Wednesday, September 24, 2014

English Votes for English Laws

Ed Milliband’s refusal to accept “English votes for English laws” will rightly be seen as party political bias of the worst kind and should be condemned by all fair minded people who believe in democracy.
Now that more powers are to be devolved to Scotland the same powers should be devolved to an English parliament made up of English MPs at Westminster.   There should be an English First Minister and government, just as in Scotland.   The costs of this extra bureaucracy would be offset by reducing the salaries of Westminster MPs as they would only need to work for say two days a week.
All the above could be done very quickly but there are consequences.   To deal with these a constitutional convention should be set up immediately with a period of one year in which to report.   The convention should consist of one third MPs and two thirds members of the public.   It would need to examine House of Lords reform, necessity for a written constitution, revision of constituency boundaries and number of constituencies, over representation of Wales at Westminster and funding for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.   One further consideration should be to look at the system of elections as it is quite clear that First Past The Post has broken down.

With goodwill all this can be achieved relatively quickly and we can create a democracy for the 21st century.   All we need is the will to get on and do it.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Devo-max and what about Scots who do not live in Scotland?

If you want to know the answers watch this :

Nicola Sturgeon replies

Steps to improve membership

The results of our poll on Steps to improve Conservative Party membership were as follow:

Let members choose candidates                                 66%

Chairman of the Party to be elected by members       50%

Let members drive the Conference Agenda               50%

Say No to State Funding                                            50%

Empower the National Convention                            33%

Hold a Conservative Annual General Meeting           33%

Break up the Coalition Government                           33%


More dialogue between MPs and volunteers              16%

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Letter to the Prime Minister

                                                                        2nd September 2014

Rt. Hon David Cameron MP
10 Downing Street,
Westminster
London
SW1



 Dear Prime Minister

Defence Policy

            At a meeting of the members of COPOV held on Saturday 19th, July 2014 in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire it was unanimously resolved that:

“H.M.Government be requested to instruct the Secretary of State for Defence, whilst attending the NATO Meeting of Ministers in Cardiff in September 2014 to press all member countries to pledge to spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP on defence during the current Financial Year and to increase their Defence expenditure above this figure in future years. "
           
 Yours sincerely
  
John E. Strafford
                                                                      Chairman