Will Northumberland's 'barley barons' stop Council helping with Sajid's health levelling up plans?

 

While Northumberland County Council's right-wing Conservatives rush around trying to correct the Council's Constitution, aka 'the bully boys charter' rewritten completely from its (praised by the local government association in 2014) format by Councillor Oliver in 2017 alledgedly on the the instructions of Councillor Wearmouth, the regions top Tory, to back up his party's actions against staff and opposition Councillors. Actions which has already cost the public purse £millions in both compensation and gagging agreements, their own Government's health secretary Sajid Javid is attempting to undermine two of its three top Tories by suggesting that deprived areas get greater input towards the equalisation and therefore the leveling up of a Council's health inequalities.

It's a helpful statement from the Health secretary who was born apparently in a council house in Rochdale before his family embraced capitalism with a small c and opened a shop in Bristol.

From that background he will be well aware of the inequalities and as the only bright light in the current cabinet will also know that only the full commitment of Government can deliver what he would wish, as from his position as health Secretary he cannot hit the biggest driver of those inequalities, poverty.

Fiddling around the edges by explaining how the UK was the first country in the world to sponsor vaping on the NHS instead of 'fags' will not deliver people out of fuel, transport, child, food and housing poverty to name but a few. Even if the NHS under his control legalised 'ganja' his Chancellor mate from the Treasury department would tax the backside out of it to cover the losses electric vehicles will place on the Tory war chests as they try to keep ahead of Labour and the Lib Dems in the 'race for greenness' as their current Cabinet and PM has destroyed the Tory brand and even with a change of PM unless it is Sajid Javid the current cabinets habits of bleeding the UK's nations slowly to death through austerity will return with a vengeance.

In Northumberland the health Minister's words will fall on stony ground as both the current Leader of Council, Councillor Sanderson and the deposed former Leader, Councillor Jackson are both farming 'barley barons' their crops slip into the alcohol production market place at premium prices annually and data shows the heaviest drinkers in numbers terms live in the most deprived areas. 

Some chance of getting Northumberland County Council who are charged with the responsibility to protect public health to help then?, so it's best to leave them to get themselves into even more trouble trying to backdate a grievance procedure by five years to plough out the history of bullying in the County. Of course by exposing themselves to the public gaze of their unlawful activities when combined with their inability to deliver Best Value on behalf of the Counties residents over the same time period even more of the Conservative Councillors may consider crossing the floor to the honest side.