Saturday, May 15, 2010

Spot the Minister

One of the aspirations any government has is to try to spread ministerial appointments across the country. There are already mutterings from East Anglia that Norfolk and Suffolk have lost out, with only a single minister (Henry Bellingham). But they are not as badly off as the North East, which has no ministers at all, and the North whose only Ministera are Nick Clegg and William Hague. Here is the breakdown of the appointments announced so far...

South East 14
Home Counties 12
London 10
South West 9
South 7
East Anglia 7
East Midlands 5
West Midlands 4
North West 3
Scotland 3
Wales 2
North 2
North East 0

25 comments:

Think This said...

Living in Surrey I have no complaints.

Ross said...

"the North whose single Minister is Nick Clegg"

So where is William Hague from?

Iain Dale said...

Oops. Corrected.

Furor Teutonicus said...

All replies on a post card, because Google hates me and will not allow me to request it on first post.

Furor Teutonicus said...

All this shows me, is that there are too many bloody Ministers.

Unknown said...

Northern Ireland doesn't even count as a region of the UK, let alone have any Ministers then?!

emily said...

Eric Pickles...?

Iain Dale said...

None of the N Ireland MPs are Ministers.

Paul Halsall said...

Its a regional government of public school men from Suburban Greater Greater London.

The rest us should secede.

Meanwhile which are the ministers in the "glass closet" mentioned as known to him by Andrew Sullivan in his transatlantic blog.

I know who sets off my gaydar.

KP said...

I appreciate its very posh but Im sure Tatton counts as the north!

Demetrius said...

I am told they are dancing in the streets in Tunbridge Wells.

Sean said...

Well what I learn from that is that we have w-a-y too many ministers.

I thought we Tories believed in small government?

Anonymous said...

And none of the North East MPs are ministers either, but they still get a mention!

Unknown said...

Does anyone know where there's a complete up to date list of appointments so far?

Dilettante said...

Given that you have included the North East (which has none) and Cameron's serious effort in Northern Ireland, I would say it should at least make your list.

tory boys never grow up said...

And of course you want an English Parliament where London and the South East could lord it over the rest of England

Alan Douglas said...

My goodness, gender balance, regional balance, left/right balance, old/young balance, Cons/Lib balance, get them ALL right and you will have a severely UNbalanced government.

And if you do go for multi-gender balances, would you have to allow for butch lesbians as well as submissive ones (if that is the right set of opposites ?) and similar for male gays ?

How about this : The most balanced person I know to run MY life is me, and I would assume that to be true of most people. How about we are ALL elected to do things for ourselves, only then the "government" be truly representative of the WHOLE nation.

What is wrong with ability as a tool by which to select people ?

Let us please let government (whoever they are) get on with it. We have become so used to whinging over the last 13 years it seems very hard to get out of the habit.

Alan Douglas

Tim Leunig said...

This is one of the problems of FPTP - there are very few LD or Con MPs in the North East - despite both parties getting a lot of votes there. You can't have ministers if you don't have MPs!

AV would go a little way to correct it, and some form of PR would work better in this regard.

Not sure why the rural Tory North of England and Norfolk and Suffolk are so poorly represented tho'

John McDonald said...

If they didn't all vote Labour 'up North' perhaps they might have got a minister!

awkwardgadgee said...

No North East Ministers? Wow, I'd better sit down.

However Cameron was right, there are too many state sector non jobs up here in the NE, I know quite a few people who just turn up and pick up a decent wage and have very little to do.

As an inhabitant of the real world, I would welcome a change to encourage more private investment,no matter where the Minister comes from. What the hell do they all do anyway, apart from toe the line?

Cantstandcant said...

It is hard to follow your numbers since you have not used official Government regions (which are the Home Counties?) and I assume that North = Yorkshire and Humberside. In which case seems a bit odd not to include Bs Warsi (of Dewsbury) - which makes 3 Cabinet Mins from Yorkshire, probably a statistical over-representation!

Victor, NW Kent said...

Elsehwere we have the complaint that not enough of them are women or are of other than white ethnic descent.

Even one moment's thought would have persuaded you that it is totally impossible to fill all of these supposed quotas.

At some point in time selection by merit has to take precedence.

I have said here before that I am opposed to governing by a fixed ideology. Equally I am opposed to governing by tokenism, by regard to religion, by sexuality.

So please, please, knock it off. Enough parochial and minority bleating.

wv= logichal

Mrs Rigby said...

Oh great! So you want to resurrect the north/south wars all on your own!

Since when have statistics like this been important?

There are a number of MPs / Lords to choose from, if that list is then split into "take three from there, two from there, five from there" irrespective of ability and suitability then the end result is weakened and expertise diminished.

It has to be the right/best person for the job - nothing else. You've surely argued for this in the past, why are you changing your tune?

Or have you been brainwashed?

David Lindsay said...

I am positively proud that the North East is the only mainland region to have not a single MP as a Minister in this Government.

Numerous people sitting for safe seats here held office in the New Labour years, from Tony Blair down and including David Miliband. Credit crunch or no credit crunch, we always had the boarded up shop fronts to show for it.

PJH said...

Wasn't it the 'inclusion' bollocks that caused some of the grief over the past 13 years?

Employ people for what they can do, not because they're a bisexual single mother from Islington living off benefits.

If the party member for Islington South happens to be female, has a kid, and her current partner is female, and knows how to deal with some aspect of the economy, fine, employ her, but don't just because she's missing experience in that last criteria (criterion?)