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[Descan]

What calculator did you use? Isn't the population around 50 million? That's about 1.25 million per the 39 counties

[Owlbread]

What calculator did you use? Isn't the population around 50 million? That's about 1.25 million per the 39 counties

I used my own bizarre calculation methods (I didn't know what I was doing) and didn't factor in London or Greater Manchester. Or Merseyside for that matter...

Are you sure about Rutland?

That's the parliamentary constituency, not the county.

[misko27]

Not just the 60s. For example, African-Americans started switching parties early in the 20th century, around the time of the New Deal. And in terms of foreign policy, neither party has ever been really homogenoun

Just split England up into ten 5-million-strong countries (like Scotland) and be done with it.

Call it the British Sovereignties. Or BS for short.

Oh yes. I would like to see a kind of Commonwealth of England, almost like the USA where instead of states they're all the traditional Counties. That would ensure a power is devolved across the board to the local communities. So it would be like a United States of England with 39 states.

That would be interesting. US States have a lot of power delegated to them.

[MonkeyHead]

Pretty sure I read somewhere that based on the Scandinavian model of a nation, the "optimum" size of a nation is around 5 to 7 million, or at least no more than 10 million. This could facilitate splitting the UK into a federal body consisting of Scotland, N.I, Wales, a city state in London (and maybe Birmingham...) and the 7 or so original Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which handily split the major urban population centres neatly, and the surrounding areas more or less according to cultural differences. Each body would end up about as populated as a US state on average, though much more densely.

Ah, here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27731725

[Owlbread]

I think it makes sense to have a lot of devolution at county level, however there may be some services that are too impractical to devolve to counties, but not necessarily to "regions" or Kingdoms. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but perhaps certain things like health services could be regionally based/organised? You know, give Northumberland or Mercia control over its NHS... protect it from Southern Tory privatisation. I don't know if, say, Shropshire (a county of 473,000 people) could have its own NHS, but Mercia could potentially.

That said, the Swiss seem to manage their tiny little cantons quite well, don't they? I'd love to read some clear information on various administrative units across the world and how much power they actually have.

[Sergarr]

Did that article called Switzerland "pacific" and "progressive"? I'm pretty sure that Switzerland is one of the most militarized countries in the world, and it's so "progressive" that it was one of the last countries to accept women's right to vote. And I'm pretty sure that Norway is heavily militarized, too.

[Dutchling]

Pacific is about actions/intent, not capabilities. For example, Russia isn't even remotely pacific, even though it's army isn't all that impressive

Can't speak about progressiveness, I am no Switzerland expert.

[Sheb]

Switzerland has not been involved in a war in a couple centuries, and has a deep tradition of neutrality. They managed to sit out both world wars for Christ's sake.

As for progressive, depends on the part. The right of women to vote is actually a canton-based things, and most of Switzerland allowed women to vote a while ago, it's just a couple of really conservative cantons that held out.

[lorb]

Did that article called Switzerland "pacific" and "progressive"? I'm pretty sure that Switzerland is one of the most militarized countries in the world, and it's so "progressive" that it was one of the last countries to accept women's right to vote. And I'm pretty sure that Norway is heavily militarized, too.

The suffrage thing is _not_ at all representative of Switzerland. It has pockets of deep conservatism that are very autonomous, but overall it is a pretty progressive nation.

[Owlbread]

Am I the only one who detests the word "Progressive" in a political context? What does it even mean? "Progress" in a Scottish context meant a lot of negative things at one time.

[Sheb]

I actually like it.

Fun fact: I lived on the "rue du Progrès". Right at the bottom of my street was a small, ill-lit, ill-maintained footpath called "rue du Seigneur" - Street of the Lord -. I have no proof of this, but I like to think that the streets were named by anticerical liberals trying to annoy the Catholic party.

[Dutchling]

It's certainly better than Liberal which is pretty much an equivalent to Conservative here.

Conservatives pretending to be liberal, that is.

[SirQuiamus]

It depends on the country, but since "progressive" politics are pretty much mainstream in the EU, they are not really "ahead of the flock" in the original sense. On the other hand, reactionary politics are downright regressive, that's for sure.

[Sergarr]

Progressive is kind of a weird word actually, since the way it's usually used implies that progress can be objectively measured and that there's some objective "progressiveness" scale. It's also for some reason only used for social progress, and never - for technological, despite that it would be easier to make such a scale for technological progress.

[Sheb]

Not really, the idea of scientific and technical progress as an objective good was great back in the late 19th/early 20th century. It kinda died recently.