Wales Votes To ... er ...

I posted a while ago about the referendum in Wales on further powers for the Welsh Assembly. Well, yesterday we voted, and today we got the results: a resounding tinkle, as N F Simpson might have said.

In terms of the democratic process, the result is a clear victory for the Yes campaign - two to one in favour - and this is how the mainstream media and the parties involved are playing it. "An old nation has come of age", as Carwyn Jones confusingly put it. It takes an old curmudgeon like me to think that the result is anything but clear.

Yes: 63.5%
No: 36.5%
Turnout: 35.4%

It's all about the turnout. In the 1997 referendum which paved the way for the establishment of the Assembly, turnout was a poor 50.1%. Yesterday, that slumped to 35.4%. What that says to me is that two out of three Welsh people couldn't be bothered enough to get off their arses to vote for something they don't really see the relevance of.

Looked at this way, we have the following breakdown:

Voted Yes: 22%
Voted No: 13%
Not bothered enough to leave the house: 65%

That's the BBC's "resounding yes".

I voted 'No' on the principle that it is madness to vote to give politicians any more power than they already have. 78% of my adopted countrymen would seem to agree.

The voting process was the strangest and least clear that I have ever experienced. The question on the ballot paper was:

The National Assembly for Wales: what happens at the moment

The Assembly has powers to make laws on 20 subject areas, such as:

Agriculture
Education
The Environment
Health
Housing
Local Government

In each subject area, the Assembly can make laws on some matters, but not others. To make laws on any of these other matters, the Assembly must ask the UK Parliament for its agreement. The UK Parliament then decides each time whether or not the Assembly can make these laws.

The Assembly cannot make laws on subject areas such as defence, tax or welfare benefits, whatever the result of this vote.

If most voters vote “yes”, the Assembly will be able to make laws on all matters in the 20 subject areas it has powers for, without needing the UK Parliament's agreement. If most voters vote “no”, what happens at the moment will continue.

Do you want the Assembly now to be able to make laws on all matters in the 20 subject areas it has powers for?

Inside the polling station there were several sheets pinned to the walls giving further information, such as the full list of 20 subject areas, but even those didn't explain what laws could or could not currently be made in Cardiff and which would be available to the Assembly in the event of a Yes vote. You would have had to go out looking for that yourself, as it wasn't available in any campaign literature that I saw. In fact, apart from the glossy "you are going to have a referendum" booklet, nothing came to the house at all, and there was very little sign of the Yes and No campaigns anywhere to be seen in public spaces. I heard no-one - literally no-one - discussing the issues beforehand.

I tell a lie: on the day of the referendum, as he was leaving work, our minibus driver told me he would be voting 'No', because it was "all bollocks".

Wales has spoken.

We know best

Via Sue, news that there is to be a public rally on 2 April on 'Leaving the European Union'.

2 April 2011
14:30 to 17:00
Friends Meeting House
173 Euston Road
London NW1 2BJ

Every poll ever taken in the UK shows a clear majority in favour or leaving the EU. We have been promised a referendum on our continued membership, first by Gordon Brown, then by Nick Clegg, and finally by 'Cast Iron' Dave Cameron. None of these have come to pass. Until now, denial of a voice to the British people has been a matter of dither and obfuscation rather than outright refusal. There has always been a good reason for 'not yet'.

Today, that has changed. From today's Daily Express:

But Downing Street insisted that the issue of EU membership was not on the
table. A spokesman said: “The Government believes that membership of the EU is
in the national interest, and for this reason there will not be a referendum on
whether we remain a member state.

So that's quite clear, then. In black and white.

We know best.
We know what you are going to say.
So we won't ask you.

Counterproductive to treat children like this. Illegal to treat employees like this. Government policy to treat a nation of 60m like this.

I'm not a halfwit. Tipping point reached. It's UKIP from now on.

Green And Pleasant Land

I've never been to Greenland, but I'd like to go. I imagine I would like the people. After all, Greenland is the only country to leave 'Europe', as our masters insist on calling it. They left what was the European Community in 1985, the only country ever to have done so.

Basically, they realised that the EC was decimating their primary industry, fishing, and had a referendum on leaving the EC. The referendum told the government that the people wanted to leave, and the government (servants of the people rather then their masters) honoured the people's decision. Greenland now has a higher average income than Germany, France or Britain.

Fishing used to be a major British industry, too, and we were more dependent on it than any other European nation, for obvious geographical reasons. It is estimated that when Britain entered the EU we controlled 80% of all European fish stocks. This is because our fishermen had carefully managed fish stocks in the North Sea, whereas French and Spanish fishermen had heavily over-fished the Mediterranean and had destroyed most of the stocks. Nowadays, gigantic Spanish trawlers hoover up the seas round the British Isles, and our fishing industry is a shadow of what it used to be.

Incidentally, while the unions and the left were outraged at job losses in the subsidised coal industry under Mrs Thatcher, they were strangely quiet about the much greater job losses in our profitable fishing fleets. Fishermen are tough and independent people (they have to be) and perhaps they weren't the right kind of working class.

Interesting facts for those who say that leaving the EU would be catastrophic for Britian's economy. It could be the best thing we ever did.

Time for that referendum you promised us, Mr Cameron.

H/t Alex Singleton.