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
Living in Surrey I have no complaints.
ReplyDelete"the North whose single Minister is Nick Clegg"
ReplyDeleteSo where is William Hague from?
Oops. Corrected.
ReplyDeleteAll replies on a post card, because Google hates me and will not allow me to request it on first post.
ReplyDeleteAll this shows me, is that there are too many bloody Ministers.
ReplyDeleteNorthern Ireland doesn't even count as a region of the UK, let alone have any Ministers then?!
ReplyDeleteEric Pickles...?
ReplyDeleteNone of the N Ireland MPs are Ministers.
ReplyDeleteIts a regional government of public school men from Suburban Greater Greater London.
ReplyDeleteThe 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.
I appreciate its very posh but Im sure Tatton counts as the north!
ReplyDeleteI am told they are dancing in the streets in Tunbridge Wells.
ReplyDeleteWell what I learn from that is that we have w-a-y too many ministers.
ReplyDeleteI thought we Tories believed in small government?
And none of the North East MPs are ministers either, but they still get a mention!
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know where there's a complete up to date list of appointments so far?
ReplyDeleteGiven 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.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course you want an English Parliament where London and the South East could lord it over the rest of England
ReplyDeleteMy 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.
ReplyDeleteAnd 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
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!
ReplyDeleteAV 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'
If they didn't all vote Labour 'up North' perhaps they might have got a minister!
ReplyDeleteNo North East Ministers? Wow, I'd better sit down.
ReplyDeleteHowever 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?
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!
ReplyDeleteElsehwere we have the complaint that not enough of them are women or are of other than white ethnic descent.
ReplyDeleteEven 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
Oh great! So you want to resurrect the north/south wars all on your own!
ReplyDeleteSince 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?
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.
ReplyDeleteNumerous 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.
Wasn't it the 'inclusion' bollocks that caused some of the grief over the past 13 years?
ReplyDeleteEmploy 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?)