Regionalisation should not be priority

WITH regard to Robert Craig’s recent letter, Mr Craig seeks to justify his claims for a country based on narrow margins of old Anglo-Saxon states by comparing them to a country that was created after the First World War, imprisoned first by the Germans in the Second World War and then Stalin after the Second World War, now two countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They were before the First World War part of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hardly a comparable situation to England over a thousand years ago.

I worry that people with the shared beliefs of Robert Craig are playing right into the hands of Gordon Brown, who will be in the new Labour Government ‘Local Democracy Czar’.

Gordon Brown signed the Scottish Claim of Right way back in the 1980s in which he pledged to put the interests and wellbeing of Scotland above all others, that means us, the English. When Chancellor under Tony Blair, Brown – with the majority of the Cabinet at that time, who had all signed the same Scottish Claim of Right – forced through the Devolution Act, giving Scotland a Parliament and Wales an Assembly.

The rest of that Act mentioned the regions of England, the intention being to break up our country.

Brown thought the people of the North East would give him a good start by agreeing to the establishment of a North East Region. The English people gave their reply by voting 7 to 1 not to accept this ‘region’ – and nor should we, the population of England, one of the oldest countries in the world.

No thanks Mr Craig, I rather think we will have to be on our toes in the next few years, and other more vital matters than regionalisation need to be dealt with, most certainly defence of the realm, policing and the NHS.

Stuart Eels Chippenham, Wiltshire