Mr Blair in his closing months seems to take a delight in telling us we are sentenced to a war against terrorists which will last a generation.

After the mess in Iraq, isn’t it time for a reappraisal of this war? What does he have in mind for the next twenty years? Is he suggesting we need to invade more countries that might be harbouring terrorists, just as he ordered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? Does he still think that is the right way to tackle suicide bombers? Isn’t that what he is implying by his wish to have “a debate” on our armed forces, in support of his view that we need the capability to intervene overseas?

I helped and then belonged to a government that had to deal with a prolonged terrorist campaign by Irish terrorists.Many of them were from the Republic of Ireland or assisted by people living in

Yesterday morning when I wanted to bring my diary up to date I discovered that in the middle of the UK’s Silicon Valley I had neither phone line nor internet connection.

I used a mobile to phone BT. They tried to tell me it was a fault with my equipment. They then told me how I could test my system to establish who was at fault.

After a few minutes with a screwdriver and a spare phone I proved to my satisfaction what I had known all along - the fault was with the BT line.

I was then told that no-one could come to reestablish the line until Tuesday, and I would have to be at home to allow them entry (difficult to see why they need it when the fault clearly lies outside the house). Nor of course could they give me an appointment time. If they decided the fault was with my equipment there would be high penalty charges.

I am very glad my income does not hinge on putting work out on the web, and that I have a mobile so I can stay in touch with people. It really is not good enough BT - you should raise your game, and be ready to repair lines that go down without arguing it’s not your fault, without threatening penalty tariffs, and offering prompt appointment times if you really do need access to people’s houses.

I am only back blogging because someone has allowed me to use their computer.

It’s a bit rich that Gordon blames Conservatives and nationalists for the current unease with the bodged devolution proposals he and his colleagues gave to Scotland and forced on England without ever asking us our opinion.

You reap what you sow.

It was never a good idea to offer Scotland more powers of self government than Wales, and to cap it with no self government for England. Now

Last year the government and Pensions Regulator listened when business lobbied strenuously about the amount of money a company had to pay to the Pensions regulator to create a fund to take over pension funds in trouble and meet the payments to pensionsers.The levy came in

Yesterday we had another very unsatisfactory debate on the Post Office in the Commons.

The Conservative front bench pointed out that 2500 sub Post Offices will close according to the government, but the top management of the business probably will close many more over the years ahead as they do not think they can make money out of the large network they currently enjoy. Conservatives proposed that sub post office contracts should be loosened to allow them to undertake more business for others to give them a chance of survival. It was a sensible and modest proposal, but the government could not bring itself to say “Yes”. It was difficult to understand why.

The whole Post Office suffers today from poor morale and a very lop sided management approach. In recent conversations with senior management at the local level, I discovered that local postal businesses are set cost reduction targets, but they are not told what their revenue is and have no control over their property and other assets. In a normal business senior managers are set profit targets, and have some freedom to grow the reveneue rather than cut the costs to deliver. They also have more influence over property and capital investment than postal managers have to help them meet their targets.

There are a whole series of good property deals to be done to give the postal business better premises for the mail activities, freeing in town sites for other commercial development as well as for the counters business. There are ways of growing postal and other related revenues. The bosses of the Post Office should have another look at the way they organise the business, and give good managers more scope to manage. Instead of managing cuts and decline we then might see more growth. Local business units need to know what their own revenue account and balance sheet look like. The top management might then be surprised at how innovative some would become.

Last November the No Turning Back Group of MPs decided we needed to do more work on how to tackle the problem of too little social mobility.

I have no problems with a Labour Cabinet Minister choosing a better school for her child. I do have problems that there is insufficient choice for many under this government.

I would like to see all schools becoming independent, with money from taxpayers sent to the schools chosen by parents up to a reasonable limit, so that all who want a free place can still have a free place, but at a better school with more choice than some experience today.

I also want to see better provision for special needs within the taxpayer financed sector. Conservatives have warned that too many special needs schools are being closed. Some children are better off in mainstream schools, whilst

It is shocking

If you want an independent England and an independent Scotland, with no Union, then of course my proposal is not for you.

I think it is worth a try to give England a fair devolution settlement, and then see if the public would rather live in a Union with such a settlement or wants to vote to break up the Union.

Of course if the British people voted to break up the Union then England would be governed by the English Parliament at Westminster, which would have fewer MPs than the Union Parliament, and fewer officials.

All who have written in seem to agree we need change to Labour’s bodged devolution fix, and all seem to agree that the position of England needs recognition. There also seems to be universal support for banishing all the much unloved English regional government.

The disagreement seems to be over whether the Union is worth saving, with some wanting to go straight to an independent England. Such a country would not ened a new Parliament bulding, as the Union Parlaiment at westminster would revert to its origins as the English Parliament.

I think it is worth trying the federal model I have proposed, with symmetry and fairness between Scotland, England Wales and Northern Ireland. If that did not suit the majority because they did not think it worked well or fairly, then we would have to consider referenda on whether to dissolve the Union or not. The pace may be forced by Scottish nationalists. The interesting issue is who should decide on whether Scotland should stay or leave the Union? Just Scottish voters in a referndum, or all UK voters? It is high time the government told us what they would do if Scotland votes for a Nationalist government in Edinburgh.

Many of the local and national government services in my part of the world closed down from 22nd December until 2nd January, and many public sector workers (including MPs of course- we are locked out of Parliament by

Churchill’s ringing phrase about an iron curtain coming down across Europe proved prophetic. For forty years Europe was split into a social democratic part in the west with considerable freedoms and an economic system that could keep

Let me try to explain my idea again. This is not official Conservative policy which is still being discussed. The official Conservative policy in 2005 was to create English votes on English issues in the Westminster Parliament to deal with the worst imbalance of Labour’s bodged and biased devolution “settlement”. My proposal goes further.

I suggest that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have devolved assemblies settling a range of agreed issues on the Scottish model. We elect MPs to Westminster who are dual mandate MPs in every case. Those sitting for Scottish seats sit in the Edinburgh Parliament part of the time to settle Scottish matters, and sit in the Westminster Parliament to settle Union matters for the rest of their working time with MPs from the other three parts of the UK. There would no more Scottish elections for a different cast of characters to be MSPs - instead Westminster MPs elected for Scottish seats would also be the MSPs.

Those sitting for English seats would sit in the English Parliament - meeting in the Westminster building which has been the home of the English Parliament for many hundreds of years, prior to it becoming the Union Parliament in 1707. They too will meet with colleagues from the rest of the UK to settle Union matters at Westminster, which would also remain the home of the UK Parliament. It would be up to the elected English MPs to decide what office holders they wanted to carry out their business.

These proposals would

a) Restore symmetry and fairness between the different countries of the Union

b) Save money compared with a model which required yet more politicans to be elected to a new English Parliament, and compared to the present model with the current additional elected people in Scotland and Wales

c) Ensure full time use of the Westminster Parliament and facilities, and

Parliament does not meet this week - we are having another nineteen day gap.

As someone who thinks there is too much legislation already I am not concerned that we are failing to produce new laws, but I am concerned that another nineteen

Devolution

No, I am not proposing the abolition of the Scottish Parliament. I am suggesting that the same people that Scotland elects to Westminster should represent them in Edinburgh as well, whilst we English MPs represent people at Westminster on both the English and the UK issues. Scotland shows just how much money the public sector can spend on setting up a new devolved Parliament. England already has a Parliament building in London which should be used for the English issues as well as for the Union Parliament. Why waste money on a new building and another set of politicians?

THE RAILWAYS DON’T WANT PASSENGERS

The government’s original strategy for transport was to switch people from cars to trains. They inherited a fast growing railway, where for the first time since 1950 railway managers wanted more passengers and promoted their businesses accordingly. In the late 1990s use of the railways by both passengers and freight surged.

Then came the clunking fist of renationalisation of the track network. The new Network Rail soon showed all the classic symptoms of being a nationalised industry, even though Ministers kept telling us it was a new kind of private company. It is a monopoly. It does not make more capacity available on the scale the users need. It sees it best hope of a good life lying in lobbying the government for more guarantees to borrow more money to keep it going.

So now the train companies, under the guiding hand of Ministers again, decide to put their fares up by far more than inflation where they are allowed to, sending a clear signal that the railway does not want more passengers. They gave the same feeling over the holiday period, with the railway closed on Christmas day, when my local convenience store still had its doors open for any who had forgotten the stuffing or the cream.

The UK is chronically short of transport capacity of all kinds. The inadequate road network has not been expanded in the last ten years, and there have been no new major rail projects commenced under this government. No wonder the railways can afford to act like the monopolists they are, with the effective encouragement of Ministers who do not seem to care that they have helped stop the expansion of train travel.

2007 is likely to be a year on constitutional struggle, as the bodged domestic reforms of the government together with the unwelcome advances of EU power cause friction in our body politic.

The most likely flare point will be in Scotland, at the time of the Scottish election to their Parliament. If the polls turn out to be correct, and the Scottish nationalists emerge as the largest party, they will put constitutional change very firmly on their agenda north of the border, and will be happy to incite the English to exert pressure against the current settlement in the south. The new unlikely allies will be the Scottish Nationalists, claiming Scotland does not get her fair share of cash