I NOTE that the latest attempt to move the UK once again on to Central European Time (CET) has been "talked out" in the House of Commons ("Clock change bid runs out of time", The Herald, January 21).
I wonder what would have happened had there been a separate English Parliament? Possibly a change of time zone at the Scotland/England border?
The only vestige of partial geographical legitimacy for CET in these islands (including Ireland) would be for residents who live east of Greenwich in the south eastern corner of England.
The MP who proposed the change represents a constituency near Southend in that area.
It is interesting that the skewed distribution of UK population permits some 75 MPs to represent that area (East Anglia, Kent and part of London and so on), and they are able in numbers to outvote the 59 MPs who currently represent Scotland. That the 59 Scottish MPs have to cover a huge geographical area compared with the 75 for Eastern England (which covers only some 25% of the landmass size of Scotland) shows the poverty of thinking which is increasingly trying to even up the number of constituents per MP with little regard to the amount of territory that different MPs have to cover, nor their constituencies' distance from Westminster.
The current proposal to replace three huge Highland constituencies with just two is the supreme example of this folly.
Many issues, such as time zones, are intrinsically territorial in nature rather than being rigidly population-based. The common complaint that Scotland spends more per head on health, for example, shows the simplistic effect of always thinking in population terms.
Scotland is very much colder than south-east England and so much more is spent on heating both homes and hospitals to try and keep warm and in treating the greater prevalence of cold-related illnesses.
The Boundary Commission proposals to remodel constituencies solely to supposedly "even out" the population served by each MP is seriously flawed and is going to make fair and democratic representation of Scotland at Westminster (if the UK model continues) much harder than it is already.
R J Ardern,
26A Southside Road, Inverness.
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