Nasties show nothing but contempt for Ashington!

The spin surrounding the potential reopening of the Ashington Blyth and Tyne line to passengers when coupled with the national disaster for the north and Midlands of the new Tory tax increases has helped illustrate how badly the Tory led Northumberland County Council and the Government have treated areas sitting in the top 10% of deprived areas nationally over the last decade.

 (if the government ever releases the cash to develop and reopen this rail line with most red wall projects frozen by the Treasury, local nasties now hope that a trimming of the £36Bn new Tory 'red wall' tax may find its way towards fulfilling at least one manifesto promise to the people of Northumberland!). 

If it goes ahead, Ashington will be the only town in Northumberland to get a station smack bang in the middle of its town centre to whisk its population to better employment in the Tyne and Wear conurbation as the proposed rail line reopening will share two stations with the well used Tyneside Metro system.

An application recently went through planning at the County Council to develop its town centre car park in readiness for any 'Royal' nod from Boris Johnson to get this 50year wait to reopen this line to passengers started. 

Immediately, the euphoria this news would develop in and around Ashington had cold water poured all over it when the leading Tory Richard Wearmouth, told the press that he would be placing punitive parking charges just in case people from his home town of Morpeth four miles away used Ashingtons car parks and travelled via this line to Newcastle, effectively destroying any opportunity for growth for the traders of Ashington to retain business on its high street that may been gained through an increase in footfall that a set of free to use car parks near a station brings.

This is another in a series of attacks on Ashingtons population by Councillor Wearmouths mob of nasty party Tories. Now historical newspaper articles show that in 2017, under his top dog control of regional Tory policy, he removed the Council's 'core strategy' document to ensure a Government backed garden village project on land next to his now disgraced mate Councillor Peter Jackson's land became stymied and stopped. Councillor Jackson backed by Councillor Wearmouth  said his new team would "produce a new Local Plan in three months", almost six years since there's still no new plan. But the problem for Ashington folk is that a 'core strategy' is a link to all Council policy including the policy to protect deprived areas. Without that policy in place Ashington and towns with similar problems are simply neglected by their Council. Residents pay all and get nowt.

Another blatant attack on Ashington was to stop the Labour Party plan to build a £32m town centre Council office block to bring 800 jobs to support trade on Ashington high street an element of their deprived area policy. with other workers spread into all of the counties market towns. 

The nasties stopped that job, paying millions in compensation to the development contractor and decided to modernise an aging almost empty out of town building designed to house 6000 workers in Morpeth. That project has run for five and a half years and cost the ratepayer  £53m.* It is expected the trimmed by the Tories workforce that will be housed in their new 'Palace of dreams' will number about 500, plenty of space for staff to dodge the alleged nasty bullies you may think.

*figures provided by a defected Tory from the fracture group to the press.