Public waking up to the stitch-up

Middlesbrough Evening Gazette
We're not left
Sep 20 2004
By Evening Gazette

With reference to a recent letter from Suzanne Fletcher (2.9.04), New Labour think secondary modern-educated people like myself and many other pensioners are stupid. This is not so.
The Regional Assembly is simply being proposed to make entry into Europe easier. It's to provide certain people the opportunity to make money and provide easy, well paid jobs for the boys.

They know the people in this area are easily conned, and the referendum is a foregone conclusion.

You might think I'm being a bit cynical but, because of the past performance of this Government, I don't believe a thing they say or facts and figures produced by them.
At the last count there were about seven or eight Labour MPs representing this area.

We even have the Prime Minister.

If these people can't represent us and get our voice heard in central Government, without causing us all a great deal of expense, then they should all resign.

Another correspondent, Mr Pratt, said our area is not mentioned in the brochure sent out by the Deputy PM's office. That is because this matter has already been settled by the people to our north and we have been removed from the picture. Anyway, our small vote in this area will not make a difference.

The pensioners of this area cannot take any more.

I have not had a holiday since 1992, I can't afford baccy for my pipe, a pint of pub beer or a bag of fish and chips, and after nearly 50 years of paying my dues and raising three children (without Government aid or paternity leave), I am nearly on the breadline.
I have only just absorbed the last increase in council tax and I can't take any more.
MR B SAUNDERS Normanby
******
I FOUND the letter from Councillor Suzanne Fletcher to be amusing if it was not so serious.
The leaflet now dropping through letter boxes quotes the estimated cost of a regional assembly and I have no doubt they will be wrong. It is the nature of Government to publish estimates biased in whichever direction they want.

A new assembly will build small empires and that always costs the long suffering tax payer more.

Mr Blair would dearly love regional assemblies. It would help us to fall in line with Europe.
Teesside is not even mentioned in the leaflet, Middlesbrough only once, and then only as the southern marker. The maps shown are for Northumberland and Durham. Presumably Teesside has no overall identity.

Central government will control the funds as they do with local authorities. Why should we believe that the 'jobs for the boys' syndrome of this Government's quango mentality would change.

If the politicians in Parliament did their duty correctly and apportioned the budget in a fair manner, then the North-east would not be in the mess it is now by being under-funded.

Would a regional assembly be any fairer? I think not. Tyneside is already getting the largest slice of the cake, and is being marketed extremely hard to attract jobs, more money. Teesside is the poor neighbour. We couldn't even keep our own airport name.

I do not believe a further tier of government is going to be beneficial or cheap.
A LLOYD Stockton on Tees
******
THANKS Suzannah Clarke for your very polite response to my last letter (Cultural Faux Pas} and for your invitation to come and discuss it at the big debate at the University of Teesside.

Unfortunately I had just returned from a cultural research break in the Czech Republic the day before the debate and had gone nearly 40 hours without sleep.

We must beg to differ on the assembly, but whatever the outcome must protect what little identity Teesside has left.
IAN LUNN Acklam, Middlesbrough