Sunderland must keep any 'Newcastle-centric' mayor in check

On Friday, May 3 we will have the first elected North East Mayor. Opinion on the subject is divided on Wearside.

People are either completely uninterested or consumed with suspicion; assuming of course that they even know about.

Reported figures vary, but according to official, largely tedious and environmentally unfriendly bumf you may have received, the mayor could oversee a budget "worth up to £4.2billion over 30 years".

So Sunderland may as well insert its snout as there are concerns, not just on Wearside, that the whole enterprise will be "Newcastle-centric".

The overall result will be announced in Silksworth. Nice little bit of profile for Sunderland there.

Yet the election is already tainted by perceived (or otherwise) Newcastle-centricity. All six candidates have connections to that city.

It isn't tribal or personal to say that the rest of the North East becomes tired of having Newcastle constantly referenced; because if it was Sunderland we wouldn't mind.

But take, for example, the BBC. The main backdrop on Look North shows Newcastle, complete with a view of St James' Park. The North East's greatest and most important landmark, Durham Cathedral, is nowhere to be seen.

Our local radio station is named BBC Radio Newcastle, even though the bulk of its listeners live elsewhere.

Superficial perhaps, but history tells us that there's more to it. Tyne and Wear's former County Council and Development Corporation were based in Newcastle, but served the whole "county".

When the corporation mercifully expired in 1998 the Tyne "and Wear" Metro still had four years of a 22-year wait remaining to extend to (a few parts) of Sunderland.

Even then there would be no Metro bridge crossing the Wear, unlike the Tyne. To this day it cadges the use of the Monkwearmouth Railway Bridge from Network Rail.

Nexus recently preposterously advised Sunderland passengers wanting a night bus to the airport, to make a 70-minute bus ride to Newcastle before doing so.

Now LNER have stopped their Sunderland-London train and also advised Wearsiders to go to Newcastle.

Over to you new mayor. At least expectations aren’t high re. fair sharing. History has seen to that.