(30 May 2014, 9:02 pm)marxistafozzski wrote Will pick my way through that later on ?

Here's a question, remember the Referendum held about 10 years ago for a North East Regional Assembly, it was a resounding No if I remember, if we had of said Yes, would the area now have had similar powers to what Holyrood and Cardiff Bay have today and in the event of Scottish Independence would a North East Assembly have been in a better position to do trade deals with the Scottish...

I should really do my research before I start a topic ;-) but if you don't ya learn nowt

The short answer is no. What was proposed, IIRC, was a whole lot of bureaucracy which basically absolved Whitehall from blame if things went wrong. Power over our own affairs would have been very, very limited with Whitehall having the final say on most matters. It would have been akin to a combined regional council, not a devolved parliament.