Regional diversity

People often think of England as one country, and then assume that its therefore all the same (we make this mistake with most countries to be fair, I know the US has much diversity in many ways, I'm sure Scotland, France and any other large country does).
The facts is that England is a wonderfully diverse country.

My childhood was filled with English traditions, and I have become aware of the region diversity of these traditions. The Morris Dancing most people think of is Cotswold Morris, but there's also a longstanding tradition of Borders Morris from the Welsh Borders, and the Brittania Coco-nutters from Bacup in Yorkshire.
There's also an East Anglian variant of Morris (although its looked down upon by others) called Molly Dancing.

Then you have regional variants of the Hobby Horse (or Obby Oss), with the most famous being in Padstow, but there are other examples around the country, often with their own unique character.

My father's area of expertise was the Long Sword Dances, which are mainly from Yorkshire, another variant of the sword dance is Rapper from Northumberland.
One tail which highlights the diversity of identity even in Yorkshire was a village which had its own Sword Dance, which was closely guarded as their dance. Then a teacher from outside saw the dance, and taught it to the children of another village. Upon seeing this, the men of the original village stopped dancing the dance, as it was no longer theirs, it had been stolen. It was a matter of village pride.

Many areas of England have different folk traditions, there are differences in the music and song from different areas too, just as there are different accents and dialects.

Of course, some tunes are near universal, others have obviously traveled (my favourite being Soldier's Joy, or Kings Head which the English claim as their own, the Shetlander's as theirs, the Americans as an American tune, but was first published in Sweden - a widely traveled tune...)

You can still see this diversity in England today, with rival football teams, different accents, even little things like having gravy on your chips being common in some areas but not at all in others.

This diversity should be celebrated, the best way is through a genuinely local political structure. These local areas should be based upon natural regions, that is those where people actually feel like they belong. Regional assemblies drawn up as lines on a map or from statistics will not work, any more than dividing Africa or the Middle East up by drawing lines on a map has.
Or even how many London Boroughs were drawn up - a number appear to have been designed to let rich Tory areas subsidise Labour voting areas in predominantly Labour run administrations...

By far the worst in this country for dividing up along bizarre lines is the Post Office with post codes. They bear little relationship to historical association and now people tend to group areas by post code, even in political terms...

Regions and local government areas should be drawn up based upon local feelings of belonging as far as possible. Perhaps Rutland is too small to be viable as a region and some people will never agree whether they live in one region or another, but if we can have local government broadly on the basis where people believe they live then we can create a pluralistic society, with stronger local communities and reasons for people to take part in politics.

In all these senses, an English Parliament would fail. It would be too remote, just like Westminster is, it would fail to represent the wonderful diversity of this country, just like Westminster does, and it could lead to some areas dominating others, just like Westminster does.

(as a side, is there any sort of feeling in Scotland or Wales that the Parliament/Assembly is too remote from their areas?)