Free prescriptions in Scotland Paid for by English taxpayers.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Nationalist Government’s health minister, said she wanted to erase ‘inequality’ in the NHS.

But it seems that some, are more equal than others, because her solution is to massively increase inequality in the NHS. She is planning on using English Taxpayers to subsidise the abolition of all prescription charges north of the border by 2011, within the lifetime of the current Scottish Parliament.

This is in addition to the free eye care and dental check ups already provided.

This is about as an extreme version of the so-called postcode lottery as you can find. Made all the more galling by the fact that due to inequalities in the tax distribution system English tax payers are being milked by Scottish politicians to fund a first class service for the Scots they do not get themselves.

It also leaves entirely aside that Scottish students will be able to avoid the burden of student dept and get a free university education, at the expense of English students having to subsidise them when that start work, whilst servicing their own debts.

One wouldn’t mind so much if it were a matter of ensuring everyone in the UK enjoyed the same standards in thinks like health care. It is understandable that for various reasons it may be more expensive to provide an identical standard in different geographical locations.

It is an entirely different thing when votes are being bought by politicians who are unaccountable to the those being taxed, buying votes from their own electorate with a two tier service.

What was that phrase? ‘No taxation without representation’?

It may be entirely coincidental that Nu-Lab’s, Gordon Brown, his glove puppet Chancellor, Alistair Darling, Des Brown, the Defence secretary and Douglas Alexander, International Development, to name but a few, all hold parliamentary seats north of the border.

The cost to the South East will only get worse when the government’ssecret council tax re evaluation for England finally takes place, as it is likely to bite hardest there. The re evaluation was supposedly postponed in 2005, but the process has continued in secret.

Since it was ‘postponed’ the government have ploughed in £3.2 million to develop a new revaluation database incorporating every home in England. So far despite the so-called ‘postponement’ the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) have gathered details of millions of homes, cataloguing things like how many WCs, bathrooms properties have and if they have conservatories or greenhouses.

Documents indicate they will also be looking at things like how ‘nice’ the area is, what parking spaces are available - Basically anything that can possible be stretched to justify ramping up the tax and punish anyone who wants to better their lives, or the environment they live in.