Promoting The North-West

Political activism through blogging. Is it a new force in politics, or just the replacement for micro-scooters?

The Necessary Group are hoping for the former, as they are promoting blogging as a tool for people to get involved, and also linking to Meetup.com. Shame they haven’t embraced the format for their own website, surely an RSS feed could keep the campaign fresh in people’s minds?

Doing some investigation, I found this report which claims that “[a]wareness of government policy for the English regions was very low, with around 50% across England having heard nothing of government proposals.”

I’m not surprised. I can’t even find the whitepaper about devolution in England (Your Region, Your Choice) on the government’s website - the site it was on seems to no longer exist. Google was a little more fruitful, finding the aforementioned report, along with a white paper explaining the implications for the North-West. Nor have I been able to find any details of the “official Yes Campaign” mentioned on the It’s Necessary FAQ or a No Campaign.

From what I’ve read so far, I’m largely in favour of a regional assembly for the North West. Not that I’ll have any say in it, seeing as I don’t live there anymore. The entrepreneur in me, however, feels that it would be more beneficial to narrow the North-South divide through innovation and commerce; get back to what the North West did best when it was leading the industrial revolution and succeed, if necessary, despite government help.