http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/the- ... hern-party

I'd love to know what you make of that - would you like to see more power devolved locally, for instance? We're about to get a taste of it over here with 'super councils'...

Would you consider voting for a northern-centric party?

<Kneejerk reaction>
Hell yeah!
Screw you, southerners!
</Kneejerk reaction>

Mark

They offered the North East 'regional democracy', which had effectively no powers at all, they told them to sod off.

The offered Manchester a mayor who would purely have been a figurehead, we told them to sod off, so they waited a year and now we're getting a mayor anyway.

Regional democracy is utterly pointless unless power and resources are devolved along with it, and those two things usually aren't on offer. So it ends up as simply another layer of people earning a loving on the taxpayer for sitting in lots of meetings and writing lots of proposals and white papers. Complete waste of time.

How does one go about earning a loving on the tax payer?

Yeah, unless there is power to go with devolution it's effectively pointless.
I'd certainly be interested in seeing more regional devolution purely to get the political systems head out if its London centric Ass. I'm not necessarily going to be holding my breath for change any time soon though.