On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:54:53 +0100, Arthur Figgis
wrote:

Personally I'm not convinced that old people should be able to commute
to work for free, but that's just me being younger than them.

They probably shouldn't, which I guess is why it has peak time
exclusions in much of England.

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To reply put my first name before the at.

On Mar 31, 9:54*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Mizter T wrote:

On Mar 31, 12:53*pm, Ian Jelf wrote:

In message , Neil Williams
writes
[snip]
I never quite worked out why the responsibility for these schemes had
to be devolved. *It makes no sense to me.

No, nor to me.

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.

Why, and could you supply examples?

Devolution seems completely daft to me. Make the right decision, and make
it once.

You serious? That's a pretty technocratic and rather unwordly way of
looking at things, if I may say. By extension you'd have a single
European or even world government. Also, do you disapprove of any
local governance, such as the GLSA arranegements?

Apart from anything else, devolution in Scotland had pretty much
become a political necessity - the clamour for it had grown so strong
over the preceding years. And in Northern Ireland, whilst the story is
very different, again it's pretty much a political necessity to have
devolution arrangements in order for any progress to be made. The
picture in Wales is like as clear cut.nothing like as clear cut.

On Mar 31, 6:49*pm, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:14:02 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T
wrote:

I don't see why it somehow inherently makes sense for it to be a UK-
wide scheme, as you seem to suggest.

I think it makes more sense than it being by somewhat
arbitrarily-delimited[1] countries, especially in the case of Wales
(given the the Borders region between England and Scotland doesn't
contain fairly large conurbations in the way that it does with Wales).

[1] In real terms. *Many people live in north Wales but carry on
business in Chester, say. *They might want to use their free travel
there.

You can say the UK's internal borders are arbitrarily-delimited if you
wish, but there's a whole lot of history to it all. And if there are
lines then they have to get drawn somewhere.


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.

I don't call it pontification, I call it political debate.

Same thing.


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).

Though we should be careful not to devolve things like providing local
public transport services to such bodies. *We'd end up with the silly
situations that exist in, say, Germany, France and Switzerland, where
local services stop at the border even where this makes no sense
whatsoever. *We're better, IMO, with our quasi-national system whereby
local authorities can add funding but don't control the entire
service.

Wow - you're proposing that *local* transport issues should not be
devolved to *regional* bodies? Sorry, but I just can't get down with
that at all whatsoever! Devolution is all about getting those powers
closer to the people - the further away many of these powers and
decisions are from Westminster and Whitehall and the centre, and the
closer they are to the people and places they apply to, the better in
my reckoning.

In my 'fantasy constitution' (don't worry, it's not like a whole other
mythical type world!) I'd have regional assemblies across England -
and I suppose they'd be the ones with responsibility for local
transport (along with some arrangement with the local authorities I
guess). There could be certain incentives built in (by UK Parliament/
government) for co-operation on cross-regional services. And the
regions could offer free bus travel to senior citizens if they wanted
to - whether that would extend beyond their region would be up to them
to decide and work out. But I digress into the world of make-
believe... and anyway the free local bus travel in England genie is
out of the bottle, and with the ever greyer electorate no-one's about
to take it away from them!.

Mizter T wrote:

I never quite worked out why the responsibility for these schemes had
to be devolved. It makes no sense to me.
No, nor to me.

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.

One of the things devolutionists have never easily addressed is what happens
to service provision in border areas - whereas the Scottish border is
relatively unpopulated, there's a lot of people along the Welsh border for
whom Welsh only/all provision within Wales is not the best situation. I have
often wondered what kind of mess the London Mayor & Assembly can get up to
if they get many more powers - originally coming from Epsom in the strip
between the GLA boundary and the M25 it's particularly worrying when London
politicians start proposing congestion charging within the entire M25 (and
even just within the boundary would be messy, especially around Chessington
where decades of road planning have worked on the basis that there'll be no
barrier to crossing it). I cannot imagine how healthcare would be easily
devolved.

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:54:29 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T
wrote:

You can say the UK's internal borders are arbitrarily-delimited if you
wish, but there's a whole lot of history to it all. And if there are
lines then they have to get drawn somewhere.

My view is that no line needed drawing in the context of public
transport concessionary fares, i.e. that it would have made more sense
remaining a whole-UK matter.

Wow - you're proposing that *local* transport issues should not be
devolved to *regional* bodies?

Indeed, where it applies to rail, as it creates a broken and insular
network. I'd give the bodies the right to fund service increases, but
not to fully control what is there.

There could be certain incentives built in (by UK Parliament/
government) for co-operation on cross-regional services.

You'll still end up with the German/Swiss/French mess.

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To reply put my first name before the at.

On Thu, 1 Apr 2010 00:06:25 +0100, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:

I cannot imagine how healthcare would be easily
devolved.

Isn't NHS Scotland a separate organisation to NHS England?

But even then, I suppose a region is too small. I think that could
only be devolved effectively if we went to a more European-style
insurance based system rather than a monolithic NHS as we have at
present, which only really works *because* of its size.

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To reply put my first name before the at.

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Eric wrote:

Tom Anderson wr

Devolution seems completely daft to me. Make the right decision, and
make it once.

Assuming that the right decision is the same one no matter where you are
looking from. Not really a very sensible assumption.

The right decision might be "X in Scotland, Y in England and Wales, and Q
in Berwick". That decision could be made nationally; you don't need
devolution to do that.

Or do you mean that in England, they might think "X all over the UK" was
best, and in Scotland, "Y all over the UK" was best? I'm not impressed by
that case - it doesn't matter what people think, it matters what's best,
so let's just do that.

tom

--
Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with
comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself. -- Francis Jeffery

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Mizter T wrote:

On Mar 31, 9:54*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Mizter T wrote:

On Mar 31, 12:53*pm, Ian Jelf wrote:

In message , Neil Williams
writes
[snip]
I never quite worked out why the responsibility for these schemes had
to be devolved. *It makes no sense to me.

No, nor to me.

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.

Why, and could you supply examples?

Devolution seems completely daft to me. Make the right decision, and
make it once.

You serious? That's a pretty technocratic

No, it's *entirely* technocratic.

and rather unwordly way of looking at things, if I may say. By extension
you'd have a single European or even world government.

Yup, seems sensible.

Also, do you disapprove of any local governance, such as the GLSA
arranegements?

Local government - at any level, from village to continent - is a useful
optimisation, if there are decisions that need to be made that are purely
local. But i don't see the point in taking decisions which could be made
at a higher level and arbitrarily splitting them up to be decided locally.

Apart from anything else, devolution in Scotland had pretty much
become a political necessity - the clamour for it had grown so strong
over the preceding years.

Yup. People love it. Doesn't mean it's a good idea.

And in Northern Ireland, whilst the story is very different, again it's
pretty much a political necessity to have devolution arrangements in
order for any progress to be made. The picture in Wales is like as clear
cut.nothing like as clear cut.

Ditto.

tom

--
Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with
comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself. -- Francis Jeffery

On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Neil Williams wrote:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:54:29 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T
wrote:

You can say the UK's internal borders are arbitrarily-delimited if you
wish, but there's a whole lot of history to it all. And if there are
lines then they have to get drawn somewhere.

My view is that no line needed drawing in the context of public
transport concessionary fares, i.e. that it would have made more sense
remaining a whole-UK matter.

Wow - you're proposing that *local* transport issues should not be
devolved to *regional* bodies?

Indeed, where it applies to rail, as it creates a broken and insular
network. I'd give the bodies the right to fund service increases, but
not to fully control what is there.

Rail transport across the Hudson river in America is a good example of
this. You've got the state of New Jersey on one side, and the state of New
York (in the shape of Manhattan) on the other. Huge numbers of people
commute from New Jersey into New York.

You have a dense subway network on the New York side, with no projection
into New Jersey. You have a decent regional rail network on the New Jersey
side, with just one projection into New York, where it gets to a terminal
at Pennsylvania Station and stops dead. The only network with multiple
stops on both sides is the Port Authority Trans-Hudson network, which only
exists precisely because there is a cross-regional authority here, the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which has a sphere of interest
on both banks of the Hudson. But because it is thus limited, that network
doesn't extend far inland from either bank!

tom

--
Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with
comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself. -- Francis Jeffery

Neil Williams wrote:

I cannot imagine how healthcare would be easily
devolved.

Isn't NHS Scotland a separate organisation to NHS England?

Yes, ditto Wales & Northern Ireland. There have been some problems with this
set-up for Wales because there's a lot of people for whom the nearest
hospital is on the other side of the border, hence problems with
accountability. But I had in mind devolving healthcare in England where a
lot of the regional boundaries are arbitary and some are straddled by health
trusts and the like, especially around London.