Hi there, citizens of Teesdale. How many of you up there, enjoying the beauties of the wild and romantic Tees, looked to this month's regional referendum to usher in an elected North-East assembly?

Fewer than one in ten, that's certain. For, of the 56.89 per cent of those who voted, a massive 81.62 per cent rejected the proposed assembly. Since the turnout was the third highest in the region, and the 'No' vote was also among the front runners, you can't get a much more emphatic thumbs-down than that.

But what do Teesdale folk find after they have firmly bolted their front door against the unwanted elected assembly? Already in, by the back door, is the unelected North-East Assembly. Now it plans to dump a windfarm right on the hearthrug - the countryside near Barnard Castle.

The windfarm is a detail in the assembly's Regional Spatial Strategy, a title that gives little hope of anything glorious emerging. Though its exact site is not yet specified, the windfarm is bound to adversely affect the setting of Barney and the quality of the Teesdale landscape.

There is bound to be a row. (I resist saying a barney). And the same can be predicted with windfarms proposed for Tow Law, the Tees Plain and, especially, Hamsterley Forest, whose most distinguished resident, Prof David Bellamy, has cast himself as Britain's Don Quixote against the advancing windfarms.

But of course the spatial strategy contains more than windfarms. Housing and industrial development, some on virgin land, are also in there. Yet after a token three-month public consultation, the final report will go to the Government, which is likely to rubber-stamp it within a year. The elected local authorities will then be expected to implement it.

A clearer case of the undemocratic tail wagging the democratic dog would be difficult to conceive. The Government is determined to deliver a regionally-packaged Britain to the European Union regardless of the wishes of the people. "If you won't eat your 'regional pie' then we'll just have to ram it down your throats.''

The irony of this forced feeding in the North-East is that the victims once eagerly looked forward to a Labour meal, unaware that one day someone within their midst would change the recipe.

Unhappily, the unelected regional assembly doesn't have a monopoly in doing what hardly anybody wants. Despite strong local protests, Durham County Council has erected its neon-lit boundary marker in open country between Sedgefield and Wolviston. With its vertical letters half protruding from the inelegant 60ft iron tower, it is a worse example of official vandalism than its opponents feared.

The county's motive was to give Durham its own Angel of the North. This completely misses the point of the Angel, which stands as an icon for the whole of the North-East.

But at least the new marker prominently raises the question of which county lies beyond this 'Durham' boundary. The answer is Durham. Local authorities come and go, and their boundaries change. The boundary markers that would gain a universal welcome would be those identifying the historic countries, in which people take great pride. Why can't we have them?