WE want to fly free, not be constrained. We want our aspirations to soar, not to be held in check by central government. We want to be able to shape our own future.

In previous decades, the North-East has held out a begging bowl and pleaded with the Government to drop expensive morsels into it. This campaign is different.

This time, we want to get on and do things off our own bat.

The Regional Spatial Strategy, drawn up by the North-East Assembly, is the region's agenda setting out how it wants to develop over the next 15 years. The Government is busy watering down that agenda. It wants to dilute firm commitments into a vague promises to investigate - and you can sense, at once, that a project that is postponed for more investigations and inquiries will not happen.

Some of the watering down is short-sighted madness. Why should all of the ports be in the south of England when there is a private firm wishing to invest in Teesport? Why force climate-changing juggernauts to drive up the A1 when their contents could more efficiently shipped into Teesport?

Why would anyone wish to limit NetPark at Sedgefield? As the out-going Prime Minister repeatedly says, these new nano-technology jobs are the future. We need to be busting a gut to lead the world, not hamstrung by a Whitehall official into trailing along in second place.

Anyone who has travelled on the East Coast Main Line, which is already and always crowded and expensive, knows there must be a real commitment to upgrade it during the next 15 years and not a meaningless, inexpensive-sounding promise to "address its issues".

There are ten weeks to persuade the Government of the folly of its paucity of ambition for the region. The Northern Echo will be banging the drum, so will the North-East Chamber of Commerce. We hope that our influential backbench bound MPs - Tony Blair, Hilary Armstrong, Alan Milburn - will pick up the beat and help us shape our own prosperous future.