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.

Is that a Licenced Sporran you'r wearing laddie?

You couldn’t make it up - The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive said there are now new rules to bring Scotland into line with existing European regulations, designed to protect vulnerable species.

They require anyone who owns any part of a protected animal to obtain a licence the penalty is a maximum fine of £5,000 and/or six months in prison.

It seems that Kilt wearers would be liable to prosecution under the regulations, if they were in possession of an unlicensed sporran.

Best place to keep the licence would presumably be your sporran as they would presumably be most likely to be asked to produce it when actually wearing it.

"Is that a licence in your sporran, or are you just glad to see me?" ;-) Hat tip to Mae West.

The legislation applies to animals killed after 1994.

So how could you prove how old your sporran was - and more to the point, exactly how much will the licence cost…

No taxation without representation

Fiona Hyslop, Scotland's Nationalist education minister, is planning to spend Taxes raised from England on Scottish school children.

How? Because taxes raised in the UK go in a common pot and are then divided out unevenly in favour of Scotland.

The Scottish parliament can spend their own money on what they like - and if that goes to reduce infant class sizes, or student grants, then fine.

But did they ever hear of the phrase “No taxation without representation”?

Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance pointed out:

"Sooner or later the Government is going to have to explain why it is OK for SNP ministers in Holyrood to make pledges on public spending with money raised from English taxpayers.

"Voters north of the border are within their rights to want more local control but fairness means not asking someone else to pay for it. English taxpayers once again see the SNP avoiding the logic of their own independence objective. You can't go your own way if you don't pay your own way."

Joel Barnet, who created the formula, is calling for it to be scrapped, as it comes under intense and increasing political scrutiny because the disparity between public spending in Scotland and England is now more than £1,500 per head. This is threatens to create a public backlash in England.

A YouGov opinion poll indicated 70% of English voters now believe Scotland is being "subsidised" by the rest of the UK and things should be balanced. By contrast, 74% of Scots want to keep the money rolling in just as it is. Why would you be surprised?

Defenders of the current system (the 74%?) say cutting Scotland's share of funds from central government could severely damage the country because there public spending forms a much larger part of the economy than in the rest of the UK – well it would form a larger part wouldn’t it, because they can afford it having an extra "subsidy of more than £11 billion a year.

The disparity is funding artificially inflated levels of Scottish public spending, among the highest in Europe.

On top of that there is also the minor matter of Scottish MPs being able to vote in Parliament on purely English matters - that will not impact on their own electorate.

In this respect they are effectively unelected and unaccountable by and to, those they govern - This is not democracy.

Ayatollah O'Brian

It looks as if Scotland may have it’s very own McAyatollah.

Cardinal Keith O’Brian an ardent Scottish secessionist has now effectively threatened Catholic politicians who do not take an anti abortion stance with virtual excommunication .

He went on TV yesterday, emotively proclaiming all abortion to be murder, referring to it as the “slaughter of the innocents” and "an evil trade". Saying: "We are killing - in our country (Scotland) - the equivalent of a classroom of kids every single day. Can you imagine that? Two Dunblane massacres a day in our country going on and on - and when's it going to stop?"

He denied actually wanting to excommunicate pro-choice Catholic politicians, but did the next best thing warning: "They must consider their own consciences - and whether or not they can approach the altar to receive Holy Communion.".

One possible reason for his support for political secession may relate to the possibility of acquiring much greater power in the smaller political pond – divided they fall, so to speak.

Free speech is one thing and he is perfectly entitled to that – but this is clearly using his position to deliberately heavily pressure susceptible politicians into voting the way he wants, rather than for what they may think for the best.

He would probably be one of the first to complain if, say, the Queen, were to do something similar in relation to supporting the act of union, despite her being personally involved with it.

A resounding success?

Apparently the Electoral Reform Society has hailed Scotland's council election as a resounding success!

A report from the society is set to claim that the single transferable vote (STV) system used in the 2007 Council elections worked well.

They do concede that there were "major inadequacies" in the vote for the Scottish Parliament, with over than 140,000 rejected/spoiled ballots.

Given that there were 45,687 rejected/spoiled ballot papers in the local government elections for Scotland, this means the local government elections were actually only one third as bad as the parliamentary election - and that has surely at least got to qualify as, “minor inadequacies”.