The Assisted Dying Bill has been passed by the UK Parliament. Sorry, the so-called UK Parliament. Were MPs representing Scots and Northern Irish constituencies involved in that vote? Because, if so, non-accountable MPs, MPs unelected by the English and Welsh, have sway over life and death in those countries.
The "UK" Government's relentless brown-nosing of the Scots and, to a lesser degree, the Welsh, is sickening. Based on historical victimhood nonsense, the racist Celtic myth of 1707, and an awful lot of gobbing-off amongst the eight million residents of these countries, the rest of us suffer the West Lothian Question (the Assisted Dying Bill is an example and the 2003 Foundations Hospital in England Bill was decisive), the Barnett Formula (loathed by Lord Joel Barnett, who created it) and asymmetric national devolution in general.
The Northern Ireland situation is more complicated and I don't hear a relentless tide of racist, exclusive chanting from there.
Worth remembering that the partitioning of Ireland took place under a Welsh PM, with much interest and support for this coming from Scots Protestant MPs.
With Scotland and Wales, we are clasping a couple of asps to our bosoms. I have read and heard repeatedly the nationalist, English-phobic nonsense spouted by certain Scots and Welsh folk - even from new arrivals in England, who read and believe and think the country they have arrived in is evil.
This creates tensions in England. A Muslim taxi driver recently told me all about how the English had been nothing but rotten to the innocent Scots and Welsh over the centuries, how they had stolen England from the Welsh, and that the British Empire was all the work of the English. I gave him my views, and when I left the taxi he said he was going home to acquaint himself with the Scots' actions at the time of the Empire, the truth about William Wallace, the Barnett Formula, the West Lothian Question, DNA studies, 'Anglo Saxons' and the racist Celtic myth - originating with a comment about languages in 1707.
As for Wales, it was a principality of the Kingdom of England for centuries - a principality with a tiny population. If the English had hated the Welsh so much, they would have been able to exorcise the notion of Wales being, in anyway, something in its own right.
Of course, England itself throws up some interesting 'right on' denigrators - one man on YouTube positively rants about the English language, how it was largely derived from elsewhere, how he backs the racist 'Celtic' myth, and so on. Like other languages are free of influences from historic invaders or immigrants? He seems to be promoting some kind of purity myth about other languages as opposed to English, which itself seems racist. Aren't all nations mongrel? His comments threads are loaded with anti-English hate.
What this man does is actually promote hatred and the continued mistreatment of the so-called UK's largest and most ethnically diverse country.
The 'UK' Government, itself as English-phobic as can be, does nothing but continue to appease a tiny minority of Scots and Welsh people, including giving Scotland back a UK Secretary of State when it now has a national parliament!
England deserves a dedicated, national parliament and a modern, inclusive sense of English identity which learns the lessons of the past and celebrates the successes. It needs a dedicated national parliament, not submerging as 'Britain', the rump of the UK.
It is the largest and most ethnically diverse country of all, even proportionally.
Allowing racist Scots and Welsh tails to continue wagging the dog and create elitism, while stirring up racial tensions in England, is simply not on.
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