyone who feels angry at this might consider joining the CEP (Campaign for an English Parliament).
The CEP is a non-political organisation that is working for an English Parliament so that the people living in England can at least have a political institution that fights for our interests.
Our telephone number is 07071 220234, which is not a mobile number.
Our website address is: http://www.thecep.org.uk/wordpress/
Derek Armstrong
Broseley
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Shropshire Star: Campaign for fairer treatment of English
Derek Armstrong has done it again!
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2 comments:
You can't have it both ways. Devolution for England, which is clearly desirable, would mean more devolution within the UK overall, which would mean more variations in services as between the four nations, reflecting the differing choices made by their elected representatives. If you want complete uniformity throughout the UK, you must abandon the campaign for an English parliament and instead demand the end of devolution to Scotland (and Wales and N Ireland), returning to Thatcherite centralism (which most of us would fiercely oppose). More devolution means more diversity of services and policies both between and within the four nations: very salutary and healthy. Power of decision should be pushed down to the lowest possible local level everywhere. The result will be genuine democracy, not a 'post code lottery' as the professional whingers will call it.
If the complaint is that the Scots are using subsidies granted by the English to fund better services than ours in England, remember that England is richer than Scotland even after the transfer of 'subsidies', so if you want our surplus money spent on the same services as those enjoyed by the Scots, address your demands to your English MP, instead of expressing futile 'anger' about the dolce vita that you imagine is being enjoyed by the Scots.
Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
Brian,
If you read the rest of the posts here or at the CEP's national site then you'll see that our complaint is not that there is a difference in the services provided but the fact that there is no English government to make the corresponding decisions for England.
In fact, I made that exact same point in the post above this one:
only an English Parliament will by putting English health priorities in the hands of politicians elected to represent English interests.
It is not the result of devolution we have a problem with, it's the fact that England has been left out of it.
And there are no English MPs to complain to, only British MPs elected in England. They are elected to the British parliament to represent British interests.
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