FROM the start of the process in the Government's "consultation" paper Your Region Your Choice, and in every statement by its local proponents, the devolution lobby has chosen to force the 1974 regional boundaries of Brussels/Whitehall on a people who have had an identity of world renown for more than a millennium - namely Yorkshire.

Their region will be created on these "top-down" boundaries and the votes will be counted on these boundaries. The result will be declared on these "top-down" boundaries. They are not Yorkshire. There are no such people as "the people of Yorkshire and the Humber".

It is a rigged region that excludes Saddleworth, West Craven, Bowland, Dentdale, Upper Teesdale and all of North East Yorkshire. The people in those places were never granted a vote on their exclusion.

By following this line the proponents of this scheme give away their real vainglorious motives. They wish to be provincial governors of the central power, whatever the area of their province and whatever the terms. They show how little they know of, or care about, real Yorkshire. What is on offer is not our region - and it is not our choice.

Coun RC Holt,

Chairman of the Executive Committee,

Yorkshire Ridings' Society.

Updated: 11:24 Thursday, June 26, 2003