Mark Easton is miffed

Mark Easton is a bit miffed at some of the negative reaction he's been getting to his reports on English devolution. He complains on his blog:

My social media accounts have been overflowing with the outrage of Englishmen and women, indignant that I should have even considered options for constitutional reform that are at odds with their particular viewpoint.

Now, I've been watching that social media reaction and I would say that, yes, some people have protested in that sort of way (especially about people they disagree with being featured in his reports), which, frankly, is a silly kind of complaint, but I'd say that more people have been 'outraged' at (a) the way Mark's own reporting has been biasing the argument in favour of English regionalism (and against EV4EL/an English parliament) and (b) at his misreporting (on Twitter) of a BBC poll finding. If you recall, he claimed it showed 80% support for English regionalism whereas it actually showed no such thing. The latter provoked an understandable social media outcry. [Mark is lying low over that one. No apology there as yet].

His latest blogpost is full of interesting stuff - lots of tasty historical titbits - but it too concentrates largely on the issue of regional devolution. The "fervent" hopes of some for an English parliament are brushed aside in a sentence and EV4EL isn't even mentioned. 

The comments below his post though are clearly no more buying the case for English regional devolution than many of his respondents on social media. A read of the most popular comments shows very little support for it, and a lot of support for some form of England-wide devolution (including an English parliament).