Let your papers know the same

This is Exeter
ASSEMBLY 'TAX' IS ILLEGAL
11:00 - 30 November 2004
I understand that Plymouth City Council is still paying an annual "subscription" of some £35,000 to the South West Regional Assembly. I question whether this payment is legal. The assembly is a voluntary, unelected, unaccountable body with no legal identity whatsoever, and the electorate has never assented to the use of taxpayer's money for this purpose. Nor have they assented to the assembly appointing permanent staff on its own account. It now has a staff of some 60 people, and a salary bill of £1.8 million according to its latest accounts, a 15 per cent increase on the previous year. It is outrageous that, following the overwhelming rejection of an elected assembly in the North East referendum, these bodies continue to exist as unelected self-appointed quangos which appear to be out of control. Here in the South West there is even less appetite for this widely-disliked assembly, let alone a "popular demand". We need another layer of local government like a hole in our collective head.
Denis McCallum
Plymouth