Shropshire Star: It's not too late to hear out English nationalists

It's been a while since I wrote a letter to the Shropshire Star. This one was published in tonight's Shropshire Star ...

It's not too late to hear out English nationalists

It's a little late for John Denham to be worrying about the emergence of white supremacists in England when he has served in a British government that has deliberately ignored moderate English nationalists for the last decade.

The effect of which has been the emergence of groups like the English and Welsh Defence League.

I have no interest in ethnic nationalism. But I really must point out that independent observers have said that the violence at the English and Welsh Defence League protests in Birmingham has been largely instigated by the thugs from Unite Against Fascism.

If the Government had spent the decade listening to the reasonable demands of ordinary people who want equal rights for English people instead of marginalising them, there would be no reason for white supremacist groups to exist.

We would have an English Parliament and English politicians elected by English people defending English interests, instead of anglophobic British nationalists at Westminster treating us like serfs.

John Denham and his colleagues have only themselves to blame for the emergence of racists like the English and Welsh Defence League because they are a product of their anti-English policies.

It's not too late for the Government to engage with moderate English nationalists like the Campaign for an English Parliament and promote an inclusive English civic nationalism, but I suspect they will be too busy navel gazing to realise it.

Stuart Parr
Telford

Welsh patients pushed down waiting list at Shropshire hospital

I was told last night on very good authority that the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt hospital in Gobowen (also known as Oswestry Opthopaedic) is bumping English patients up the waiting lists in protest at the Welsh government's refusal to pay the going rate for treatment.

The three main hospitals in Shropshire all lose money treating Welsh patients because the Welsh government doesn't pay the same amount for treatments as the British government does. More Welsh patients have to be treated to achieve the same income as they would receive if treating only English patients.

Added to this is the problem of the Welsh not paying their bills on time which resulted in at least two hospitals - Oswestry here in Shropshire and one in Bristol - threatening to refuse treatment to Welsh patients if they didn't hand over the cash.

An English patient's recent conversation with a consultant at Oswestry went something like ...

Patient: So when am I likely to get my operation?
Consultant: Probably around November unless you live in Wales
Patient: Why, what difference would it make if I lived in
Wales?
Consultant: Well, with all the free prescriptions and free parking
they get and they don't pay us us enough for treatment, Welsh patients get
pushed down the waiting list

I'm not sure if this is official hospital policy or an unofficial protest by consultants but I expect it will annoy the Welsh immensely, especially given the number of letters recently in the Shropshire Star trying to defend the special treatment the Welsh are getting (including putting Welsh signs in Oswestry hospital). There is a simple solution if the Welsh do start getting shirty over being pushed down the waiting lists - they could spend some of the multi-billion pound annual subsidy they get from the English taxpayer building some of their own hospitals.

A startling discovery?

Phillip Dunne, the Tory MP for Ludlow in Shropshire, is demanding that the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) come clean about plans to revalue houses in England for council tax.

Mr Dunne has "discovered" that the VOA has been training up valuers and has been covertly inspecting and cataloguing properties in England for valuation purposes. Presumably he doesn't have a subscription to the Torygraph because they made a big thing of it back in 2007 and it was old news then.

The VOA is part of HM Revenue & Customs which is itself a part of the Treasury, the government department run by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and yep, you've guess it, the VOA has no involvement in valuations in Alistair Darling's constituency. The VOA only operates in England and Wales and although a revaluation of Welsh homes has already taken place, the Welsh government uses public money to subsidise council tax bills, effectively capping them.

So, will Mr Dunne be drawing any of this to the attention of his constituents? Will he point out the unfairness of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, elected in Scotland, running the VOA even though the people affected by the decisions taken by the VOA can't hold him to account for his department's actions through the ballot box? Will he be drawing attention to the fact that the Welsh government is using English money to subsidise Welsh council tax bills while the British government sits back and watches English council tax demands increase by 3 or 4 times the rate of inflation? Will he point out to his constituents that an English Parliament would have the same ability to cushion English council tax payers from the increasing demands of public expenditure in the same was the Welsh government does now for Welsh council tax payers?

Perhaps he's changed his mind in the four years since he told CEP Shropshire chairman, Edward Higginbottom, that he prefered the unworkable English Votes on English Laws proposal his party has put forward than the English Parliament that the majority of English people want but I doubt it. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas after all.

Shropshire Star Letters

These two letters were in the Shropshire Star in the last few days:

Promote St George

As a patriotic English-woman and a proud Shrewsbury resident, I feel it's about time that my local council and the rest of the politically-correct establishment did more to promote England's patron saint.

The council uses taxpayers' money to promote multi-culturalism but does nothing to mark St George's day. This anti-English bias is an absolute disgrace.

Helen Foulkes
Shrewsbury

I'm English and proud

Isn't it strange how this year it's no longer racist to celebrate St Georges Day?

It couldn't possibly be because the main political parties are scared that they have pushed the English people too far, making them second class citizens in their own country?

All of a sudden the likes of Gordon Brown are saying it's OK to be English again, but we still have the usual rhetorical clap trap in the media.

Why are the English the only race who have to justify who they are? Why are we made to feel guilty about our culture and heritage?

Mike Amos
Shrewsbury

Happy St Georges Day

Sandwell St Georges Day Parade

Stone Cross St George Association, organisers of the Sandwell St Georges Day parade, have sent the following message to supporters …

Apologies for not giving much news of late but we’ve been working behind the scenes to try and move things forward.

GOOD NEWS…

The date of the parade WILL be the 19th April. Assembling in Westminster Road from 9:45am

Sandwell Council have allowed the fair to remain open on the Sunday and have given us permission to have a stage erected in the park so we can address the crowd of people. Obviously there will not be as much in the park as in previous years but a week ago we had nothing in going on in the park!

BAD NEWS…

Some of the expenses for the parade are really high, Chris Kelly from Keltruck has very kindly offered to pay ‘the difference’ for the parade but as it stands at the moment we have very little in the way of donations from anywhere else! PLEASE try and help us financially, even if you could send a cheque for £1, All 3,400 of you all on this list will go a long way paying off just the insurance!

£1 will give you a mention on our website, £10 will give you a yearly membership, £100 a lifetime membership.

PLEASE HELP!!

For more details, go to the Stone Cross St George Association website.

St Georges Day in Telford

UKIP Telford & Wrekin

Celebrating St Georges Day

on the evening of the 23rd April

at

The Telford White House Hotel
Watling Street
Wellington
Telford
TF1 2NJ

Tickets £12.50 each

Arrival 7.00 – 7.15 Meal 7.30pm

Ends around 10.30pm

Brass Band

Meal
Fish & Chips and Mushy Peas
Apple Pie

This is the time to sing along let your hair down and have fun.

More importantly Fly the Flag

Please forward a cheque payable:

UKIP Telford & Wrekin
c/o Holly Cottage
30 The Fields
Kynnersley
Telford
Shropshire
TF6 6ED

Please note: this is not a CEP event and the CEP doesn't support any political party

Shropshire man falls foul of the Nationality Lottery

A Shropshire man has fallen foul of the nationality lottery after Telford & Wrekin NHS Trust refused to treat him with Lucentis to try and save his sight.

Allan Farley has punctate inner choroidopathy and two consultants have told him that Lucentis will help to save the sight in his right eye. He is already blind in his left.

But the NHS Trust, acting on guidelines issued by the increasingly inaccurately named National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), have refused to fund a course of Lucentis. Honestly, someone really should complain to Trading Standards - they are neither "national" nor "nice".

Two years worth of Lucentis will cost about £18k, pocket money compared to the cost of paying benefits and providing services to a blind man and his family for the next 50 or 60 years. If you'll excuse the pun, the decision is more than a little short sighted.

Mr Farley says he's being refused Lucentis because of the cost. Yes, it's an expensive drug and the NHS Trust probably doesn't have £18k stuffed down the back of the Chief Exec's sofa to pay for it but finding the money for the drug is a secondary issue and the NHS Trust does have the money if it wants to spend it.

The real reason why Mr Farley is being refused Lucentis is because he lives in England. If he lived in Scotland he would have been treated by now and the sight of his left eye might have been saved. The Scottish Medical Consortium - the equivalent body to NICE north of the border - allows Lucentis to be provided on the NHS in Scotland, along with a host of other drugs such as cancer and alzheimers treatments that are unavailable to English people.

Shropshire MPs complaining about unfair treatment of the English

The following story graced the front page of Wednesday night's Shropshire Star:

MP's bid for equal rights at factories

Workers at a Japanese car part factory in Shropshire are not receiving the same state aid in the current economic climate as their Welsh counterparts, an MP has claimed.

Shimizu UK has operations in Hortonwood, Telford, and Welshpool.

However, while its Welsh staff receive taxpayer-funded subsidies for their earnings and efforts to boost their skills - those at the English site do not.

Mark Pritchard, The Wrekin MP, whose constituency includes Hortonwood, today demanded a fair deal and similar assistance for his constituents as well.

The Tory MP raised the issue with Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy in the Commons.

He said: "The Secretary of State will know that Shimizu - a fone Japanese company - has a factory in Welshpool and also in Hortonwood in my constituency.

"But the difference is, on the Welsh side of the border they receive taxpayer subsidies for wages and training.

"That is good news obviously for people in jobs in Wales, but what about the people of Shropshire and my constituentsm who would like to see a similar subsidy from the regional develpment agency?"

Mr Murphy said there were "plenty" of schemes to turn to for assistance, including Train 2 Gain.

He said: "There are plenty of schemes - it is important that you make your constituents aware of them."

The irony is, the Conservatives today announced that they will abolish all the regional quangos if they win the next election, including the regional development agencies.

Today I wrote the following to the four Conservative MP's in Shropshire (there's no point writing to the Labour MP, David Wright, any more as he rarely replies and when he does it's usually spin or he answers a question you haven't asked) as follows:

Dear MP,

Yesterday, Mark Pritchard had the following exchange with the British Secretary for State for Wales:

Mark Pritchard: What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues and the Welsh Assembly Government on schemes to assist businesses in Wales during the economic downturn. [261330]

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Paul Murphy): I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer that I gave the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams).

Mark Pritchard: I am delighted to have given the Secretary of State more time to think about his answer. He knows that Shimizu, a fine Japanese company, has factories in Welshpool and in Hortonwood in my constituency. The difference is that, on the Welsh side of the border, it receives taxpayer subsidies for wages and training. That is good news; we want people in jobs in Wales, but what about the people of Shropshire and my constituents, who would like a similar subsidy from the regional development agency?

Mr. Murphy: As the hon. Gentleman knows, one great benefit of devolution is that we can have several schemes to help businesses in Wales that might not be available in England. However, there are also effective schemes across the border in England, such as Train to Gain, the help that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform gives small and medium-sized enterprises, and the Department for Work and Pensions schemes. There are plenty of schemes—it is important that the hon. Gentleman makes his constituents aware of them.

This raises an important point and one that is going to get more focus, especially as the economic situation worsens.

Last week Daniel was quoted quite justifiably complaining about the £2m per year cost of treating Welsh patients at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Co-incidentally, I received a letter from the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital that same week confirming that the new kidney cancer wonder drug that the Welsh government have approved for NHS use could be given to a Welsh patient in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital whilst an English patient would be refused it. Is this another benefit of devolution? It is for the Welsh.

As the economy gets worse, the Scottish and Welsh governments are spending more of their subsidy on propping up their businesses. There is no equivalent focus on English businesses from the British government, the focus is on UK-wide measures.

The Bank of England has magicked a few billion pounds out of thin air and used it to buy assets off British banks so that they will have enough capital to start lending again. The Royal Bank of Scotland has pledged £1.7bn to start offering mortgages - but only in Scotland. RBS is a Scottish bank first and foremost, they're only British when they need rescuing from bankruptcy. The same applies to HBOS - both RBS and HBOS pledged to sacrifice jobs in England to save them in Scotland.

I'm afraid the regional development agencies (which David Cameron says he will abolish) just won't cut it when it comes to addressing the democratic deficit in England or providing support to the English economy. An unelected regional quango with a few million pounds of funding pales in comparison to the national governments of Scotland and Wales with multi-billion pound budgets, the ability to pass its own legislation and directly elected politicians elected to represent the interests of the people that elected them.

What England needs and what England wants is an English government with English politicians elected by English people to represent English interests. We don't need a Prime Minister and Chancellor elected in Scotland, unaccountable to English voters and having signed the Scottish Claim of Right, pledging to put the interests of Scotland first and foremost in all their acts and deliberations. We don't need MPs elected in Scotland, unaccountable to English voters, casting the deciding votes on devolved subjects such as university top-up fees, foundation hospitals and the new runway at Heathrow.

Before you give the usual speech about how we're stronger together than apart and our shared values, ask yourself what the union is doing for your constituents right now. Billions of pounds is being spent on Scotland and Wales at the expense of England. Legislation that only affects England is being passed by Scottish MPs that have no right to vote on the same matters in their own constituencies. Scottish and Welsh businesses are not only benefitting from the British government's UK-wide efforts to combat the recession but they are also benefitting from their own government's efforts. You are already seeing - and questioning - the benefits to Scottish and Welsh people from having their own devolved governments. Why would you want to deny those same benefits to your own constituents?

The case for an English Parliament is growing stronger as every day goes by and support for it is increasing year on year. It is no longer a subject for academics and political anoraks, it is a mainstream subject talked about in pubs, workplaces and schools. Are you going to stand on the Welsh border like a modern-day Canute and demand that the tide of change turns back or are you going to accept that things are going to change whether you want them to or not? England is being failed and you can do something about it - support the Campaign for an English Parliament while there is still an England to support.

I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you personally and discuss this further.

Stuart Parr

When I got home tonight and picked up the paper, Daniel Kawczynski was on the front page again, this time in a similar vein to Mark Pritchard last night. How am I supposed to keep up!

Pleading for the future

Fifteen firms appeal to MP for help to survive

Up to 15 Shrewsbury businesses have approached their MP in a desperate bit to avoid folding because of problems with their banks, it has been claimed.

Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski said he had faced the "extraordinary" situation of being asked by companies to pleasd with bank bosses to allow mre time for payments to be made and stave off unreasonable demands.

He said that Wrekin was not the only company to have faced sever pressure from the banks and has called for the government to do more to help firms in trouble.

"I am currently involved in negotiation with banks with regard to 15 Shrewsbury firms who are having difficultues with their banks," he added.

"These companies have asked me personally to get involved and I am writing to banks and arranging for Shrwsbury businesses to meet with their bank managers.

"It is quite an extraordinary situation when local firms are asking for the suppor of their MP to stop them going to the wall."

The Tory MP said that since the recession took hol, he has been approached by an increasing number of businesses who are suffering because of a decline in demand whilst struggling to access credit.

A Meet the Buyer event is being held for businesses in the construction industry, which will take place on March 27 at the Shirehall.

The Chamber of Commerce will offer a presentation and short interview slots explaining how contracting and procurement services are arranged by Shropshire Council.

The reference to "Wrekin" is Wrekin Construction, a local construction company that has just gone bust with the loss of around 1,100 direct and indirect jobs. Despite having £40m of orders on its books for this year and enough money coming to them to pay their £2.8m overdraft off by the end of the week, the Royal Bank of Scotland refused to give them a few days extra to pay it. The Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform - an English department of the British government - will now have to pay £5m in redundancy payments because the company is in administration. Yet in the same week, RBS pledges to spend £1.7bn on loaning new mortgages in Scotland - as is usually the case: Scottish first, British second.

MP tells of Welsh woe

This article appeared in the Shropshire Star the other day ...

MP tells of Welsh woe

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski has professed that he loves Wales, but he had plenty of complaints about the principality during a debate in the House of Commons.

The Shrewsbury & Atcham MP questioned Wales’s role in health services in Shropshire, flooding, tuberculosis in cattle, and “unfair and uncompetitive” grants to businesses given by the Welsh Assembly.

“The Welsh Assembly creates huge difficulties for English border towns,” he told MPs.

Mr Kawczynski said the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital was losing £2 million a year as a result of the way the assembly paid for treatment across the border.

“We have patients coming from Wales to the hospital who get life-saving medication to which my constituents in Shrewsbury are not entitled,” he told the Commons.

“I have to fight tooth and nail to secure life-saving treatments for my constituents that people from Wales get automatically in our hospital.

“That causes huge frustration and anger and divides our two communities.”

The Conservative MP said 40,000 cows had to be killed in England last year as a result of bovine TB.

“It is such a shame that there is not more co-operation between our parliament here in London and the Welsh Assembly over the issue, which transcends our borders,” he said.

“There should be far more co-operation in dealing with such major issues.”

Mr Kawczynski said flooding caused “tremendous misery” along the length of the River Severn with Shrewsbury flooding repeatedly.

“The way to resolve the problem is not to have little barriers in each town, but to have a wet washland scheme across the border in Wales,” he said.

“This would flood a large piece of agricultural land, which would become a marsh in the summer, encouraging wildlife, and a lake in winter.”

The Conservative MP said it was unacceptable that a Government minister had intervened to block the idea.

By London Editor John Hipwood

The Shropshire branch of the CEP has been plugging away at all five of the county's MPs, including Daniel. He is nominally supportive of some form of better representation for England and, having sat on a devolution committee, is quite aware of the discrimination England faces.

Co-incidently, I received an email from the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust which covers the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in Shrewsbury and the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt in Oswestry. Prompted by an announcement by the Welsh Government that Welsh patients would be entitled to a new kidney cancer wonder-drug free of charge on the NHS, I had asked them ...

Will Welsh patients treated in the RSH also get these drugs paid for by the Welsh Assembly? Will it be possible for an English and Welsh patient being treated at the RSH for the same thing and for the English patient to be refused the drugs that the Welsh patient will be getting?

The reply was long-winded but, in a nutshell, the answer was "yes". The question is, what does Daniel propose to do about it? The Tory policy of English Pauses for English Clauses won't resolve the issue, only an English Parliament will by putting English health priorities in the hands of politicians elected to represent English interests.

Click the icon below to view a copy of the letter from the NHS Trust.

Shropshire Star: Campaign for fairer treatment of English

Derek Armstrong has done it again!

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

Shropshire Star: England is denied EU aid benefit by Labour

This excellent letter appeared in the Shropshire Star on Saturday:

England is denied EU aid benefit by Labour

The Labour Government is denying England a windfall from the European Union yet it is making sure that Wales, Scotland and Ulster benefit.

The fall in the value of the pound has increased the value of euro-denominated EU grants by a fifth and the European Commission has offered a six-month extension to its December 2008 deadline to all countries for unused funds as part of a 200 billion euro (£178 billion) economic stimulus package.

Labour took up the option for Scotland, Wales and Ulster, but rejected it for England. Only recently Brown and his ministers held their cabinet meeting in Liverpool to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Merseyside in the midst of the recession.

However, in 1989 he signed the Scottish Claim of Right, in which he pledged "to make the interests of Scotland paramount" in everything he said and did.

As Prime Minister we rightly expect him to show and even-handed attitude towards all the nations of the UK.

Anyone who feels angry at this anti-English action might consider joining the Campaign for an English Parliament. Our number is 07071 220234, which is not a mobile number. Our website address is http://www.thecep.org.uk/wordpress/

While Wales and Ulster have their own assemblies and Scotland has its own parliament, England has no such parliament or assembly. Labour cares for the UK's Celtic nations, while treating England with contempt.

Derek Armstrong
CEP Member
Shropshire Branch

Derek has set the bar high - not only did he get across a very valid point on the blatant discrimination the English suffer at the hands of the British government, he also got the CEP phone number and website address in the letter as well!

Shropshire Hotel ignores St George

The Wroxeter Hotel is advertising its diary of events for the first four months of 2009.

Amongst the events are Burns Night and St Patricks Day celebrations but conspicuous in its absence is any celebration of St Georges Day.

Those who know their history might see a certain amount of irony in a hotel that owes its success to the Romans ignoring St George.

Morris Dancing!

My long-suffering wife dispatched me with to Ironbridge today with my 3 boys.

I got a passport allowing unlimited access to all the Ironbridge museums for the bargain price of £24 through my employer not long ago. We've certainly made full use of the passport since getting it - we've been to Blists Hill a couple of times and Enginuity about 5 times.

Enginuity is brilliant but there's only so many times you can go to the same place and play with the same stuff so we went for a look around the Tile Museum and then went to the Ironbridge for a look round the toll house. That's when we came across these guys:



I've lived no more than 10 minutes away from Ironbridge my whole life and didn't even know there was a morris dancing group in Ironbridge! These lot are called the Iron Men and Severn Gilders. It was really nice to see some traditional English public entertainment - even the obligatory 5 million Japanese tourists that frequent Ironbridge every weekend (ok, there were actually about 10) found it most entertaining.

Here are some pictures and the original 3gp video file which is much better quality than the YouTube version above ...

CEP rally - 18th October at Shrewsbury

The Shropshire branch of the CEP is holding a rally on Saturday the 18th of October in Shrewsbury.

We'll be meeting somewhere central - probably Pride Hill or near the hideous Market Hall - at around 10am and hand out leaflets.

The theme of the rally will be the NHS.  Just over the border in Wales they have free prescriptions and free hospital parking.  The Welsh government doesn't even pay the going rate for their treatment in English hospitals, costing the hospitals in Shrewsbury, Oswestry & Telford over £1m per year in lost revenues.  In Scotland they will all be entitled to free prescriptions from April next year and in Northern Ireland prescriptions will be only £3 next year and free for all from 2010.

Please get in touch for more details.

Shropshire Star: Kind of PM to think of England

The following letter was published in tonight’s Shropshire Star. Unfortunately, whilst editing it they took out “in England” from the end of the first line which makes the whole letter ambiguous.

Kind of PM to think of England

How kind of Gordon Brown, the MP for Kikcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Scotland, to find some loose change down the back of the sofa to pay for free prescriptions for cancer patients.

I remember when my own mother was recovering from cancer the last thing she needed was the worry of how to pay for prescriptions when she was unable to work.

However, when considering Mr Brown’s generosity, it should be remembered that in Wales nobody has paid for a prescription for nearly two years now.

And any of Gordon Brown’s constituents in Scotland suffering from long-term of permanent illnesses haven’t paid for prescriptions for some time. Already 92 per cent of prescriptions dispensed in Scotland are free of charge.

Stuart Parr
Telford

Press Release: Gordon Brown ready to sacrifice HBOS jobs in England

Gordon Brown ready to sacrifice HBOS jobs in England to carry out his 1989 pledge to Scotland

‘The real face of Gordon Brown has at last been exposed. As the financial crisis bites deeper and deeper and jobs are threatened in their thousands both in Scotland and England by the imminent Lloyds takeover of HBOS, his declared support for Britain has been shown to be very second place indeed. What really matters to Brown is not Britain but just one part of it. What matters to him is Scotland first and foremost. And if ever there has been a reason for England to have its own parliament which will defend its people, it is now.’ That was the warning and the call issued to Campaign for an English Parliament members in Shropshire by Stuart Parr, member of the CEP National Council.

‘The UK Prime Minister Mr Gordon Brown MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Fifeshire is now carrying out the pledge he made on March 31sat 1989 when he signed the ‘Scottish Claim of Right’ drawn up by the Scottish Constitutional Convention together with 132 other Scottish MPs and MEPs including Michael Martin the Speaker of the House of Commons.’That Claim of Right read as follows: “We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests will be paramount”.

‘Gordon Brown has been the engine driving the Lloyds takover of HBOS” stated Mr Parr. ‘No one can blame him for that. However, what the Times online has reported today is that page one of the formal takeover document promises that “the management focus is to keep jobs in Scotland; and there is no such
reassurance about England”. Not even about Halifax itself, the birthplace of the Halifax Building Society which employs thousands of English men and women. ‘How little Brown cares for England! How else can anyone possibly explain that clause in the takeover document?’ asked Mr Parr. ‘And how unacceptable it is coming from the UK Prime Minister. The interests of just one of the nations that make up the UK should not be paramount to him, should not come first and foremost. Not even to a UK Prime Minister whose future will be decided by the bye-election soon to be held in the Glenrothes constituency next door to his own. Such narrow politiking should not enter into a takeover document of the immense UK-wide importance of the Lloyds-HBOS merger.

‘Clearly England now needs its own Parliament, its own Government and its own First Minister to defend the legitimate interests of its people and restore balance to the Union. England simply cannot trust the UK Government as it stands..Britain is failing England’.

Shropshire Star: New flag pointless

This was published in the Shropshire Star last night, rather amateurishly edited:

New flag pointless

It’s a shame readers have been unable to see John Yates’s [sic] proposed new British flag. Mr Yates has spent 30 years agonising over the exclusion from Wales that he hasn’t noticed most Welsh people don’t consider themselves British any more.

Redesigning the flag when the union is unlikely to see out the next decade is a bit like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Cheshire town votes to join Wales

Presumably inspired by Berwick on Tweed, residents of Audlem in Cheshire have staged their own poll on whether to become part of Wales.

The main reason seems to be the free prescriptions they would be getting if they were just over the border in Wales.

The poll was tongue in cheek but there was one rather worrying suggestion - that they should opt to join Shropshire instead and that the whole of Shropshire should join Wales. A disturbing thought I'm sure you'll agree but we do have two of the qualifications for being handed to Wales - like Monmouthshire, we are on the border and like Monmouthshire we have lots of Welsh place names - so we'd better keep an eye on our MPs to make sure they aren't being bought and sold for English Welsh English gold!

The Audlem Online website has a debate on the poll with some interesting comments already, including one resident saying that the English are trying to steal Monmouthshire. I felt it my duty to point out that it can't be stealing if you're merely taking back what is rightfully yours.

English hospitals refuse to treat Welsh

A row has erupted over Welsh patients being treated in English hospitals thanks to North Bristol NHS Trust.

Back in July 2006 Oswestry Hospital threatened to stop accepting Welsh patients because Powys Local Health Board wasn't paying its bills. An agreement was reached to prevent it happening at Oswestry but now North Bristol is having the same problem only this time the situation hasn't been resolved amicably and Welsh patients are no longer being admitted to their hospitals.

The Western Mail (a Welsh newspaper) suggests that the "row over NHS access is frankly ridiculous" and that North Bristol should continue to treat Welsh patients that they're not being paid to treat despite having a statutory obligation to ensure that they remain financially viable. The example of Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust continuing to treat Welsh patients despite an annual cost of £2m to do so is cited as an example: "If it can be made to work in Mid Wales and Telford and Shrewsbury, North Bristol NHS Trust needs to provide a pretty compelling case as to why it can’t work there".

What happened in Shropshire clearly wasn't a one-off but the question now has to be how many times this has happened in the past and whether this is going to keep on happening in the future. The English taxpayer already subsidises the superior Welsh health service, English hospitals treat Welsh patients at a reduced cost to their Local Health Board and now it looks like English hospitals are treating Welsh patients for free because Welsh Local Health Boards aren't paying their bills.

I have phoned the reporter who wrote this story and explained that it's not fair that English NHS Trusts should be expected to make concessions when the English already subsidise the Welsh NHS and when English hospitals are providing services to Welsh patients at reduced prices. She said she hadn't thought about it in that way and agreed that it wasn't fair and that she would do some more investigation into cross-border health services.