Is the United Kingdom breaking up without us noticing?

[woodenhead]

Tread lightly on this topic, there be politics afoot and if we're not careful we might step in it.

 

I've been watching the news recently, I don't do it often but I was intrigued by the events last week when the EU and the Government were finally all making positive noises in unison.

 

Anyway onto the topic - why would the BBC show a map of just England when talking about Covid measures - they talk about Scotland, they talk about Wales but don't show an maps then when they do England, they show a map of just England.  When I first saw it, I thought Wales looked odd, I was sure it stuck out more than that before realising Wales wasn't there (and of course neither was Scotland).

 

I know each administration is doing things differently, but I don't really like whole countries being omitted from a map like they don't exist - or have we really moved so far apart now (that I hadn't noticed) and this is the new normal?

[KeithMacdonald]

1 minute ago, woodenhead said:

Anyway onto the topic - why would the BBC show a map of just England when talking about Covid measures - they talk about Scotland, they talk about Wales but don't show an maps then when they do England, they show a map of just England. 

 

It can be confusing. The BBC in London tends to report NHS England as though it were the whole of the UK. It sometimes needs a conscious effort (by people like us) to look at the seperate and autonomous NHS operations in NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and NHS Northern Ireland.

[StevieD71]

To make matters more confusing, it's not even called the NHS here in Northern Ireland. It's the HSC (Health and Social Care).

[Legend]

Speaking as someone in Scotland I can say yes it’s giving that appearance .

 

In fairness up here Holyrood is responsible for lots of policies , distinct from England , so it does kind of make sense to report it separately . 
 

Without getting into the politics ,it is a shame , particularly when you have a national pandemic that knows no borders . 

[black and decker boy]

Health is a devolved matter. Each home nation presents its own figures and sets its own restrictions.

 

Boris cannot present nor dictate for the Whole U.K. but some graphs (maybe the ONS ones) do show all 4 nations trends.

 

Collated U.K. figures are released daily except at Christmas when IIRC, Scotland  & NI haven’t reported from 24th until 29th.

[ian]

27 minutes ago, darrel said:

Scotland never voted for ..

And there you veer into politics.

 

The demos chose particular courses. Individual people, groups and even countries may have wished for a different outcome but we abide by the choice of the majority,

Edited December 27, 2020 by ian

[iL Dottore]

From afar, I see the need for the UK to move toward a regional form of Government - possibly at a Kanton equivalent (county?), for the simple reason that what is an important issue for - say - Norfolk, may be of little importance to - say - Cornwall. A Swiss style federation has the advantage of having a small supranational / supraregional national government (for matters like defence of the whole nation or the nation”s currency) leaving the kantons to make the bulk of the laws (and spend the bulk of taxes raised in that kanton in that kanton.

Of course it is more complicated than that, but basically tax raising, law making and political accountability goes: gemeinde - kanton - National government.

However, this form of government requires two things that could be problematic: it requires cross-party collaboration at all levels (not much evident currently in the UK) and for Westminster to devolve (“give up”) a huge tranche of powers to lower levels - something I don’t see happening easily, if at all (I can’t imagine a senior Mandarin in Whitehall willingly swapping - say - The Royal Opera House - for - say - Morris Dancing in Truro )

[APOLLO]

Hasn't Cardiff already got a Canton ?

 

Brit15

[Steamport Southport]

The NHS has always been regional. It's like the police and fire brigades.

 

 

 

Jason

[ian]

49 minutes ago, darrel said:

If England constantly voted for a political party but ended up with whatever party Scotland voted for.

 

I was under the impression that the voters resident in Scotland had voted for a number of different parties, the same as the voters in the other home nations.

 

Each constituency elected an MP, although not all (often not the majority) of voters in that constituency supported them. Ditto for the country as a whole. That is the way that democracy works in the UK.

[woodenhead]

I know if you look at this from a Governmental perspective it does become political but what I am thinking here is the actions of the media treating each country as apart from the United Kingdom, when you show maps of one country and simply discard the bits beyond the border it rather destroys what I am used to - a United Kingdom with so much in common.

 

If I go to Google and ask for a map of the United Kingdom, I see Eire included, it will be marked as seperate but it isn't wiped from the map, it's still there, it still exists.  If you put a map of just England onto a news article it looks like it only matters to England whereas much of what happens at one end of our land mass impacts people at the other end too.

 

The weather thankfully remains a national picture showing all the nations but for how long?

 

Has the BBC in it's attempts to break a London bias just created a national bias in it's place.

[ian]

There is an identity problem with the BBC, rather like the government in that there is the BBC, BBC Scotland, BBC NI and BBC Wales but no BBC England so sometimes things can get a bit confusing.

 

"And now for the news where you are..."

 

"Mum, there's a camera crew in the front garden!"

Edited December 27, 2020 by ian
Clarification

[Steamport Southport]

I think you're reading far too much into it.

 

Times like this we should be thinking of poor New Zealand....

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-47171599

 

[Zomboid]

Scotland has its own dedicated media outlets, which will cover things there. Likewise Wales and NI.

 

Politically it's all a result of there being devolution in Scotland, Wales and NI, but not England. The result being that the overall UK government is directly responsible for a load of stuff in England but not the other nations. I think the idea of Regional English Assemblies was rejected by the first region to be given the opportunity, and it never went any further.

[woodenhead]

3 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Times like this we should be thinking of poor New Zealand....

 

Is that like in the Antartic, near Greenland, Shetland and Scotland

[Hibelroad]

I assumed that BBC Wales and BBC Scotland would be showing different maps, is that not that case? 

[KeithMacdonald]

59 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

for Westminster to devolve (“give up”) a huge tranche of powers to lower levels - something I don’t see happening easily, if at all (I can’t imagine a senior Mandarin in Whitehall willingly swapping - say - The Royal Opera House - for - say - Morris Dancing in Truro )

 

Wasn't that exact theme a classic episode of Yes Minister?

 

 

 

[KeithMacdonald]

 

 

[Kickstart]

1 hour ago, caradoc said:

 

Fair point, but in the current Scottish Parliament the ruling party is a minority administration, dependant on votes from other parties, and in the 2019 General Election the same party won by far the greatest number of seats - With 45% of the vote. So it can be argued that in neither case did Scotland really actually vote for that party ! But that is how democracy works and I accept the results, whether they go my way or not. 

 

This is probably not just a Scottish problem. The amount of votes per seat are massively inconsistent through the uk, and leads to a case of voting for the least worst candidate, which badly skews the results.

 

There are details here:-

 

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-turning-votes-into-seats/

 

SNP required 25900 votes per seat won, against the Greens who required 866400 votes per seat won. From the above page it seems parties that are strong regionally are comparatively over represented.

 

Suspect any regional independence would just result in a different substantial minority feeling unrepresented.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[Bernard Lamb]

3 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

The NHS has always been regional. It's like the police and fire brigades.

 

 

 

Jason

But not all fire brigades are funded in the same manner.

Just another quirk in our quaint way of doing things in the UK.

Bernard

[AY Mod]

4 hours ago, darrel said:

The English would be very angry, and rightly so.

 

And I get somewhat annoyed when you repeatedly ignore forum rules regarding politics. I've removed that an posts earlier today.

[Fenman]

2 hours ago, caradoc said:

...

But that is how democracy works and I accept the results, whether they go my way or not. 

 

I think your problem is that democracy doesn’t really work any more. When was the last time a U.K. government with a majority of parliamentary seats actually had a majority of the popular vote?

 

In my constituency the dominant party could stand a turnip as a candidate and it would still win. My vote is utterly meaningless — except that winning parties try to use my participation in elections as proof of my support for the corrupt system, so I’ve stopped voting in those elections (while continuing to vote in more representative elections and referendums).

 

We have seen evermore centralisation of power in the U.K. for many decades. The old system, which was initially created in England more than a thousand years ago, was based on the county as a fundamental unit of governance. Most things, from education to army regiments to the judicial system, were based on that unit (or even devolved to the Parish, like social services). But the transformation over the last few decades of local government into, effectively, local administration of central government policies, has left an enormous democratic hole.

 

The OP wrote about the possible break-up of the U.K. — which I also think is now more a case of when rather than if — but it feels to me as if England is going through the same process. What, exactly, does Cornwall or Tyneside have in common with Surrey or Kensington? England was an artificial construction of a small number of brilliant Anglo-Saxon monarchs. And the U.K. then started as an English empire, a testament to the vision and military genius of Athelstan the Glorious (who, ironically, is unknown to pretty much most English people), and some of his successors. 
 

Times change and nothing is forever (the U.K. itself has flexed and changed numerous times over the years, most recently losing a huge chunk of Ireland; England has also changed (how many times has Berwick shifted from England to Scotland, and back again?)). It’s just vanity to assume that what we have now is the natural and permanent state of things. Surely covid has reminded us of that?

 

Paul