I'm all right, Jock!

Some thirty-odd years ago, a Treasury Minister was asked, as a matter of some urgency, to come up with a formula for the distribution of public money between the regions of the UK.  He did so, and as time was of the essence, he used the simple idea of distributing it on the basis of proportion of population.  He admitted at the time that it was hardly a scientific approach, and he saw it as a stop-gap until a better system could be devised.  Now, thirty-odd years later, we are still using it, and due to demographic changes in the intervening years, it has produced anomalies.  Most notably the Scots now get significantly more money per head than the English, and it is being suggested that this is why Scotland can afford to give their inhabitants free University tuition, free prescription charges and free care for the elderly - in other words we, south of the border, are subsidising them.  Many (English) MPs getting their knickers in a twist about this.  Problem is - and we've been down this line of thought before - that because it's such a simple system, it's cheap to administer, whereas a "fairer" system would cost considerably more.  So, will anything be done?  We shall see.