COMMENT If Scotland breaks away, for those of us Southerners who love the kilted Celts, such a parting will be bitterly painful ANOTHER week another slew of articles announcing the imminent break up of Britain. From Simon Jenkins (Boris Johnson can’t rely on internal feuds to derail Scottish independence): “Anglo-Scottish relations are heading for an almighty crash and Boris Johnson cannot look the other way. By the time he has finished in office, it is perfectly possible that Scotland will have gone the way of Ireland in 1922 and Northern Ireland will have voted itself back into the Dublin fold.”
We are left with the huge topic of England – and its place and role in the futur THE UK is in major flux. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are increasingly in a different political space and marching to their own beats. Westminster day by day underlines its incompetence and unfitness, which leaves us with the huge topic of England – and its place and role in the future. As UK politics increasingly come to resemble “four-nation politics” the question of how England is governed, thinks of itself and collectively sees its future, has become one of the major issues facing politics across these isles. How it evolves will be up to the people and citizens of England, but without a doubt, the outcome of this debate will have repercussions for all of us across these isles – including Scotland.
one in one out applied to the introduction of new regulatory measures. In its
report to the OECD, the government claimed that 3,095 regulations were scrapped or improved and thereof 1,376 changes [had] a material benefit – apparently amounting to more than £1.2 billion. The Deregulation Act 2015 enacted many of the reforms identified by this exercise.
The New Labour years saw the rise of Regulatory Impact Assessments for new legislation and policies (later increasingly known as Impact Assessments), and the ascendancy of the Better Regulation Executive and
Regulatory Policy Committee. This tendency might have been thought to have reached its apogee when the one-time Department of Trade and Industry (now the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) became the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. However, it was under the Coalition Government that the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 introduced a statutory obligation on g
Scottish Secretary speech on Scottish farming
Alister Jack delivered a speech to the National Farmers Union of Scotland AGM.
From:
11 February 2021 (Transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered)
We farmers are nothing if not innovators, early adopters of new technology and ways of thinking which we adapt to deliver tangible results.
The story of farming in Scotland is one of continuous improvement and progress and we stand now in the foothills of what I believe is an exciting new era for agriculture, one filled with genuine opportunity.
We have now left the EU and are out into the wider world. We are making decisions for ourselves and we are in charge of our own destiny.
Mark Isherwood, MS for North Wales
By Mark Isherwood, MS for North Wales Despite Welsh Government Ministers and all five other North Wales county councils confirming that local authorities have discretion to pay out Business Grants to self-catering businesses unable to meet Welsh Government eligibility criteria, but able to prove they are a legitimate business, Flintshire Council alone continues to insist that they are ineligible, leaving several struggling. Questioning the First Minister, I therefore called on him to place on the record that local authorities are able to use their discretion to support such businesses, and he confirmed this to be the case. It is therefore shocking that Flintshire Council alone is still rejecting this, when equivalent businesses in every other North Wales county have received this essential support from their councils.