Hain calls for NE Regional Assembly: Numpty

Will Green in the Journal has reported that the concept of English Regional Assemblies is still on the socialist agenda.

It come to something when a failed Europe Minister and Welsh MP starts to instruct the people of the North East as to what is good for them.
Mr Hain said during a talk at the London School of Economics: “It could be a regional government in the North East of England – rejected, I know, in 2004 but rejected on a kind of Mickey Mouse offer where the powers were not really real and the timing wasn’t right.
“Under a Tory-led Government, I think we could easily win that referendum now.”

Ian Mearns, MP for Gateshead and former chairman of the campaign for a North East assembly, said the region needed a “strong voice” to take on an increasingly powerful Scotland and a distant Whitehall.

Of course for Labour such a thing would be valuable as it would give them a permanent toehold in English governance, something that isn't guaranteed in any other way.

What the people of the NE would think about it, and the guaranteed waste of public money pushing, propagandising and voting for it is another matter.

They are just so desperate.

The squeal of failed ambition

That paragon of local newspapers, the Bury Times has a lovely tale to tell. A gaggle of local Labour Councillors are whining about the demise of the North West Regional Assembly.

"DEMOCRACY will be the loser under Government plans to abolish regional
assemblies, say local councillors.
They are unhappy that ministers want to hand key powers to unelected quangos such as Regional Development Agencies (RDAs)".

Well yes, the RDAs are unelected QUANGOs that is true, but so are the Assemblies. Just because someone has been elected to a council dioes not mean that they would be elected to a regional assembly. What is more nobody has ever wanted either aspect of regional government. After all the only place that has been asked, just across the pennines made it pretty bloody clear wghat they thought of the idea.

As another example of creeping eurocracy neither the RDAs nor the Asemblies have any legitimacy or credibility at all. All they ever do is spend more of our money with decisions being made at such a distance to the elctorate as to be near invisible.

Return planning to counties, boroughs and districts, whee the people most effected will have a say. Frankly the other areas of responsibility, "housing, transport, and scrutiny of economic development", should either not exist at all or should be run locally as well.

Down in my part of the world, Dorset, I was horrified that the Regional government has decided to plonk the lion's share of new traveller encampments (both temporary and permanent) into the county. Of the total number of 475 new 'transit pitches' in the whole South West no fewer than 326 are in Dorset, 128 in North Dorset alone. That is more than a 1/4 of the whole in one district council area. That Council has one representative on the SWRA out of 114.
Ses like a good deal to me