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The original merger dissolved the English and Scottish parliaments entirely and created the modern United Kingdom parliament.

I thought so too but it actually created the "Parliament of Great Britain", which lasted until Great Britain and Ireland were United into the UK nearly a century later.

now the Scottish have a local Parliment to represent their own interests, but the English do not

And that's patently unfair, the Scottish Parliament now has power of most local affairs and England has no say. Yet Scottish MPs in Westminster can vote on "England and Wales" issues which are controlled by the UK Parliament. The obvious solution (if Scotland stayed) would simply be to exclude their MPs from such votes.

England and Wales are legally together, have been since Henry VIII officially annexed Wales to England. Independence for Wales would be tricker than Scotland and I don't see it being on the table any time soon if ever, the Welsh separatists are politically weak compared to their Scottish counterparts, there doesn't appear to be much desire amongst the Welsh people to seperate.

DJ's distant cousin used to be the leader of the Scottish Tories, Annabel Goldie, right DJ?

For Northern Ireland 2 of the counties are majority Unionist, Antrim and Down, I think they should stay with the UK if they wish. Reunification makes sense for the rest of NI, but heavens knows what that would do to Ireland politically, it's already a mess.

I think a much better case could be made that Wales joined the UK/Great Britian (whatever they called the union at the time) involuntarily compared to Scotland's circumstances. As other freepers noted, Scotland was deeply in debt at the time and merged with England out of desperation. Wales, on the other hand, was basically invaded and put under English rule, and the last Welsh "Prince of Wales" was executed so the King of England could honor his son with that title.

That being said, the Welsh really don't seem to harbor any grudges 700 years later, and are much more ingrained in British culture than the Scottish. The Scottish have always had a very distinctive national identity whereas many Welsh people just seem to be defacto English to me. (though I suppose they'd probably feel insulted if I told them that) There's very little support for Wales leaving the UK at the moment, but I think if Scotland left it would set the wheels in motion for all four nations to eventually become their own separate entities. Not much point in having a "United Kingdom" that consists solely of England and Wales.

Finally, the obvious solution to the English not having any government to represent their interests is to make one and revive the English Parliament. Why did they revive the Scottish parliament but not the English one?