IT has taken Eric Schmidt, the American boss of Google, to bring the government's attention to the Bristol region as England's Silicon Valley and an entrepreneurial hub. For an elected mayor to make a really big difference, he or she would need to be a metro-mayor, not just a city mayor. Boris Johnson is able to do so much because he speaks for eight million Londoners. He is in effect the First Minister of London.

The way in which elected representatives have failed to speak up for Bristol is a feature of living in an overly centralised country. A parliament in Bristol would make all the difference to the picture of the whole of the South Country. Bristol would be developed as the Southern Rail Hub with the much needed rail link from Bristol to Cambridge via Oxford drawing the three university towns together.

Robert Craig

All The South Party