The North East of England a fortnight ago voted decisively against proposals to give the region its own seat of government. Trumpeted as a chance to have a 'voice' for the North East and to bring government closer to the people, it was also cited as an answer to the so-called 'West Lothian question'. However, voters across the region were unimpressed, and instead voted to blow a loud raspberry at the architect of the plans, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

Ultimately, the toothless version of devolution on offer was a distraction from the issues at stake. There may have been a stronger yes vote if the proposed institution actually had some meaningful powers. However, what people forget is that the wider constitutional problem of the West Lothian question can not be solved by regional assemblies in England or by cutting the number of Scots MPs at Westminster. Fundamentally, the problem is concerned not with the number of Scots MPs who can vote on English matters, but the fact that any can do so at all.

The vision of asymmetrical devolution on the Spanish model, which has driven Labour's policy on devolution since the 1980s, is now dead. By extension, the Lib Dem dream of federalism is now dead also, since England has so far resisted being broken into regions and is too large in relation to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to make any such arrangement work properly.

A separate but related issue is that there has been grumbling for years in England at the number of Scots in cabinet. However, this forgets that Labour won elections in Scotland during the 1980s at a time when the party lost them with depressing regularity in England. Much of the current UK Cabinet come from the 1983 and 1987 parliamentary intakes - if a large number of the party's most experienced MPs come from Scotland, surely it's to be expected that they will be well represented in the upper reaches of the government?

What we are also seeing is the high water mark of this representation. Although there is no constitutional bar to a Scots MP holding a ministerial position covering only England, as the mostly English 1997 and 2001 intakes mature, it will become harder for Scots to enter the UK Cabinet. Since the only remaining UK-wide ministries such as the Treasury, the MOD and the FCO are regarded as senior positions, I suspect it will become harder for Scots MPs to gain the sort of experience previously regarded as necessary to hold these offices.

However, the political right in England has never bothered to let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Scottish whinge. As resentment continues to build south of the border at the 'favourable' financial treatment of Scotland (not true, incidentally - I may come back to this subject in another 'Flag'), the 'over-representation' of Scots and the West Lothian Question, increasingly the only answer to the undeniable English democratic deficit is an English parliament, leading to Scottish independence and a new relationship between Edinburgh, London, Cardiff and Belfast.

I believe that the current constitutional situation is now inherently unstable. Unless opinion on English devolution shifts significantly in the coming years, the only answer to the English democratic deficit will be an English parliament and eventual Scottish Independence.

So what movement in the political plates could see the end of the British state as we know it? The acid test of any constitutional arrangement like we have at present comes when different parties control the centre and the devolved institution, which will happen whenever Labour loses power at Westminster. However, another 'doomsday scenario' would be for Labour to lose their majority in England, but continue to govern by virtue of the votes of their Scottish and Welsh MPs.

For how long would English voters tolerate such a position, which would likely be further exacerbated by the relatively high number of Scottish-based ministers? The riposte that this is the kind of situation that the Scots and Welsh had to tolerate during the last period of Conservative party government simply wouldn't and shouldn't be allowed to wash.

English voters have just as much right to choose the form of government best suited to their needs as do the Scots and the Welsh. If an English parliament is judged to be the solution, let's get on with dismantling Britain peacefully and amicably. That way, the Scots, Welsh and English can continue to live together side by side, but with each able to pursue their unique values and objectives in the world.

Does anyone remember Nannie K Wells, who was Secretary Depute of the SNP during the late 1920s and early 1930s? I discovered her while researching Scottish nationalism in the 1920s and 30s . She gave her recreation as, "managing rheumaticky minds with modern electric shock treatment," and there is a photograph of her in Gordon Wright's illustrated biography of MacDiarmid, sitting in front of a group of friends with a lively, humorous face. She, clearly, was someone well worth getting to know.

She was born in Findhorn, Morayshire in 1875, the daughter of a former Rector of Milnes School. She was educated in Berlin, Paris and Aberdeen and worked in the Foreign Office during the First World War. She married in 1901 and had three sons. She spent some time in Oxford before returning to Scotland, where she was secretary of the Edinburgh Women Citizens' Association.

She wrote regularly for nationalist publications, including The Scots Independent and The Free Man and also published a number of books of poetry and biography. She was a friend of Hugh MacDiarmid and collaborated with him on an unpublished biography of the 14th century rebel Alexander Stewart, "the Wolf of Badenoch."

She was one of the first Scottish Nationalists to speak out against fascism. In The Free Man of August 26th. 1933 she wrote:

A new ideal has taken possession of twentieth century man. "Millions of men," says our Dictator, [Mussolini] "have seen and understood." The phrase is significant: not "chosen" or "willed" or "believed" - simply "seen and understood." - it implies somehow an inarticulate mass . or . a class of intelligent children with a teacher standing by the blackboard, pictures into which you cannot fit by any stretch of the imagination the argumentative and fissiparous Scots..

. Every fresh revelation of the origin of both Fascisti and Nazi organisations show that the money on which they were reared comes from great capitalistic sources and that means also militarist sources. . A time of heart-searching - of courageous decision, of endurance, of determined resistance to these false ideals awaits all Free Men. Maybe it is for them that our Scotland has lain fallow these years - so that within us, Leadership and Liberty - may again be reconciled as they have been more than once in our history as a nation.

That declaration rings down the decades; and is as relevant to our day as to hers. She is well worth remembering.

"They are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall."     
                                        -     General Wolfe on his Highland troops in Canada.

It's that time of year again when we remember the dead of two world wars (and our thoughts may turn to present conflicts), but there's a persistent and morbid fascination in England with the first of these wars - not with the futile obscenity of working man fighting working man to prop up corrupt and decayed empires, nor that it lead directly to World War 2 and many more deaths, nor the estimated 20 million civilian deaths in Europe from influenza that were precipitated by the war (including my grandmother who died on Armistice Day 1918 leaving seven young children); instead, writers and filmmakers seem obsessed with the individual tragedies of the middle and upper classes - the trauma of war, the 'lost generation', 'doomed youth' - "there's some corner of a foreign field . . . " etc., and of course - the tremendous loss of life.

The loss of one life in such a conflict would have been a tragedy, but let's try to shed some light on this - just how many were lost - 30%? - 40%? - 50%? - not quite. Deaths as a percentage of the whole British Army (including the Scots and the Irish) were 11.8%, i.e. fewer than 1 in 8 died - far too many, but not as many as we may have been led to believe. However, the Scottish death-toll, taken separately, was a staggering 26.4% - i.e. over a quarter of mobilised Scottish soldiers (including non-combatants) never left the field, not to mention the physically and mentally scarred. This unenviable (sorry 'proud') record was only marginally beaten by the Turks and the Serbs, the large majority of whose casualties died of disease rather than gunfire. (When the Scottish and Northern Irish deaths are removed from the statistics, the remaining 'British' death rate drops below 10%).

So why did so many Scottish soldiers die - was it poor leadership, lack of discipline, cowardice, or a death-wish, or was it perhaps that the Scottish regiments, damned by their bravery and effectiveness were continually and indiscriminately used as spearheads to soften up the enemy prior to a mass attack, and as a consequence took the full force of stolid German resistance?

Although the loss of life in World War 2 was nowhere near as high, it remains a fact that a quarter of all British casualties were Scots (in the Korean War it was a third) - from a country that had only 10% of the total population, the 'proportional' sacrifice was even greater than in World War I.

Generations of Scots have either ignored, subsumed, or not been apprised of the fact that the flower of their manhood was, and continued to be, cynically thrown away with hardly a voiced raised in protest, and that Scotland, the country that gave most for 'King and Country' never recovered economically, culturally, spiritually, or nationally.

In the light of current events I leave it to the readers to decide whether General Wolfe's words echo down to this day.