MESSRS Showell and Margrett seem to agree that regionalisation has not been introduced in a Machiavellian manner.
Perhaps they do not know when it started, how far it has gone or how far its perpetrators intend to take it, whether we know about it or not, like it or not and oppose it or not.
Perhaps one or both of them has his tongue in his cheek. They should have.
Splitting the EU into impotent provinces, competing for Brussels "largesse", has advanced to the point where local government is now all but controlled by "regional" policy, and "regional" policy is made entirely in Brussels.
Speaking of Machiavelli, though, Messrs Showell and Margrett might be amused to know that the Deutscher Bundestag (German Parliament) - while calling upon France and Britain to speed the pace of "devolution" - has just taken steps to reduce the powers of the "Laender" (German "regions") and centralise power in Berlin.
This is on the perfectly valid grounds that regionalisation produces a weak, internally divided nation.
The joke is that Germany's federal (devolved) structure was imposed on it by the Allies, in 1945, in order to prevent a recurrence of the then recent, unfortunate fracas, which we're not supposed to mention any more.
STEVE REED,
UK Independence Party.
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