27/11/02

The original estimated cost of the Scottish assembly building was £50m; at present it is £350m. The North-East will be faced with a similar fate if there is a yes vote.

It will house about 30 regional representatives. They will decide their own salaries and choose their secretaries, administrators, ancillary staff and other endless minions, and all superannuated. Have you started your calculations yet?

However, let us look at possible savings. We could reduce the number of MPs by three for every created assembly. We could reduce the number of local councillors by half as their work will be reduced. We could close all quangos and their support staff, and make them answerable to the electorate.

I am trying to stimulate thinking so that people see how this venture could make a large hole in their income. - GB Oliver, Whitburn.

IT was an interesting article by Chris Lloyd (Echo, Nov 14) on the proposed regional assembly.

While he suggested the city of Durham should be the seat of the mini-parliament, the writer of the comment article was describing a different future by suggesting a light railway system for Teesside.

It would put a different perspective on future development in the new North-East because a demand would soon follow for a metro rail system from Newcastle to Middlesborough via Sunderland and Hartlepool.

This would allow employers to select from a very large number of employees, which would then see the region's manufacturing base situated in the coastal areas.

We have been through this type of programme before with the contraction of the Durham mining industry. Then production was concentrated on the coastal pits and the inland collieries suffered the consequences of new technology.

Competing in a global economy requires companies to be cost effective and as our future will mainly rely on exporting the various products made here, investors will be closely examining areas adjacent to seaports. This could result in a two-tier economy with the wealthy areas on the coast and a secondary lifestyle inland.

A future regional assembly would then be located in a wealth-creating area, which would rule out the city of Durham.

The joint effort of Newcastle/Gateshead to be the United Kingdom's capital of culture could see the same people wanting the new regional assembly to be situated on Tyneside.

A regional assembly could make a difference to people's lives but it will make a greater difference to the lifestyle of politicians if the voters do not use their votes wisely. - Thomas Conlon, Spennymoor.

TORY MEP Martin Callanan (Echo, Nov 15) has launched a campaign against an elected regional assembly because it would sound the death knell for County Durham.

It would make better sense for the North-East region to be divided between Scotland and a new province which would include County Durham, Yorkshire, the Humber, the North West including Merseyside, the East Midlands and Eastern regions.

Unlike regional assemblies, a provincial parliament would be compatible with the continuation of counties like County Durham. - Robert Craig, Weston-super-Mare.

WHAT a revealing snippet headlined "Minister for Europe visits" (Echo, Nov 20) reporting the planned visit of Denis Macshane to address the North-East assembly.

Of course, the audience was "invited", which can be translated as meaning that not one voice of opposition will be tolerated.

Each time anyone highlights the "Brussels dimension" as being the fundamental driving force behind the regional assembly, the denials and allusions to "flights of fancy" are as numerous as they are predictable.

Presumably, then, this meeting of an institution which exists to pursue "Home Rule" being addressed by the Minister for Europe should be seen as somewhat incongruous, or have "the usual suspects" got a ready-made explanation for the apparent conflict of interest? - D Pascoe, UK Independence Party, Hartlepool.

TUITION FEES

YOUR comments (Echo, Nov 20) are simplistic and vague in suggesting that education can be available to those from every social scale.

For the most part, the better off succeed because being better off often means that they have better parents who encourage them more.

Do we build more universities and fill them up with students who can't afford to pay and then take the money off pensioners and those less able to pay?

Harry Mead on the same page also points out how badly many of our pensioners are being treated. Yet we are talking of putting another £10bn into increasing the education budget simply so that students can have a place at university at the expense of the taxpayer.

If there is a right to go to university then there should also be a right for students to pay their dues when they find employment. - John Young, Crook.

WITH one daughter through university and the other already there, it would be only too easy to turn a blind eye to the current funding crisis and the solution of increased fees offered by the Government.

This would ignore the point of how will my grandchildren go to university in due course. The top universities were once for the aristocracy. Now they are for the meritocracy. Soon they'll be for the mediocrity! - Martin Birtle, Stockton.

FOOTBALL

I THINK Steve Cotterill of Sunderland Football Club could turn out to be one of the best coaches we have produced in this country. He should be given the chance to work with the England manager, ready to takeover when a vacancy occurs. - N Tate, Darlington.