Obviously I no longer keep sufficiently abreast of the news. Until it was upon us I had no idea there was to be a high-powered "inaugural'' North-East Economic Forum, held last Friday on the PM's constituency doorstep at Hardwick Hall, Sedgefield.

The extensive coverage left me still unsure who, or what, is Sovereign Strategy, who co-organised this gathering of pro-regional North-East movers and shakers with Northumbria University.

Did the Government have a hand in it - working the Forum like a glove puppet? The event certainly looked like a massive brainwashing exercise, intended to make the misguided people of the North-East wake up to their massive recent folly in roundly rejecting the idea of an elected regional assembly.

The PM himself turned up, of course. Peter Mandelson took time off from Europe to attend. Alan Milburn delivered a keynote speech in which, while pronouncing regional government "as dead as the dodo'' he nevertheless said the North-East risked "fading into parochialism'' if it didn't have something similar. My my! Nail-biting now among the 'No' voters. Perhaps we'd better sign up to the regional thing after all, just like the Government, the EU's agent in the endeavour, wants us to.

An up-and-coming Blairite, David Miliband, was another voice regretting the rejection of the elected assembly. His speech was astonishing. For it flung in our faces the dismantling of democracy that has already taken place, as yet still unrecognised by most people, through the promotion of regionalism. Pointing out that "economic regeneration, planning and housing policy'' are now "all decided at regional level'', Mr Miliband, MP for South Shields and Minister for Communities and Local Government, stressed that the North East Assembly - unelected of course - "is the regional planning authority''. That big estate that's gobbling your green belt? A work of the Assembly, not your local council.

Notably absent from the Forum was the S word - Scotland. Years ago, any case for regionalism in the North-East was buttressed by a reference to the greater cash per head available in Scotland. Today, with the post-Devolution advantages enjoyed by the Scots so much more marked than previously, the Government wishes to draw a veil over the differences. The Scottish experience highlights the need for an English Parliament, far more crucial than regional government.

Nevertheless regional government is what our lords and masters are determined to impose. Government-inspired or not, the Forum looks to be a Trojan Horse of the stealthy enterprise.

A goody held out by the PM was the prospect of a 90-minute Newcastle-London rail link, by a magnetic-levitation train. When the Channel Tunnel was being built we were promised direct EuroStar trains from the North-East. We're still waiting.

The RAF is to quit Leeming only a little more than a decade after expensively converting the base for its Tornados. No wonder the country can't afford a decent state pension.

Reducing to 12 months the jail sentence on a Stockton youth who kicked a prone man in the face so violently that major surgery was required to repair the injury, Appeal Court judges declared the original 18-month sentence to be "manifestly excessive''. To me, and I'm sure many others, it looks "manifestly'' lenient. Five years would be nearer the mark.