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And mahoosive.
Even more bizarre is that Teesside Intl airport is now Durham Tees Valley airport despite it being further from Durham than Newcastle airport is.
Maybe we need a regional assembly to sort out all the names.
North Yorkshire and Northumberland are my favourite counties so far.
Durham Tees Valley Airport. It's not really Teesside though. It's nearer Darlington. It should be County Durham Tees Valley airport to avoid confusion.
Down here we also like to confuse things with Bristol Airport being in North Somerset and our the continued use of the name Avon by the emergency services even though Avon as a unitary authority was abolished.
Maybe its all a cunning plan to confuse any foreign powers who tried to invade this country.
It takes 15 minutes from where I live to drive to Newcastle airport. It takes 10 minutes to drive to Durham City in the opposite direction. If I started at Durham City I would pass my house in ten minutes and then another 15 to the airport. That is 25, perhaps a half hour. If traffic is at a standstill on the A1 I would add maybe 20 minutes to that. Or are you taking it from where you live in County Durham, father away from the city itself?
How I see it is that if I vote Yes then its gonna cost me more money every year, but on the other hand would things be better for the North East ?
Help.......come on you political lot, you know the inns and outs of all this.........tell me the reasons why I should vote NO....cos thats what im swaying with at the minuite.
and quite a pathetic name in my opinion.
Personally I don't want to pay towards yet another ineffective tier of government. I don't think that it will do anymore for the north east than is already being done and I think it will create yet another barrier between the north east and the rest of the UK. I personally think it will be a waste of money and a waste of time. I've already posted my vote back, as have my parents and they all say the same thing.
I wonder if the train station at the airport will ever get used now?
Oh, and for a DH1 postcode, Newcastle Airport is the closest according to multimap. But if you go down the road to Shincliffe then Durham Airport is closer.
But you are already paying for it, and it already exists.
All the regional assembly will do is give a democratic element to the Go-Ne quango, and take a lot of powers away from the quite frankly terrible county councils. The unitary authorities probably won't lose that much- the RA will take control of Nexus and that'd be about it I presume.
I think that links in nicely with what I said earlier in the thread. The north east people (<i>some</i> of whom are 'Geordies' :rolleyes: ) seem as a collective to want to think they're hard done by, which I don't believe for one moment and I've lived here all my life.
I've never found that. I don't know anyone personally who wouldn't identify with a sense of being English (as well as British... I don't want to get into that debate here, hehe!) just because of where they're from. I don't feel 'cut off' from the rest of Britain although I do agree that we have a slightly different culture from the south east. The same could be said about those living in the south west, or even the midlands though. Isn't that just natural diversity?
I don't want the north east to have another reason for being 'different'. And I've just never been convinced by the claims that have been made in favour of a regional assembly. It is all well and good saying they'll have powers to do x and y, but they have failed time and time again to say how they would do it. How will they create jobs?
Too late now anyway, I've voted and sent the ballot paper back.
We have a bi-cameral legislature, with one elected chamber. Our executive is split between a hereditary monarchy, and the internally elected leader of the majority party in the Commons. Our judiciary are appointed by the government. We also have various elected local governance – in the countryside, I believe there is a County, District and Parish structure, whereas in most urban areas there is a unitary authority; the members of which are elected. Supra-nationally, we have the European Parliament. To me this doesn’t seem like much, in the US, and other states, the entire executive and legislative offices are elected directly, and in many states the judiciary are also, although I do accept that the US and UK are totally different countries, the many levels and various elective bodies in the US do give the voters more control over what goes on.
In the UK, power has been devolved from the Monarch over the years, to the Barons, to Parliament, which crew from the Curia Regis (1066ish) – an appointed body of advisors to the King, to the present semi elected, Sovereign law making body in the UK. I believe that, over time a regional assembly would grow in influence and authority as its Westminster father has.
The ‘debate’ has, I agree been pathetic, however, the more direct accountability in the system, the more power we, the electorate have to demand change. If nothing else, the regional assembly would offer the holistic electorally endorsed voice of the region; which would by nature have greater influence on central government, and in the media, than the voices of a plethora of local authorities, which are heavily dominated financially by the centre.
We, as a region have the opportunity to take greater control of the region, a minor rise in tax, in my opinion is worth it.
As someone from the North East, I usually put my nationality down as British, I don’t particularly see myself as much else, perhaps European, but that is a very broad label.