“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

This story isn’t simply another criticism of the Tories at County Hall in Morpeth as it starts clearly a few years previously, 1991 in fact and its not all about Tories. The Lib Dems as many who have joined their ranks will tell you preached the gospel according to the ‘framework’ and that framework was extremely flexible but commonly used to blame everyone else for anything that was less than perfect and claim the LibDems were significant in getting anything of note locally through your Council. It was written with local government at heart because that’s where the Lib Dems were at their strongest.

They honed their skills through the Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy days and through the use of the framework strengthened their grip on Councils, becoming the second party in many areas, even those outside their heartlands of the middle classes and Universities.

Their grave error was to seek ultimate power and join a coalition with the Tories in 2010, not because the people couldn’t stand the coalition it was because the Tories used the LibDem’s own framework to do them in! (Politically that is) changing its title to the Template.

The Tories recruited and tasked supporters who could utilise the modern skills of social media and blend it into a hazed normality of everyday life, starting up sites usually with the Town name followed by matters and set about harvesting people who liked to feel they could criticise people within their community without putting their heads above the proverbial parapet.


The Tories have been amazing exponents of the use of the template in Local Government following the rules recently exposed in the press about Dominic Cummings who knew how to use personal data that could be unlawfully scooped from Councils to pin point social media messages into the streets their enemies lived in and secretly managed both in opposition and in administration to lie about matters so often and spin this and that excuse as to why things haven’t happened in a timely fashion that people believe their rhetoric and spin because there’s very little else to bat with.

But in this great County of Northumberland a little bit of tittle-tattle regarding two adults and the madness of vengeance that took place when someone thought it wasn’t correct has now become known as the ‘Northumberland Affair’ and the truth about the lies attached to the Tory template are pouring out in a period when the Tories should be lying their teeth out against the Labour Party who pale into insignificance on the battlefront through their need to campaign positively. It shows that as a nation we would rather believe negativity than alacrity.

The first lie we will expose has been repeated umpteen times to satisfy the close allies of the Tories, the so called Bedlington Independents, who have ridden the waves of the Tories shirttails with a promise that the almost defunct Advance Northumberland would furnish them with a new Town Centre development and that Aldi would be their anchor store. Well three years on from that promise and spin startup we find that it is not even in the thoughts of Aldi to build another store any closer to Bedlington than Morpeth!
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18674856.26-locations-aldi-want-build-new-stores/?fbclid=IwAR2RXNc857O8oE3AVw7Oe2bKDwCRbEuGjd06Aj96_pLYVLLrgkDGIcVfn4M

What will the Bedlington Independents do now that they have found out that they have been stabbed between the eyes?

Secondly the upmarket spin regarding the reopening of the Ashington Blyth and Tyne railway line, planned and pushed by several administrations at County Hall for well over 25yrs. The current Tories have taken the biscuit on this exercise, using the Template as a guide they spent public money on a massive publicity campaign and had a run along the line on a train with a Minister of State, Chris Grayling, and a minion MP in tow, promising the release of funds to reopen the line.

This of course was template spin of the first order because during the same time period in Parliamentary terms Chris Grayling, born on April fools day and well known as ‘failing Grayling’ finally left the government  (at his own request, we should add) after nine years littered with failure, incompetence and catastrophe.

In the early part of 2020 pre covid a new minister Chris Heaton Harris visited the site at the behest were told of the Mayor for North of Tyne region Labours Jamie Driscoll who has kept the project alive with a government promise of a miserly £1.5m to move to another planning stage. Shortly afterwards the same Heaton Harris did not name this line in his release of funds to expand railway services in his element of the Northern Powerhouse Transport for the North report a month after his visit.

We could go on and on with the untruths spun by the Conservatives at County Hall such as the failure to improve the A1 and the lies surrounding the Cowpen Road bypass but we will leave that to the Labour Party in their move towards the 2021 local government elections and with their positive campaigning at heart will be able to softly kiss and tell about the failures of the current Tory administration who are so dizzy or in love or corrupt they possibly don’t know what the actual truth is any more.