THEY'VE been at it again down at the WI. The new debating club has in just two meetings become the next best thing to a Wild West saloon brawl that Beggarsdale has seen in yonks.

First it was GM foods, which as I reported some week ago produced an unlikely (some might say unholy) alliance between Owd Tom and Teacher Tess.

This week it was politics or, to put a finer point on it, Yorkshire politics. There have been quieter crowds on the Headingley terraces at test match time.

The motion was: "That this house supports the creation of a Yorkshire Regional Parliament", an idea launched in York a few weeks ago. If the Jocks and Taffs can have their own assemblies, why not us Tykes?

Now I must admit that this scheme does have its attractions. We have been run too long by people who think you fall off the edge of the world north of Watford and wouldn't know a Yorkshire pudding from a croissant.

Yet we Tykes are supposed to be on the tight side with our brass and the question arises: who would pick up the tab for yet another layer of government?

What struck me in the recent debacle over the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton was the fact that the fate of the world's most powerful man was decided by just 200 politicians, 100 in Congress and 100 in the Senate.

Here in dear old Blighty, with a population less than a quarter of America's, we already have 650-plus MPs who are just building themselves the most expensive office block in Europe on the banks of the Thames.

And as Tony Blair becomes even more presidential than his mate Bill, what do these cohorts do apart from getting themselves caught in massage parlours or fiddling their election expenses?

Well, quite frankly, I don't know. Nor do I know what the Scottish and Welsh assemblies will do. In that case, what would a Yorkshire Parliament do apart, perhaps, from launching air strikes on Lancashire?

Now American states do have their own assemblies and powerful Governors but they only send four people to Washington as their national representatives.

If a Yorkshire Parliament were established, we should cut down our Westminster MPs to the same figure.

That way, we would save ourselves a lot of money, even more hot air, and turn the new MPs' office block into a profit-making hotel for overseas tourists. The Palace of Westminster itself could become a theme park.

And this is the point that Owd Tom made down at the WI. "Ah've noticed that there is a new job abaht these days," he said, waving a batch of newspaper cuttings. "It is called being a professional politician. Lads and lasses go straight from college ont' council and from t'council straight inta Parliament.

"There was a day when politicians 'ad proper jobs before gettin' 'emselves elected so they knew summat abaht the real world. Give us a Yorkshire parliament and all we'd get is another bunch o'dreamers who know nowt abaht owt."

Motion defeated.

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.