On Mar 31, 5:22*pm, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:45:23 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T
wrote:
Eh?! It's what devolution is *all about* - devolving the decisions for
a wide range of activities to the national bodies in Scotland and
Wales. It makes for better government. I'd have regional assemblies
across England, but that won't happen for a generation now.

It doesn't make for better implementation of any national scheme,
though. *The needs for free travel didn't differ between England,
Wales, Scotland or even Northern Ireland. *It would therefore have
made sense for it to occur across the UK, or for there to at the very
least be cross validity between the schemes.

It's a national scheme for England - feel free to argue at will over
the status of England as a nation (indeed the status of Scotland,
Wales and NI - the latter two in particular!). The point is that
transport issues were devolved to the relevant institutions in those
three nations/ regions/ whatever you want to call them. They call the
shots within their jurisdictions. The ENCTS is just that - for
England.

I don't see why it somehow inherently makes sense for it to be a UK-
wide scheme, as you seem to suggest. Anyway, the nature of devolution
means that there won't be a UK-wide scheme - Parliament only deals
with such matters the territory of England. (Again, feel free to
pontificate about a UK Parliament that only has powers w.r.t. some
fields in England only, in others in England & Wales, in others NI as
well, and in others across the whole of the UK - that's the current
constitutional settlement we have. Some can't stand the supposed
illogicality and messiness of it all - I secretly kinda quite enjoy
watching people getting all het up over it, because reality is indeed
messy and illogical!)

There could be cross-validity between the schemes if the various
institutions came to an agreement with each other - given the
differing funding methods that seems unlikely.


And IMO regional assemblies over and above the current Counties are an
utter waste of money, unless you also remove a level of government
(e.g. by abolishing counties themselves and replacing them with
unitary authorities the size of a couple of boroughs).

Having a single tier of local government was *exactly* what was
proposed for the North East. Also, the whole beauty of it would be
wresting various powers away from distant Westminster and Whitehall to
somewhere closer to home. It'd be a far better way of doing things
than an English Parliament, IMHO (which is how some would 'solve' the
'problem' of lopsided devolution in the UK).