REGIONAL GOVERNMENT: AS someone who also migrated north in the 1990s, I sympathise with Dr Tom Shakespeare's hope that a regional assembly would "change the nature of politics" in the North-East, as he says it has in London (Echo, July 20).

However, the type of regional assembly we are being offered is nothing like London's and it is difficult to make comparisons.

In London, people elect both a mayor and an assembly, with the assembly having no executive power, but working purely as a check on the mayor. While London's assembly may have its faults, Dr Shakespeare rightly points out that Ken Livingstone has been able to bring in key figures who are not politicians.

However, in the North-East, this will not happen. The leader of an assembly will be selected from the largest party in the assembly, and will not have the mandate to act as a figurehead for the North-East, as Mr Livingstone does in London.

Unlike the mayor of London, the leader will not be able to bring in people from outside and will rely solely on colleagues in the assembly.

Dr Shakespeare is correct about the size of the assembly's budget. The Government spends in excess of £11.6bn a year in the North-East, while the assembly would have a budget of just £350m - all of which would be drawn from local authorities' budgets - and the Government will determine how the vast majority will be spent.

I do not agree with Dr Shakespeare's charge that we are too negative. We agree that decision-making should be decentralised from London, but we don't think that this can happen through the expensive talking shop John Prescott is proposing. Instead, the Government should devolve powers to local councils and authorities and give decision-making back to local people and local communities. - James Tooley, PhD, Professor of Education Policy, University of Newcastle.

SURELY the council leaders attending the meeting in Darlington which supported Durham City as the base for a regional assembly (Echo, July 14) were expressing personal views because, as you state, the majority of councils still have to discuss the matter formally.

To construe these opinions as a ringing endorsement, or as overwhelming backing for Durham, is hardly justified.

You suggest in your leader that Neil Herron is wrong to call the Durham decision premature. I agree: Yes4TheNorth-East, which organised the meeting, should spell out its vision. It may be that voters, particularly those in other parts of the region, do not unreservedly give their blessing to a Durham-based assembly. They may also wonder if the way this decision was taken was likely to be indicative of future decision making by an assembly.

More importantly, I agree with Mr Smith (HAS, July 14) who is critical of the lack of information about the referendum. My requests at my library for Government information have produced absolutely nothing.

As you say in your leader, it is important for the people to be fully engaged in the debate. This is now a pressing matter.

Meanwhile, at least the politicians know where they are going to be sitting. Perhaps Neil Herron has a point; it is all about posturing. - DJ Million, Darlington.

TO clarify a number of misconceptions that have been aired in Hear All Sides recently:

1. It will be down to the assembly to decide where it is located. The merits of the various locations can, and should, be discussed. But those in elected positions currently meeting and expressing opinions need to be very careful as to whose opinions they are expressing. They have already been censured by the District Auditor for having 'opinions' with taxpayers' money.

2. I am wholly in favour of the North-East. An assembly will not give us "control over our destiny". Whoever utters such delusional statements needs to be given two tickets to the real world.

3. It is outrageous that the only factual information we have is the date of the referendum. The rest is still not definitive and we are less than four months away from the vote.

I could support the dream and the vision coming from the 'Yes' supporters. We all could. That is not what is being offered. Trouble with dreams is that there does come a point where you have to wake up.- Neil Herron, North-East No Campaign, Sunderland.

I FIND the implication in S White's letter, (HAS, July 15) quite insulting. He seems to say that people in their later years oppose any change just for the sake of it. Are we not capable of rational thinking any more?

I am opposed to any change that undermines the importance of family life, for example, reducing the homosexual age of consent, the proposed legalising of prostitution, and any tinkering with the definition of marriage.

It seems to me that if we have a problem, those making decisions either ignore it until it deteriorates, change it to make it more acceptable (spin it), or in desperation give up and legalise it. That is, treating symptoms instead of dealing with causes head on.

I did vote for a trading union in 1971 but not the political union, with sharp teeth, it has turned into. Does he think that another tier, an expensive talking-shop, without teeth, will make a difference to the North-East?

If we in the North are not getting a fair share of the country's consideration, then more people need to chase up those that are supposed to be representing us now and tell them what we want. We old fogies are! - John Scott, Billingham.

IN response to K Young (HAS, July 19 about my letter of July 15), I was NOT insinuating that anyone was racist. I was simply stating the facts.

Which are that North-East Says No coalition consists mainly of white, middle-class, retired men. The proposed regional assembly requires a cross section of the population of the region, which North-East Says No does not represent. - S White, Bishop Auckland.

LIBERAL Democrat Jacqueline Bell (HAS, July 16) states that the experience of regional government in Scotland has been "positive". She refers in particular to the funding of care for the elderly and the abolition of students' tuition fees.

Undoubtedly, both of these actions are laudable, but she fails to understand that they have only been possible because of the extra taxpayers' money which the Government chooses to give to Scotland.

The North-East currently receives much less funding, and the situation will not change should we decide to have a regional assembly.

The Government refuses, for example, to abolish or amend the out-dated and unfair Barnett formula, which has favoured Scotland for decades.

An assembly would, however, have the power to take money from us by increasing our council tax, which will bring no benefit to us at all. - Judith Wallace, Chairman, North-East No Campaign, Sunderland.

REGIONAL government may seem a good idea on paper but who is going to sit in the new halls of power? Will the people elected be of the same calibre as we have now running our councils? If this is what we are to get then I suggest tha t we leave things as they are and not waste people's money establishing another palace of varieties. - Jim Rishworth, Darlington.