Gospels, wind and rail - the pitch for Northern votes
With all the three main parties' national and regional manifestos now published, what are they offering that is distinctively northern?
, although large chunks talk about the party's record rather than what they'll offer if re-elected.
There are some specific local policy pitches though.
They are promising to relocate more civil service jobs from London to the region, although there are no specifics.
They will consider turning Northern Rock back into a Mutual, but that of course is not a promise, in fact it's only an "option".
They will though establish a "regional growth fund" to help the economy recover, and retain regional development agencies.
And they'll also invest £18.5m in the development of offshore wind test sites in the North East, and they say they'll ensure fast broadband access to every home.
Some of it stretches the truth a little though. The manifesto talks about Newcastle linking into a high speed rail line to London, via Leeds.
The only firm Labour plan for that high speed line is to build to Birmingham by 2026 at the earliest, Leeds may follow at an unspecified later date, and there are no plans for Newcastle to be actially on the line.
Instead the region would be linked to it via the existing East Coast line. And of course there are no plans for a line up the West Coast to stop in Cumbria.
On energy, Labour is committed to new nuclear power stations in Cumbria and Hartlepool.
One of the most eye-catching sections relates to a real bugbear in the North East - the Lindisfarne Gospels.
The manifesto says "The region's Labour MPs are committed to securing the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels to a permanent home in the North East."
Laudable of course, but before you get too excited there's still no concrete proposal yet to bring the Gospels back.
The Liberal Democrats also have a regional manifesto but a look at their website suggests a pro forma approach as every region's looks startlingly similar (compare and contrast those for the and ).
There are some specifics though. They say they'd invest part of a £400 million fund to help ports in Teesside and Tyneside build offshore wind turbines.
And they say they'd hope to turn Northern Rock into a building society.
They'd also create Regional Stock Exchanges to help provide businesses with better sources of investment.
And they'd fund 140 extra police officers for the North East and put £175m into the region's schools.
The Liberal Democrats though would scrap any plans for new nuclear power stations.
And on transport there's only a vague commitment to improving road and rail links.
The Conservatives don't have a regional pitch, but there are some items of interest for our area in .
They're committed to increasing the private sector's share of the economy in the region. The North East's is currently the smallest in the country.
They also talk about bringing High Speed rail to the North East, but only in a second phase of development with no set timetable.
Regional development agencies would be replaced with "local enterprise partnerships" unless the area's councils decided that they still wanted an agency for the whole region.
On energy, communities who agree to have wind farms could be allowed to keep the business rates from them for six years. New nuclear power stations would be built as long as they didn't need a public subsidy.
Local people would be given the chance to bid to run any "community service" instead of the State, and directly-elected commissioners would replace police authorities.
I've still to study the smaller parties' manifestos in depth, so I'll come back to them in a later post.
I'm Richard Moss, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Political Editor for the North East and Cumbria. Welcome to my irreverent - but hopefully insightful - northern take on reporting politics for Look North and the Politics Show.
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