eurealist.co.uk

Reports in local press in the North East and South West suggest that the Regional Assemblies – which are deeply unpopular in those euroregions – will be disbanded and their responsibilities and budgets transferred back to local authorities.

The Regional Development Agencies (RDA) are then likely to become the single biggest body responsible for the region - but their powers will be kept in check by elected councils and MPs.

This can only be good news for those of us who despair at the lack of democratic accountability which has been wrought by these Assemblies, we elect our local councillors to sit in our local chambers, not to go off and pretend they have some sort of democratic mandate for a whole region.

Our one hope now is that Mr Brown accepts that we the people do not want any of these Regional Assemblies, and goes the whole hog and scraps the rest of them including ours in the West Midlands, otherwise we will end up in an even bigger constitutional mess than at present. When we have got rid of the Assemblies our next target should be the Regional Development Quangos who are totally unaccountable to the voters of this country and whos only reason for existence in the first place is to act as a conduit for the return of an ever decreasing amount of our own money from the EU.