Shame: regional assembly rejected

We arrived in Durham to late to register and vote and our votes would have made little difference. I wanted to vote for a regional assembly; in general I believe in political decentralisation for reasons that spreading power seems to mitigate the potential for abuse and because I think that it normally give people a greater say in their own lives. This coheres well -I think- with God's respect for human dignity and the gift of agency. Also, in general terms, wealth tends to follow power, so to redistribute wealth in Britian requires decentralisation.

Many who voted 'no', it seems were worried it would cost them more [arguably not true since the scheme would have reduced the total number of politicians involved in governing the NE by some 500]. Shame is that no means that we can't argue over what it will look like and how to devlve since it can be taken that the decision is not to devolve when actually quite a lot of the no vote was being unconvinced by this particular package not necessarily the idea.