Monday 7th December 2020 Is it Isaiah Chapter 10 Verse 3, ref: ‘The day of reckoning’ or Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors

 

            ‘Why should their liberty than ours be more’?

Northumberland’s annual? December Council half yearly debt meeting of the Corporate & Economic Growth Overview and Scrutiny committee which looks at the first half years debt the County Council administration has accrued, and suggests what should be written off to Cabinet in the same week.

The report which is available via the Council’s meeting diary shows that in this very strange year for people and their Council who havw recorded a huge debt increase with the half year figures looking very similar to annual figures for the last four financial years. In their usual secret society manner, the Tory Administration haven’t listed them together within the report for the Taxpayer to be able to make an easy comparison.

The report has been written on behalf of the Cabinet member for finance, Councillor Nick Oliver who, as has been released recently lost his fourth Director of Finance in three and a half years. Unknown in Local Government circles but this is Northumberland County Council who are sitting under the dark cloud of a series of major investigations into a number of high level allegations including bullying of staff by Councillors and corruption both of which would affect the role of any Director of Finance and include the Portfolio holder, Cllr Nick Oliver.

But its the report we are more interested in, particularly the write off of debt. Its been reported that Councillor Oliver was involved at a top level with a company which folded leaving the Council with £31,000 worth of debt in business rates. All business rate debt has been clumped together in the report making it impossible to decipher who the main debtors are. Is one of them Councillor Oliver and his families defunct company of which he was company secretary and will they receive a debt write off, or the bailiff and court like everyone else? 

Just like Isaiah and his explanation of the day of reckoning, will we the taxpayer have to wait until St Peter has had a chat with Cllr Oliver to chalk the matter up in his eternal scroll before we find out? and as we the taxpayer know its been an expensive Comedy of Errors at County Hall Morpeth since May 2017. 

We believe Shakespeare was correct in the assumption we listed above which is more modernly explained by George Orwell via the pigs in his classic, animal farm, with his famous explanation of equality which we will plagiarise here as ‘Some Tories feel they are much more equal than the Northumberland Taxpayer’!