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It might work if there was thought put into who exactly has responsibility for what. Currently local government empties the bins and contributes to schools, but it has to operate under strict limits set by Westminster. Some local government is county-sized, some of it works with even smaller regions.

If you add a wider regional level of government on top of that, things may get confusing.

The most important issues are transport infrastructure and energy conservation, and I doubt regional parliaments would be good at either.

What might work is large N/SE/SW regional splits. But you still wouldn't get the full benefit without a push for formal devolution from Westminster, and the idea wouldn't be popular.

With Tories in power it has no chance at all of happening.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 07:14:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Spain can't work, Britain proves it.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 07:35:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Did I say that?

You have to remember we have a very different culture here, and it's rare for government to be any good at any level.

We also don't have the regional identities that Spain has. We have Londonandthesoutheast, Up North, and Wessex, which is a bit odd.

So the idea of regionalisation confuses people. It doesn't fit into anything they have experience of, and - unlike Scotland and Wales - it's not a natural trend.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 08:18:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Maybe I don't realise where the Spanish regional identities come from that justified 17 regions back around 1980 (though, after nearly 30 years, all of the regions that we do have now are beginning to show signs of developing regional identities). Quoting myself from the thread I linked to above:
One thing that puzzles me is that the West Lothian question never posed itself in Spain, despite the fact that the plan that the framers of the Constitution of 1978 had in mind was basically for the peripheral regions (Galicia, Basque Country, Catalonia, and maybe Navarra, Andalucia and the islands) to get regional assemblies and having the rest under the National Parliament. In actuality, it took less than 10 years for the entire country to get carved up into 17 regional governments (plus Ceuta and Melilla).
Nobody was expecting everyone to be a regionalist. Maybe what heppened was that Andalusia "fast-tracked" itself by holding a referendum, which was a provision in the Constitution that nobody expected to be put into practice leaving the "fast track" for Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country only.
Why was it that all of "Greater Castille" didn't just constitute itself into a single autonomous unit (like the putative English parliament) and instead organised itself into 10 regions? Is it because the mechanism was explicitly bottom-up? Also, the existing Regional organisation from Franco's time greatly influenced (but differs in significant ways) from the current subdivisions.

Also note that, just like the Spanish Autonomy Statutes are organic laws of the National Parliament (second only to the Constitution in rank) so the UK's regional assemblies have been created by act of the Westminster Parliament.



When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 08:26:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, I'd echo TBG's point. Spain already had a certain regionalism, you actually have 4 or 5 dialects of spanish, some of which are very different.

With the exception of about 4 people in cornwall, the english only speak english. There are regional variations of some words but they don't even make it to the status of a dialect. We just have a wide variety of accents, but they're blurring.

So regionalism confuses us, we can't even decide where the Midlands are or The North starts.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 09:47:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
What dialects of Spanish do you have in mind? Please don't say "Galician, Basque and Catalan".

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 09:54:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Helen:
With the exception of about 4 people in cornwall, the english only speak english.

Often, not even that.

Snark aside, there would be a lot more interest in a split along racial and religious lines. Little Englanders don't much like brown people, and - realistically - sometimes vice versa. We already have areas of London with strong racial and cultural characteristics but - luckily - there's no precedent for them to try to act independently.

Practically, they really couldn't anyway, not even if they put up barricades. But if we ever had a BNP-type government I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to see the bigger cities splitting up spontaneously into racial ghettos. That would be a very bad thing, but it's a lot easier for people here to imagine that than an England split into

Traditional English regional colour is often really just a fabrication of the heritage and tourism industries. Areas like the Cotswolds have a distinct flavour, but there's nothing political about it - it's about the physical countryside and different kinds of pubs and cottages, not about dialect and identity.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 11:01:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Dialect is dying out Me Duck.

Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 11:15:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't think the notion that there is more dialectal/accentual variation in Spain than in Britain holds water.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri May 9th, 2008 at 02:13:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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