RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE LAST FEW DAYS: CHINA, NORTHERN POWERHOUSE AND EVEL

The last day of the charade that is the Golden Era celebration will be over today. After Mr Xi takes a trip to what the English call "The North", he will escape back to China.

In OUR United Kingdom though, "The North" isn't Shetland or Orkney, nor is it the Hebrides, Highlands, Central Belt, nor even the Southern Uplands. 

Nope, it is far south of all of these things. 

It's almost like the Brits drew a map and replaced the word Scotland with "Here be Dragons". Or Haggis!

This is where I left the kid.

The North is Manchester, some 200 kms south of Scotland, from where the Brits are going to build a Northern Powerhouse, presumably with Chinese money, becasue they have none themselves.

The cornerstone of this powerhouse will be, if they ever get it started, the High Speed Train from the centre of the universe that is London, to "The North". HS2.

The costs of the line are difficult to pin down. Having started off at a reasonable price of around £16 billion, the building of the line is now estimated by the English Transport Department to have risen to £43 billion. But we all know thay can;t count much after 20, so it is wise to look at other estimates. Boris Johnson, the London Mayor and MP, has it at £70 billion, and the Institute of Economic Affairs at £80 billion.  Bit of a difference there...

TGV Network running into Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland

A House of Lords Committee has suggested that the cost of building the line will be nine times more expensive than the French equivalent. The French of course had the foresight to build high speed trains (TGV) across the country decades ago when Mitterrand was president and Thatcher was favouring roads and private transport.

You might rub your hands together with glee, thinking that if Mr Osborne was pouring all this money into "The North" then there would be benefits for Scotland in the form of Barnett consequentials. But I fear you would be wrong.

There will be no consequentials, just as there were not for Crossrail or the Olympics.

This despite the fact that the negative impact of the line on certain areas outside of England (particularly including Eastern Scotland and South Wales) will be severe.

And now that we have EVEL, Scottish MPs won't even be allowed to vote on this railway which will have such a negative effect on our country. 

It's not just English foxes that will rue the passing of the EVEL bill last night and the second class status now accorded to our MPs.

(I wonder if that means that Muddle will be excluded from Cabinet when English matters are being discussed, or if the English Members of the Scottish Affairs Committee will now be excluded from the Scottish Affairs Committee... and, given that Scotland was excluded from this state visit, did Muddle have a meeting with President Xi... OK, silly question.)

The last few days have shown where the London government (which we can now reasonably call the English Government) places the Scots in OUR United Kingdom, the one that Cameron goes on and on about ad nauseam.

Roll on the next opportunity to, like Mr Xi, escape from this ridiculous and pathetic little third rate union.

IF YOU VOTE TO STAY WITHIN OUR UNION, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE...

ON THE OTHER HAND WE'LL PROBABLY IGNORE YOU... AND PUT IN A TRADESMAN'S ENTRANCE...

It looks like we may not get to design our own road signs after all

The Daily Mail reports on its front page that English MPs threaten to derail the DevoMicro settlement laid out in the doctored Smith Commission Report.

There was a picture of their front page on the blog, but Niko, quite reasonably, pointed out that as the rest of the paper's page was dedicated to the horrific story of the barbarous slaughter of school children in Pakistan, the frivolous headline and pictures I used to illustrate the Tory revolt was inappropriate. 

He was right and I was wrong. Apologies for any offence this might have caused.  

In any case it looks like we can forget ....

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...

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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