Morpeth mob, feasting on Northumberland's golden egg laying goose.

 

"Gaslighting Morpeth Tories won't accept that when people get in their cars to shop they don't follow tradition and will not put up with congestion through ignorance". "Killingworth and Kingston Parks takings will have shot up through this mess while our town dies off" 

This week, after the announcement that the Morpeth led Tory county council had bypassed Cramlington for any assisted Tory only funding from the leveling up fund and we read the remarks on roadworks from Councillor Mark Swinburn against his own Council of which he's a highly paid member, we thought we should take a codgerley bus trip from our park bench and take a look.

A short walk up from the village stop near Sainsburys brought us up to the absolute chaos at the west end of Cramlingtons wonderful shopping centre and leisure campus. We found a tail back of traffic trying to exit and enter the west area car parks of biblical proportions. The cacophony of car horns and irate screeching retail spenders was horrendous and for the first time we had to agree that a Tory Councillor, Mark Swinburn, had called it right and we, like Councillor Swinburn, believe the shambolic and self centred Morpeth mob planned this disruption to show the Cramlington Conservative faction that they must tow the line or else!

A wander around the centre illustrated how badly the monstrous exposure to the removal of easy access by car is. Most of us park bench codgers have been in awe of the success of Manor Walks and its retail park, a success that has disappeared over the last few weeks.

We adjourned to the pub and after filling our aging boots we, your codger team, began to copy the times reporters who had been in Blyth this week following the loss of British volt and just like those professional media degree experts, we couldn't find anyone who would admit to voting Conservative.

But, when it came to talking about the traffic problems caused by the County Council they opened up and one Cramlington Councillor, the business chairperson of the Council, Councillor Barry Flux was slated by all we spoke to and rumours of him fighting in Newcastle and his nastiness abound among Cramlingtons public. Getting back to the traffic problems was a little difficult and  the quotes were very negative with Mary saying "Killingworth and Kingston Parks takings will have shot up while our town dies off" with Robert telling us " those gaslighting Morpeth Tories won't accept that when people get in their car to go shopping they don't follow tradition and will not put up with congestion through ignorance".

*Our team editor can't correct the spelling particularly from young shoppers,  some of the anglo saxon script was unprintable so we dropped off the quotes list.

Although we should finish our tale with the fact that we piled on the bus back to our park bench and it stood in the traffic for over ten minutes leaving some of us stranded for an age as connections had been missed.