h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Scottish Devolution and the West Lothian Question - A12796482
Author: hula|||hoops - U1254774

Hey, thoughts please!

I know I've missed out historically similar situations, e.g. Ireland; and the criticisms of the alternative solutions could be more in depth, but I dont really want to get bogged down in the pros and cons of Scottish independence, etc.

Its intented as a brief summary of the main issues.

It'sa good entry, I can't immediately see an awful lot wrong with it. My only question for the moment is, what exactly does 'Maintaining a 'democratic deficit" in England' mean? I don't understand that. Oh- you might, if you know, put in some stuff about what prompted the proposal for devolution? Not essential, it's just an idea.

By that i just meant the whole west lothian question voting issue.

I put in a link to an article with some reasons, but I figured the 'why' would become a bit scholarly with citations of opinions of what issues were the most important and which weren't, and what else contributed etc... besides, it would probably seem like Tory-bashing. Antone else thing I should try to include reasons?

I think that the table that just passes the fact that english MPs outnumber scottish MPs is over simplfing.

Remember that the majority of the labour party is not huge. All the tory MPs are in England whereas a lot of the labour seats are scottish

This means that on some issues where there is a potential rebellion where the labour rebels join the torys, the goverment english / welsh MP majority is less than the amount of scottish MPs.



Another thing is that in the next couple of years 2 of the 3 major party leaders will have scottish constuencies.




.


Also makes note to clear up the guideml, espeically the footnotes

The problem with making the table more complex, to reflect the balance of parties, is that this will constantly change with by-elections, elections etc. Indeed when the WLQ was first mooted the figures were different due to boundary changes and certainly the party figures were very different (didn't Tories hold nearly half the Scottish seats then?). I think it's fine as is, but perhaps needs a sentence explaining the what effect/influence the 'balance of power' also has on it.

Few comments on the entry:-

The headings don't require ':'

It is house-style to have omit the 'intro'/'backgound' heading and the first paragraph to summarise/introduce the whole topic.

?what was the turnout for the '97 referendum?

Link to Scotland Act broken (there is a space before the http://)

I don't think that 'parochial' is a good term to refer to the devolved issues - it has slight negative undertones.

I would consider changing that little intro bit anyway to explain the terms 'devolved' and 'reserved', as the examples are redundent because of the lists following.

'Devolved to Scotland:' >> 'Devolved to Scottish Parliament:'

'Reserved to Westiminster:' >> 'Reserved at Westminster:' or 'Reserved for British Parliament, Westminster:'

I think the West Lothian Question needs to be also introduced right at the top, after all the entry is titled to deal with both.

I would re-order the entire proposed solutions section. Introduce each as a sub-heading and then 'list' their pros and cons (as neutrally as possible - I would certainly avoid mentioning number of MPs/MSPs for parties as these will change). At the moment it jumps back and forth a bit so doesn't flow naturally to the reader.

Anyway, good effort to date - hope you find my feedback useful.

-scrumph

I was put off from including the numbers of MPs/party because they are so quickly out of date, e.g. with the by-elections yesterday and the scottish parliament elections next summer. I've added it now.

"Another thing is that in the next couple of years 2 of the 3 major party leaders will have scottish constuencies."

I chose not to include this because:
1) there's no telling who will become/remain party leader
2) party leaders are determined by their party, not the electorate (unless they vote one out )

I've added a little bit on this point now.


I know the footnotes are wrong, but i can't figure out how to fix it.

I think it's great, an interesting topic, well discussed.

I think the problem with the footnotes is that the first footnote, in the first paragraph doesn't have any text in it. If you delete the footnote tags it will sort itself out.

I also think that a lot of the lists could be done as paragraphs of text and would make it more readable.

In general good work, is this your first entry?

-scrumph



I made some changes (late) last night but couldn't update them (the site is not favourable to insomniacs!), so my last post isn't as recent as it appears. I'll edit Re: your comments a bit later.

sorted! No, I've done one other a year ago.

There's still something bugging me about this entry and I've just figured out what it is- it doesn't really 'end'. Maybe it doesn't need to end, perhaps that's just a personal view, but I wonder if some sort of conclusion might just pull the whole thing together and finish it off nicely. Otherwise it looks good.

Amended version now available.

Still good work, maybe a bit of a summary is needed at the end.

I like the revised version, I'm tempted to go for the whole Scottish independence business, right after I've moved there...

This is a much stronger entry now, I think it looks really good. I agree that the summary is still a little lightweight (and you still need to fix that footnote?) but otherwise it's very good.

cheers guys, i think thats it finished.

Currently we have 12 Scottish MPs in a cabinet of 23, therefore the majority of the Cabinet were not elected by the country they are governing, as their is no legislation to prevent it, in theory the PM, and all the cabinet could be Scottish MPs. Yet another poorly thought out and expensive piece of legislation.

As devolution for Scotland was only voted on in Scotland, I would say that it was a minority decision to allow the devolution.

Just a couple of thoughts.

The problem with including Cabinet details is that they become out of date even faster than general election results.

The Cabinet positions have never been allocated so each country is proportionally represented, they are determined by the Prime Minister. There was nothing to stop there being a majority of non-English constituency Cabinet members before devolution to Scotland (and Wales).

There is a case for the point that, e.g. the Secretary of State for Health may come from a Scottish constituency even though health is devolved to Scotland, and i'll add that to the entry.



"we have 12 Scottish MPs in a cabinet of 23, therefore the majority of the Cabinet were not elected by the country they are governing"

Looking over the Cabinet I counted 5 MPs who hold a Scottish constituency so I'm not sure where the 12 figure came from. The nationality of a MP is not important to the WLQ; the geographic location of their constituency is (presuming that Tony Blair helps to bump up the 'scots' count).

The Cabinet ministers do not just govern England, and the positions of Chancellor, Sec. State Defence, and Sec. State Trade & Industry, held by Scottish constituency MPs, are on issues which are reserved. In addition, the positions of Home Secretary and Sec. State Transport&Scotland, held by Scottish constituency MPs, are also concerned (although not totally) with reserved issues.


Devolution to Scotland and Wales was included in the Labour Party's 1997 election manifesto.

Good entry, and very relevant at the moment

Nitpicks:

In the section on what is devolved and reserved, you've used tags for the Scots but not for the English

Sewell Motions - why are they called Sewell Motions?

Current Political Climate - I think you could do with adding a BORDER=1 attribute to the TABLE tag so that your table has lines to it.

You should probably add a bullet point for each solution explaining in brief what each solution involves.

Keep up the good work

Alex

, done.

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