One thing has occurred to me on reading it however is if the referendum question is
Do you want the Assembly now to be able to make laws on all matters in the 20 subject areas it has powers for?
What will happen if the Assembly was to gain powers in other subject areas, Policing for instance. Will law making powers be assumed? Will this depend on the whim of Westminster who may grant responsibility but not the means to change the Law as now happens. Will we have to have a referendum on every area of new
responsibility?
I hope whoever drew up the bill on this thought out the likelihood of the Assembly gaining responsibility in more than the 20 areas it currently has.
In many ways this reflects what the referendum is about if we have responsibility for a subject we must have the means to affect the way they are run by law making.
What we are talking about is if you elect people to the assembly to make a change in they must be given the tools to do so
The Welsh Assembly is not a School Council set up by a Head to give pupils some idea of responsibility and as a lesson in democracy whilst making sure he or she can ignore any "Wild Ideas".
I remind you of the comment of True Wales spokesman Paul Matthews,
"We’re not the most innovative or creative, and very often those that are, move out of Wales.”The likes of True Wales believe that we are incapable of even making simple decisions and will jeopardize our future by such a portrayal. A No vote on March 3rd will say to the World "here are a people afraid of responsibility. W ho can't even have the courage to make simple changes to their lives but must constantly ask its bigger brother for approval".
March 3rd will be an opportunity for Wales to tell the world it is prepared to act responsible and willing to look at its own affairs and sought out its own problems.
2 comments:
All depends on the nature of the Yes vote I guess. Because of the overwhelming Yes vote in Scotland in 1997, more power has been transferred to the Scottish Parliament without going through a referednum. Not the same in Wales since only half of us bothered to vote & the Yes vote was only narrowly won.
If we get a narrow yes vote this time and a low turnout, the Tories could see this as a mandate to frustrate the Assembly further. Yet if we can get a more convincing Yes vote they may not stand in our way
Anonymous 11:27
There is of course a difference in that this is the first Non-Labour government since devolution and whilst there are still many die hard anti d evolutionist in Labour the Scottish experience shows they may look favorably on devolving more areas but there are clearly more hard line Unionists in the Conservative party and I can't see the Lib-Dems pressurising their Westminster colleagues to devolve more areas of responsibility.
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