IoS letters, emails & online postings (28 September 2014)

If the UK allows MPs elected in England to double as English assembly members at Westminster, why should we not give the MPs we elect in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a similar dual role? Given the preponderance of England's population, it may be reasonable for English MPs to use the Commons as their Assembly building, while other nations/provinces retain assembly buildings nearer home.

What doesn't seem reasonable is for poorer outlying populations to have the extra cost and bother of electing an extra tier of assembly members if English constituencies can get by with one. Why should my Swansea or Gower MP not speak for me in both Cardiff and London, if sessions are suitably timed and better use made of the long recess?

What we really lack in our half-cock social democracy is any effective public representation of the economic, social and cultural life that underlies politics. What I've missed in my own working life is not so much a say in local or national governments as any voice in the corporate and departmental decisions that govern what we do from day to day and who get's what for it.

I'm no longer a member of any party or union but have been sent a TUC document called "Workers on Board", which seems a step in the right direction.

Greg Wilkinson

Swansea

I agree with Chuka Umunna (Interview, 21 September) that our second parliamentary chamber should be a senate-style, fully elected body. And while we are considering a modern, more democratic constitution we need to explore the advantages to ordinary people, of the United Kingdom becoming a Republic.

A referendum on whether the UK wishes to become a republic would stimulate the political engagement Scotland's referendum on independence generated, and give us, for the first time in our history, a say in the political structures that govern us.

Dianne Stokes

Wells, Somerset

Now that a clear majority north of the border has comprehensively rejected Scottishness, surely it is time for us to have an established church in North Britain? The Episcopal Church of Scotland would be ideal for this role and it would be only fitting were the Queen to appoint one of their Bishops to sit in the House of Lords alongside their Anglican colleagues.

John Eoin Douglas

Edinburgh

Some comfort to Katy Guest ("Some things, only a man can explain, 21 September) with regard to sexual harassment of women. At a football match last Saturday a chant started up among some young male fans on the terrace "Get your tits out for the lads". However, this was countered by other (male) fans making loud sarcastic comments, such as "Oooh a woman", and "Have you never seen a woman before?" The chant died, and the group did not return to it. I think that the message is starting to get across to ordinary men that this sort of juvenile behaviour is not to be tolerated in the modern world.

Liz White

Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

Military action in Iraq or Syria is wrong. It will result in innocent people being maimed and killed. This will, in turn, make more people join the extremist movement against the West. Even more people will join up when they see the West doing nothing against Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine yet happily bombing Arab countries.

Mark Richards

Brighton, East Sussex

I was ill prepared for Jonathan Meades' column ("Will no one stop the march of localism?", 21 September), in which he managed to be offensive to just about everyone he could think of, not just the Scots. Your readers of a Bullingdon (or BNP) persuasion will no doubt have found this hilarious, but most others will have found his nasty racist outpourings intolerable and utterly out of place in a supposedly serious and decent newspaper.

Mike Wright

Lancaster, Lancashire