Press Release
4pm Wednesday 24 March 2004

Is the Government 'Lack of Information Campaign' Deliberate?

Following a recent survey which showed that over 60% of the people in the North East were unaware that there was even a referendum on elected regional government this year, it is no wonder as Minister Nick Raynsford revealed in the House of Commons (22nd March) some alarming statistics.

One must now really question whether the Government's information campaign is one of deliberate vagueness, obfuscation and avoidance of serious debate, and one must ask, is the 'lack of information' deliberate? Or can it simply be put down to incompetence?

The issue of regional government has hardly set the pubs and clubs alight and the 'Your Say' initiative has been a series of events which has not put Yes and No arguments, but simply put the Government's perspective. Free leaflets and a couple of pens to a few hundred people at a public meeting ain't gonna convince the man and woman in the street who wish to know exactly what the nuts and bolts of the deal actually are.

Now we find out the following:-

139,200 'Your Say' leaflets have been printed but with no indication how these will be shared or distributed to the 2,500,000 North East residents. Are we expected to read one, memorise it and then pass it on to nineteen friends (or thirteen if we take out under eighteen year olds)?

How will the 5,000 "Your Say: Business and Jobs" leaflets be allocated?

And the one that really beggars belief, "Your Say : Assembly Powers and Responsibilities"...only 5,000 copies. It looks like the man in the street has more chance of seeing Lord Lucan riding Shergar down Grey Street being chased by a Unicorn than he has of seeing one of these leaflets.

The whole regionalisation charade is descending into a disgraceful,shambolic and expensive farce and perhaps if the Government had realised that it was they who created the manufactured concept of 'the will of the people' based on manipulated and misleading statistics we would not have this offensive waste of public money on this very pointless exercise...and by the way, we are paying for all of this, including all the leaflets for boundary changes in Yorkshire which were wrongly delivered to homes in Northumberland. It appears that there is no truth in the rumour that the Chuckle brothers are in charge of distribution.

Once we have press and media asking the cutting questions that we have been asking for over eighteen months and being blunt about exactly what is on offer, and whose faces will wish to fill the frame of an assembly and how an assembly will be able to deliver instead listening to rhetoric and utopian dreams, then the stark reality will be that a no vote is not just a possibility, it will be inevitable...and guaranteed in all three regions.

ENDS

Contact:

Neil Herron - Campaign Director, North East NO Campaign

48 Frederick Street
Sunderland
SR1 1NF

Tel. 0191 5657143
Mob. 07776 202045