November has been a month of non-news.
Over the last few weeks we’ve been subject to so-called scandal after so-called scandal and yet none of them much matters. People don’t care, for example, whether a wealthy man gave a lot of money to Labour, only whether he sought to gain influence by doing so. To my mind, giving the money through friends suggests that no influence was so sought.
The same is true of Ian Lucas’ request to have a debate about a Welsh component to a revised Union flag. I suspect not a single academic child has grown up and not asked the same question. The absence of a Welsh flag can be explained by a little studying of history, but it still seems odd that it has not been added in retrospect.
Again, though, the Welsh flag issue is not the one that the MP for Wrexham ought to be worried about. What about Welsh people having to suffer the indignity of being represented by an Assembly which has lesser powers than the Scottish Parliament? Why do the Scots deserve preferential treatment?
And while we’re talking about constitutional settlements, what has happened to devolution for England? The Campaign for an English Parliament has been complaining for nearly ten years, the Labour party has been threatening to break England up for more than ten years and yet the BBC give news-time to a minor issue like what the flag looks like.
I completely agree, as I said, that the Union flag is an anomaly, but surely the bigger anomalies ought to be cleared up first — let’s give Wales and England the parliaments they deserve, and let’s cut the British parliament down to size (given it’s purely federal role after the institution of the Welsh and English parliaments).
It’s not by mistake that the Welsh calls for an Assembly upgrade are so largely ignored, though. The turkey chicken-politician isn’t likely to vote for Christmas Winterval unless the people who vote for them make them feel they have to.
Like this entry? Share it with others:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
