2015 is years away but it will be good entertainment :sleeping:
Anyway the gist seems to be
- The proposals are part of a move to cut the number of MPs by 50 to 600 by the next general election.
- Under plans approved by Parliament England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland will all see their parliamentary representation reduced after the next election, due in May 2015.
- The government believes a smaller Commons will lower the cost of politics, saving £12m, while the system will be fairer as the number of registered voters in each constituency will be more uniform
The full details of allocated English seats, compared to 2010, are:
South East England: 83 seats (-1)
North West England: 68 (-7)
London - 68 seats (-5)
Eastern England: 56 seats (-2)
Yorkshire and Humber: 50 seats (-4)
West Midlands: 54 seats (-5)
South West England: 53 seats (-2)
East Midlands: 44 seats (-2)
North East England: 26 seats (-3)
Details for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be published at a later date though
Scotland: 52 (-7)
Wales: 30 (-10)
Northern Ireland: 16 (-2)
If you want a say, then visit before 5th December
Comments
1) A saving of £12m and more could be achieved by simply changing the current MPs pension scheme
2) Probably save the same by changing their expenses, i.e. reducing what they can claim and the cost of administering it
3) Any one know how much this excercise is costing, bet it's more than £12m
4) Be some interesting wheeling and dealing amongst existing MPs/Parties to see who 'ends up where'
e.g.
Chancellor George Osborne's Tatton constituency in Cheshire would disappear
Ed Balls and Hilary Benn could face a fight for one seat
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke's Rushcliffe constituency would cease to exist
The Dulwich and West Norwood seat of former Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell would disappear
5) will any of this actually make any difference to the way we are governed, how Parliament is run, or how we are represented ?
Lets cut another 450 and reduce the bill by a further £120 million and the rest
Seriously though, why do we need so many MP's, how many of you have seen, heard, or even know the name of your local MP ? I would rather see an MP elected for each County not town or sub district, of course they would need more admin staff per MP but they could re-employ the staff being made redundant by the MP losing thier jobs, the cost of a number of admin staff is far less than the cost of an MP and though they would need more per MP they would not need as much as they need now, not to mention the other savings of having less MP's such as mortgage interest payments, expenses etc.
So much government waste on "jobs for the boys" I am all for creating jobs but not seriously high paid jobs which are just not needed.
Do we also need that many MP's when parliamentary committees seem to do so much of the fact finding, research and decision making, and a lot of that could be put out to Universities as projects requiring only cost funding and not salaries.
Get a better deal in the EU instead of being the highest contributing nation by either threatening departure from it or better still leaving it.
We no longer need the EU, there are very few restrictions imposed on import and export these days, when EU membership took away that right Governments found that the balance of import and export was not that important anyway so Countries now welcome 2 way trade without the EU saying you have to, does anyone believe for one minute that France, Germany, Italy and all the rest will say "we are not selling you anymore of our cars or anything else and we won't buy your cheap gas or any other product anymore ?
What does the EU do for us ?
Why does London need 68 MP's when the West Midlands only needs 54, true there are 2 million more people in London than there are in the West Midlands but the West Midlands covers an area of around 13,000 sq km whereas London covers an area of only 1300 kms
Surely there is more diversity of problems and solutions to be considered in an area that is 10 times the size, being so totally heavily populated in a small area makes London very much the same wherever you live in the City but with so many rural areas, Cities (Stoke, Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton etc) and towns the problems must be more diverse therefore I can understand why more representatives would be needed in the wider area
Why do 68 MP's in London need a second home paid for by the taxpayer to be closer to London ? they already live there, isnt the second home perk supposed to be because they have to spend so much time in the City attending at Westminster, the MP for Westminster seems to think his family home is good enough and close enough because he chose to buy his (taxpayer financed) 2nd home away down the road in Devon ?
Why is it ok for an MP to have language lessons paid for by the taxpayer, isnt that something they should pay for like any other course/qualification people get in order to do thier job ? perhaps it helps a little to speak other languages but when an MP (and cabinet minister) gets us to pay for lessons in Chinese and Mandrin shortly after marrying a chinese national or the MP who just before retiring to Spain got the taxpayer to pay for Spannish lessons ?
You didn't really think they were going to stop claiming for things they shouldn't did you ;)
I have no really strong views about this (I'm not disenfranchised yet!) but I was interested in a twittered comment to SkyNews this morning that the reduction in MP's will reduce democracy to unacceptable levels.
I can't see that; a good Constituency MP's case load can be quite vast and if he/she is good at their job, they can influence outcomes in many areas for many people. Most of their correspondence however, is just 'top and tailed' - as they describe it, the MP's researchers and secretariat do most of the work - some of it voluntarily. As for the legislature, the Party machine generally imposes the whip and debates these days tend to be more mechanised and self serving rather than the 'cut and thrust' of days gone by where the success or otherwise of the reading of a Bill can be heavily influenced.
PMQ's is a circus and serves no useful purpose. Far better are the Standing Committees which hold ministers to account. Most of the questions at PMQ's in the main chamber are fabricated by Whips anyway.
The business of Government should be modernised and with greater delegation of power anyway to more local levels of governance, the need for the vast machine which is Westminster diminishes.
It's not as if the existing constuencies have any real history. They were created in 1972, and are barely out of short trousers. In the process perfectly good and ancient counties lost a lot of their identity. They made a mockery of Yorkshire's ridings by inventing a completely fake region called South Yorkshire and trying to destroy the East Riding.
Bring back the counties!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can accept that we are not the biggest financial contributor to the EU, I thought we were but didnt have any real basis for thinking this, I am sure we are a major contributor, but my personal belief is that even if we are the smallest financial contributor it is still not a good deal, better prices, but isn't that just because we pour in vast amounts that could be used in the UK to make our companies more competative anyway, for example, could we not just eliminate VAT on British made products to stimulate sales of items that create UK jobs, it wouldn't have to be a British product just made in Britain.
Toyota cars in Derby, Samsung factories etc, not only would it lessen the need to shop abroad for cometitively priced products but it would encourage foreign firms to build thier european factories in Britain especially asian companies like Japanese or Chinese Companies, but even european Companies like BMW or Peugeot would know that if they built thier car factories in Britain thier cars could sell for 20% less than if they were built in Germany or France, unemployment and the cost of it would fall, and the VAT loss would be replaced by no EU contributions and lesser unemployment benefit being paid.
The Swiss seem to do ok without being in the EU
I certainly don't see how the countries begging for EU financial help like Greece and Ireland can at the same time be paying billions into it ?
AND boundary changes, hated them, proud to have been born in Lancashire and proud of my Lancashire tattoo I suddenly found I was from Cumbria yuk, (no offence Cumbrians lovely place but I wanna be from Lancashire)
I thought the whole idea behind this was that the revised areas had around the same numbers of us in there to make our votes count more equally when we all go to the polls, why should the voters in the areas with a lower poulation density have a bigger impact on any national vote.
All UK laws come from the EU, the USA manages an upper house of 100 and lower house of 435. Basically the UK needs to kick out all the Lords and 400 MP's.
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