REGIONAL GOVERNMENT: I LIVED in the North-East for a number of years, and my abiding memories are of the strong sense of regional loyalty, and the quality of the beer.

The Welsh Assembly is a major contributory factor to Wales being a second-class region relative to England. Here we have found that:

* a new assembly will give a new layer of bureaucracy. This will enable politicians and officers to pass the problems, and the buck, up and down;

* employment will improve significantly in the immediate area of the new assembly. Nothing extra will get done, but more civil servants will be employed doing it;

* a new assembly building is essential to attract the right quality of employee, to be supplied with the best fittings and a new IT system. Initial cost estimates will be modest but will soon double;

* the assembly will have no legislative powers, and the debates will compare with paint drying in public interest;

* the politicians will award themselves double digit salary increases annually;

* the chief executive will have boundless energy in going to faraway places on your behalf.

I haven't mentioned policies, because that implies thought, and the capability to deviate from the party line. Forget it. - Bernard Heaven, Pembrokeshire.

PETER Mandelson fails to point out how a regional assembly will lead to increased numbers of politicians, additional tiers of bureaucracy, and increased costs for local taxpayers and will fail to provide any new significant powers for the region (Echo, June 17).

People should be under no illusion, there will be no new powers awarded to the region as a result of devolution. A regional assembly will simply take away power from town halls and push it up to a Tyneside-based talking shop. The North-East deserves real devolution of power, pushing power down to local councils and local communities. - Martin Callanan MEP, Conservative, North-East.

POLITICIANS are deceitful. This Government has devolved Scotland and Wales for the sole purpose of lining them up as European entities. Soon they will be asked to join the European Union.

Regional government has nothing to do with a voice for the North. It is Tony Blair's sly underhand way of getting us all into the European Union. - Jim Ross, Rowlands Gill, Tyne and Wear.

WITH a few honourable exceptions like teachers, librarians and refuse collectors, existing standards of service at local level are execrable.

Who has not been messed around at least once by arrogant upstarts in the police, social and housing services?

Local government is not working and until the root causes - inadequate public scrutiny and accountability of officials - are tackled, replacing councils with even more powerful regional assemblies would only make matters worse. - Tony Kelly, Crook.

THE devolution lobby has chosen to force the 1974 regional boundaries of Brussels/Whitehall on a people who have had an identity of world renown for over a millennium: Yorkshire.

Their region will be created on these "top down" boundaries, but it will not be Yorkshire. There is no such people as "the people of Yorkshire and the Humber".

It is a rigged region that excludes Saddleworth, West Craven, Bowland, Dentdale, Upper Teesdale and all of north-east Yorkshire.

In following this line the proponents of this scheme show how little they know of, or care about, real Yorkshire. - RC Holt, Yorkshire Ridings Society.

APPLEBY HORSE FAIR

I AM appalled at the actions of Barnard Castle Council and the comments of some residents re the travellers who pass through each year (Echo, June 10).

There now seems to be very few places where they can camp, and yet whenever I have driven past an area where there has been a camp I haven't seen so much as a scrap of paper left behind. They seem to have a respect for the earth which most have forgotten - as the litter in our coastal resorts, where the sand is covered with polystyrene chip cartons every evening, shows.

I would urge the people of Barney to celebrate your traditions rather than let yourselves be ruled by fear. - J Thompson, Bishop Auckland.

May I send my heartfelt sorrow to the family and friends of the father and son killed on the notorious A66 on their way back from Appleby Horse Fair (Echo, June 12).

It is time the local councils warned people who don't know about the fair to slow down for horse drawn vehicles.

And drivers, please be patient. The horses have been going up and down that road long before the rest of us and it's only for one week out of 52. - C North, Darlington.

WHO?

CONGRATULATIONS (Echo, June 23). At last a day without a picture of the king of silly haircuts. Am I being too optimistic in thinking that the Beckhams will fade into obscurity? - M Newell, Bedale.

GAY BISHOP

I AM not always in agreement with Peter Mullen, but I am on this occasion (Echo, June 24), although I might draw the line at calling all evangelicals "rancid"!

We must seek to interpret the Bible in the light of our present time, remembering that Leviticus was written for a people who led a totally different life from ours. But what is important to me is what Jesus said and what he would say today.

I don't believe that we choose our sexuality and it's no more rational or Christian to discriminate against people on this ground than it is on the colour of their skin. - Peter Elliott, Eaglescliffe.