It seems Nick Clegg wants to ride roughshod over the democratic will of the people. The Lib Dem leader said today that he wouldn’t go into coalition with any party that required support from either UKIP or the SNP. The man has clearly lost the plot. He has forgotten what representative democracy is all about, and this from the man who fought for proportional representation while Deputy PM. He fought for a PR system that would for the most part ensure that no party would ever gain an overall majority in Westminster. This from the leader of a party which for decades has advocated a federated United Kingdom. It says in the Lib Dem Constitution that they “commit ourselves to the promotion of a democratic federal framework within which as much power as feasible is exercised by the nations and regions of the United Kingdom.
As the Better Together campaign so noisily told us; all UK governments govern for the whole UK and the MPs operate for the good of all irrespective of their constituency. A Lib Dem MP from the Northern Isles carries the same weight as one from London, or Manchester or Cardiff, that’s the foundation of our Parliament.
So, not content with propping up the Tories for the last five years Nick Clegg wants to design his own government for the next five years irrespective of the vote. He really has lost the plot. For the sake of argument let us postulate that on May the 8th we have 100 MPs that are neither Labour nor Conservative. Of those 100 there are say 35 Lib Dems, 45 SNP, and the rest a mixture of DUP, SDLP, Sinn Féin, UKIP and the Greens, this is not unreasonable given the polls and that Miliband and Cameron can command say 275 MPs each. For either of the two big parties to get into number 10 legitimately they would have to have the support of 2 or more of smaller parties. Is Nick Clegg, the supposedly arch democrat, seriously telling us he wouldn’t work with Labour and the SNP? Or are some MPs more equal than others? Or would he get into bed with the DUP some of whose MPs are at best sceptical about climate change and would look wipe the ’67 Abortion Act from the statute book?
I think we should be told.
My work background is in operational meteorology and in my career I have been involved in forecasting for everything from bananas to jumbo jets.I joined the Met Office 1974 as an observer at Glasgow Airport. After training as a forecaster, I worked as an Operational aviation forecaster at various defence sites and airports. In 1982, I moved to Glasgow Weather Centre as a forecaster and STV broadcaster till 1988. He then took up a post as Senior Forecaster London Weather Centre, then Senior Forecaster ITV where I qualified as a trainer in presentation techniques for the ITV Association. After being diagnosed with MS, he moved into management and became Head of London Weather Centre in 1997 followed by a period of front-line management for Southern England and Europe covering London and Cardiff Weather Centres and the Met Offices on defence stations from Akrotiri in Cyprus to St Mawgan in Cornwall. He took up the post of Met Office Chief Advisor for Scotland & Northern Ireland in March 2008 and moved to Edinburgh. I retired in September 2014. My one claim to fame is once performed a comedy sketch on TV with Manuel (Andrew Sachs) from Fawlty Towers in support of Comic Relief.
Notes from the Overground 
Reblogged this on jelmak1234.
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