TORIES WATER DOWN SMITH COMMISSION REPORT AND THE NATIONAL BECOMES A PERMANENT FIXTURE

I'm not going to dwell for long on the Smith Commission report. The matter has been better dealt with today on many blogs, not least Wings.

I never thought its findings would amount to much, although I felt we owed it the chance to report. But as long as there was to be Barnett pocket money from Westminster, and as long as they kept our oil and export revenues, we were never going to have the money to do what we need to do to stop our kids starving and our old folk dying of the cold.

We were promised something approaching federal government in Edinburgh. Gordon Brown said it, and gave, at least to my ears, the impression that he was speaking, with the authority of the Prime Minister.

What has been reported today is as near to federalism as Iceland is to New Zealand. 

The minute that, on the 19th September, Cameron linked Scottish devo-super-plus, as someone at the time called it, with English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), the whole vow thing started unravelling.

Because, EVEL will mean that the (until now) habitual 40 or so Labour MPs will be unable to influence law making in England. As we all know, unlike the Celtic countries in the union, England's domestic affairs are dealt with by the UK parliament. Domestic affairs keeps the Celtic parliaments or assemblies busy for 3 days a week. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that Westminster spends the bulk of the week, most weeks, on English legislation. If there were a Labour government with a majority dependent on their Scottish contingent, they would effectively not be the government of England, even though they could command a majority on UK-wide matters.

Cameron, quite rightly, will not give in on this. In his case this is likely because UKIP and his own English backbenchers are snapping at his heals, and because he sees it as a way to unseat Labour. But a fairer minded person would have to agree that it is a travesty of justice that Scottish MPs can vote on Justice, Education, Health, Law and Order, in England (with no responsibility to constituents for their votes) and yet English MPs cannot vote of these matters in Scotland (or Wales or Ulster).

Apparently the original findings of the Smith Commission have already been watered down by the Cabinet (particularly by the awful May woman, who wants to be prime minister, and by Iain Duncan Smith who appears to want to murder all sick, unemployed and old people). When Carmichael reported to the London Cabinet on Tuesday there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Added to this, one Tory MP pointed out that laws are not made by David Cameron. They are made by parliament, and as presently constituted, the Westminster parliament consists of 533 English MPs to 59 Scottish, 40 Welsh and 18 Ulster representatives.

It's not hard to see then why Scotland is unlikely to be the winner in all of this.

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The National is here to stay. The initial print run on Monday was 60,000. On Tuesday they had increased it to 100,000. But there were distribution problems, and some of the supermarkets refused to stock the paper. The initial hopes were for a sale of between 15,000 and 30,000.

However, with daily sales way in excess of competitors like the Scotsman and Herald, (The Herald sells around 38,000 a day and the Scotsman around 27,000) it seems that the paper has decided that it has a market. There are plans to develop it into a permanent feature of the Scottish press. 

I asked Tesco why it was not stocking the paper. Was it, I wondered because they didn't agree with its politics. They replied that once the paper decided whether or not it was to continue publishing, they would review their policy. I look forward to that decision.

Morrison's still do not stock it, nor did I see it in Sainsbury's. I don't use Asda.

To have sold over 50,000 copies each day without the supermarkets on board is quite an achievement. 
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