Rural Poverty Growing out of all proportion as Tories pour cash in only to save their urban MP.

Several happenings and announcements over this month show that the Tories in Northumberland have missed out on helping their long term supporters who live in the countryside while spending huge amounts in their ‘Capital City of Tory Culture’ in Morpeth and their national warchest voting fund of levelling up, gifting cash to renovate desperate homes in urban Blyth that  the community has been waiting to arrive for 14 years of austere free market twisty Government in office in Westminster.

The glamour developments in Morpeth by Northumberland Conservatives of a massively costly 6 year modernisation of County Hall rapidly moving towards another two year scheme to finish it off and the unique design and focus on building the ‘Palace of Leisure’ in Morpeth Town Centre while ALDI delivers 130,000 meals to the Counties poor via food banks shows how out of touch the ultra-right Morpeth centric Tories have become now they hold ultimate power in the County of Northumberland.

The dreadful announcement that Iceland ltd., are to close their Hexham store has also been ignored and with their low cost frozen meals and their £1 range becoming the staple for many older state pensioners who live in rural areas and their bargain meat packs helping less well off families still put meals on the table in these austere times this closure is a blow below the belt for many.

With the Tory Government’s stripping out cash from transport services; and bus companies removing even more routes that cannot survive without Government support has left residents who live in the Countryside and who need public transport in limbo and the budget setting exercise in County Hall Morpeth on Wednesday 22nd February 2022 forced up Council Tax to its maximum once again while services are slashed to cover the additional payments of responsibility allowances for Tory Councillors adding up to an additional half a million pounds in a Johnsonite style raid on the public purse, cuts to the bone when discussed in our market towns.

With veg prices about to soar in line with everything else as agi-millionaires and investors dream of joining the ranks of billionaires from the banking and energy business both the Tories in Westminster who encourage a free market economy that is stripping the dignity never mind the cash from local folk in Northumberland and the local Tories who were given £9m by Jamie Driscol, mayor of the North of Tyne combined authority to support the delivery of essential services across the Counties rural areas then decide to spend it on consultants, probably from Morpeth, have badly let down their long term supporters from rural areas.

The NFU came out to note that small rural farms who relied on handouts from the EU and those farming marginal land needed massive Government help to aid the move from agriculture to horticulture yet the Tories in Government have missed that obvious needed change to lower import costs, turned their faces away whilst leaving rural dwellers exposed to carpetbagging companies who want land cheaply especially on the edges of market towns. As recession hits and bites more local people much harder, developers will want the Government to expose more green belt to concrete over and will blame the wishes of many who dream of moving out of cities as the catalyst for their change of protective heart and not the developers pockets.

The Tories at all levels need to wake up to the problems they have caused in England's northernmost County before the countryside is left to God and good neighbours. But we don’t think they can backtrack from cash at all costs and even begin to think of putting people before profit.

 https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/23342235.iceland-store-hexham-set-close/

 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/big-money-promised-rural-northumberland-25588129

 https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/northumberland-council-to-spend-ps9m-on-consultants-as-part-of-modernisation-plan-to-achieve-ps17m-savings-3991654

 

 

Dozens of Councillors sitting in shock and not one could find a pin to drop!

 

Proverbs 10:19

Tell us silence can help us avoid sinning.

The avoidance of sin reached epidemic proportions on Wednesday 22 February 2023 when the Leader of Northumberland County Council bowed to pressure from his ultra right sidekicks to gift a Tory who was removed from their top-ranks two years ago an additional £1000 per month of cash from the public purse.

Councillor Glen Sanderson proposed that Councillor Nick Oliver was to be promoted to the position of scrutiny chairperson pouring extra cash into his pockets from yours.

Two years ago the same Leader removed Councillor Oliver from his top team as the press had let the public know he owed the Council £thousands through taking another one of his family companies to the wall. The Tories knew about his loose ways with business when in 2017 the disgraced Councillor Peter Jackson made him his finance guru, shocking many who had come into contact with him outside the Councils environment.

The Council chamber in Versailles, Morpeth Branch Hall (it's all smoke and mirrors) fell silent when the nomination was made and it was noticeable when the Cramlington Conservatives and a number of older county Conservatives snuck out of the Council chamber during the stunned silence, leaving only Tories and those receiving extra cash in allowances this year, (half a million pound extra has been found to fill their pockets) remained and smiled prettily when shouting agreed, to follow their leader and support the rise of this person.

It's been said by a top Tory businessman from within the County on his social media that this decision sums up why the nation is sliding over to Labour more rapidly than the new Mercedes F1 car travels.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/top-councillor-northumberland-county-council-18796382

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/councillor-booted-from-committee-job-3444828

https://northumberland.laboursites.org/2020/10/05/cabinet-member-responsible-for-debt-recovery-owes-money-to-the-council/

What a pathetic shambles Northumberland Tories delivered on ‘Budgie Day’.

It was far too cold for us codgers to sit at our park bench today so we visited a community facility in Ashington that the Tories who set their budget today refused to sponsor.

Over a few cups of tea we watched the events on social media unfurl at County Hall and could almost smell both the fear of deselection or the failure to pick up and pocket a valuable increase in their special allowances from the Tories assembled in Britain's most expensive half refurbed almost unused County Hall.

As usual the meeting formula dragged on a bit as top Tory, Dodgy Dick Wearmouth kept sweeping his team with his laser eye in case a smirk of descent or a single dot from his ironclad script slipped from the pages and onto the lips of those he controls. Today possibly took his focus from deselecting regional Conservatives who aren’t fully locked into the return of Boris Johnson. We codgers noted those forced out, both men and women in North Tyneside and Sunderland are to be replaced by ultra-right Johnsonite men.

The move towards the budget itself came with opposition Councillors bringing out the negatives against its acceptance LibDems, Labour and Independents waxed lyrical about Job Losses, the impact of this budget on Communities, the lack of risk assessment and public consultation and the secrecy with which this budget has been put together does not bode well for people County-wide as the Caller report on joint responsibilities went out of the window at its first test. Dodgy Dicks mates took no notice.

The speakers pointed out that this budget which may pay off hundreds, take borrowing through the roof and deliver less of what people need and more of what Tories want.

It was said people need:

An equality impact assessment to see how this Tory budget affects those who already find themselves suffering from dodgy Tory national policy debacles.

A series of risk assessments on the effects on Council workers to give them assurance on matters including workload once their colleagues leave the service or are forced from their jobs.

A risk assessment on the nonsense of not consulting correctly on this budget with the public before releasing it to be voted on.

Opposition speakers pointed out how service slippage had reached epidemic proportions and one wit also alluded to the social media rants about the ignorant parking of the Leader of Council blocking off peoples drives and not owning up to it.

With such obvious matters as road gully cleaning falling back from twice a year to once every thirty-six months in a County where in recent memory the river Tyne has burst its banks twice and Labour found funding to properly finish Morpeth’s flood defences to protect homes from the ravages of the river Wansbeck as well as repair bridges and bunds in Wylam, Corbridge and beyond is deplorable and downright dangerous for residents living in a county with so many rivers and the North Sea tides as its Eastern boundary.

This budget pushes families from poorer areas to the limit, more will have to sell homes to pay for care, more will have to wait longer to have work undertaken and more will have to choose paying increased rent or to feed their families. What have these Tories brought Northumberland communities down to?

The meeting which was the first attended by the Council’s new but very experienced Chief Executive will be one to remember for her, as she has inherited a failing authority with an administration where control is all and the majority of Councillors from that ruling administration are like rabbits in the headlamps.

It's sad, but thats what you get from Tories at all levels.

 

It's time to develop modern rapid build social housing in Northumberland, Six years after Peter Jackson promised it.

 

The great culture shift by Northumberland Conservatives during 2020 following the ditching of their super strategist Councillor Peter Jackson for alleged ‘rakish behaviour’ allowed the rise of the Nasties under the watchful eye of the gorgon, dodgy Dick Wearmouth led to the loss of how to make Morpeth the new capital of the North and the beginning of force-feeding Tory culture to the masses.

The ‘New Nasties’ under the guidance of dodgy Dick and soggy Sanderson have even decided not only to spend £millions more than Councillor Jackson’s “lick of paint” on Morpeths County Hall, but to also forget the Council Housing strategy he was promoting following the success of Labour in housing those in need from 2013-2017 by building 400 new social houses under the watchful eye of Cramlington Councillor Allan Hepple a top housing manager during his working career.

Councillor Jackson”s strategy of stopping 2000 homes his own Tory Government were promoting at Dissington Garden Village then agreeing to roll on with growing Amble by accepting four sites for full permission that were held up at their consultation stage by Labour to cover his back with national planning officers. With 500 homes at Acklington Road, 275 on Percy Drive, 190 at Hauxley View and 14 at St Cuthberts old school site all forced through against public opinion following the Tories winning the 2017 local government election.

His strategic announcement in 2019 was followed a few months later by re-release of Labours plan to build a prefabricated homes factory in Ashington to help develop affordable homes and social housing County-wide to stop villages dying and increase the ability to house people who needed Council homes to secure a decent home for an affordable rent. Dodgy Dick and Soggy himself quickly forgot that strategy following Councillor Jackson's demise from his top position.

Now that the housing register is full to bursting point through people getting poorer daily due to Tory policies and their race for cash at all costs, it's time to reignite Councillor Jacksons Housing Strategy and rapidly build homes, place them on Council owned infill sites and get decent roofs over the heads of decent people as fast as possible and kick Nasty culture and the centres to pump it out from into the long grass for decades to come.

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/strategy-promised-for-new-generation-of-council-housing-in-northumberland-161004

scotbuild.com

Affordable Homes in Sheepwash - Frame Homes UK

Northumberland Continuing with *'Scrotiny' Panels?

With Labour's Leader noting Bad Behaviour from the 
Administration continuing!

With things going from bad to worse at Northumberland County Council with it still sitting under a cloud, not achieving 'Best Value' for the last six years, dogged by the loss of Britishvolt, still under investigation from a Local Government peer group, their company Advance Northumberland making buyers wait more than a year to gain access to newly built homes and with the administration keeping the public at bay through using Kremlin secrecy methodology in its day to day workings.

We are pleased the Leader of the Labour Group Councillor Scott Dickinson has noted on public social media this week that toxic bullying and bad behaviour is still ongoing from the Councils administration ensuring that scrutiny panels are screwed down just as tightly as the Tories Cabinet keeping the Councils secrets kept away from the public at large.

Scrutinyin local government terms is a process whereby councillors who are not the Council's Cabinet can play an influential role in the shaping of policy and decisions that will have a real benefit on behalf of the community they represent.

Scrutiny was established in English and Welsh local authorities by the Local Government Act 2000. They were intended as a counterweight to the new executive structures created by that Act, Northumberland's executive structure is currently one of Leader and Cabinet all belonging to one party.

This is a huge change from Labour's executive structure and open Policy Board system 2013-2017 where all political parties enjoyed membership of the policy board and all non-personal or protected data information was shared openly with every political group, every member of a scrutiny panel and the public at large.

To ensure that scrutiny has some value in Local Government the panels members are fully furnished with both the results of ongoing local performance information regarding their authority along with both regional and national comparison information in order that scrutiny members of Council, (not its executive) set targets that can be both measured reliably and met by their teams to push the executive into ensuring they are properly responsible for the departments they are highly paid to manage as Councillors, making scrutiny a true bottom up process to galvanise the public into the recognition that their local Council can add value for receipt of their vote.

This gives the public and the Council's external auditors who are appointed by Government, assurance that 'Best Value' when spending of in Northumberland's case over £1Bn per year of public money is achieved.

Since 2017 the Tory led County Council has neither issued information that can drive best value that is readily useful to scrutiny members or ever achieved it on behalf of Northumberland's residents. Using press spin to plaster over the gaps, repressing the need to know and dressing everything in 'Dodo Feathers'.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/scrote *

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/20231065.damning-report-tip-iceberg-warns-ex-leader-northumberland-county-council/

The inks are not dry on Max Caller's report and we hear Criticism, read about nastiness, crawling apologies, no debate until it's too late and the In-House Royal Family left sitting outside the whispers?

 

It might seem like handbags at five paces to some who sit outside the arena but for workers, staff, trade unions and opposition politicians this Tory mob from Morpeth ‘tek the biscuit’.

The Max Caller report looked at the nasty delinquent bullying ways that an administration in office treated everyone around them for the last six years.

Following receipt of the report and allowing the dust to settle closer to the ground, we estimate approximately head height as their conservative vision has proven to be completely enveloped in a blue mist, the Tories on the Council led by Councillors Sanderson and Wearmouth spun out a tale about how ‘It wasn’t us mister it was all those others’.

 

Then they publicly crumple up both the tale and the outcomes of the report and at their first attempt at having any vision for honesty and interest in either the people or the rules set by Caller, like the Royal Navy of old, they blew it out of the water.

The Council has a Cabinet made up of one single party who, like their dreams when they roll out of the lodge, consider themselves Royalty.

This time, like many other times, they agree to a budget and medium term financial plan without any consultation with opposition Councillors, the Public, the trade unions or their partners in Lower Tier Councils who have bankrolled their activities for the last six years and put up with what's being poured out.

The leader and deputy leader slated the Labour Party political group leader when he had the temerity to tell them like it is.

Pensioners groups and shelter openly criticised rises in Council Tax and Social Housing Rents that will simply cause hardship and strip savings from those around them.

The Council deputy leader Councillor Wearmouth exposed the £17m cut in budget and it has been reported by the TU’s that they still don’t know where the axe will fall on their members.

The Tories also announced they want to spend £9M on consultants to modernise their services, at this point we need to remind Councillors that Councillor Sanderson holds a very high post within the Local Government Association to personally give advice on modernising services and the Council already pays an annual membership to the North-East employers organisation https://www.nereo.gov.uk/about-us/ who also advise on modernising Council services so why spend £9m or is it to emulate Boris Johnson and his pandemic cash giveaways?

They then set about the Liberal Leader Councillor Reid in public and at that same meeting the ‘Royal Wearmouth’ in his regular fashion, attempted to bully Councillor Caz Bell for asking civil questions about his budgets effect on ordinary folk and Councillor Murphy had to openly seek an apology on the Labour Party’s behalf, the report is in a link below.

They have gone on to hide a public event on the largest regional change for decades in the North East that of an elected mayor for the region from prying eyes in case they get asked questions. They may have missed that lesson as the chalk for their slate had got damp

But to all of our regular readers the most revealing outcome isn’t that this budget will cause hardship above and beyond the norm its the amount of secrecy that Max Caller attempted to halt is still ongoing and a Tory Councillor From Blyth whose partner is the daughter of a TOP Tory, Councillor Jones a cabinet fixture for the Tories if that isn’t a pun, isn’t being informed about a bus stop very close to Ian Levy MP’s home?

It must be a secret!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-62926064 Tory mismanagement and reason they need to slash £17m.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-council-tax-2023-26154407?utm_source=sharebar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sharebar

https://anorthernviewofpolictics.blogspot.com/2023/02/northumberland-labour-group-leader.html

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/ex-council-leader-slams-successor-over-northumberland-budget-consultation-4025544

Secrecy prevails in Northumberland as the Council hides public consultation on a poor devolution deal in Alnwick.

 

Following a well publicised signing of the ‘devolution deal for the North-East’ which will force an elected mayor on 1.5m people and change the way ‘Borderlands debate’ will be centred in future, Councillor Geln Sanderson the secret leader of a secret Council has decided to hold the public consultation for this major social change in the historic but lonely market town of Alnwick well away from the prying eyes.

A letter dated 3rd February was issued out to stakeholders across Northumberland last weekend for an event to be held tomorrow stating (The Northumberland event will be held on 15th February 2023, 4pm at St James’ Church, Alnwick.)

This supposed public consultation event is a disgrace from Northumberland Tories, being held in the North of the County which is vast yet only 12% of the County’s population live there, shows exactly how Councillor Sanderson wants this consultation event's outcomes to be read.

More than 50% of the County population live in 4% of its landmass in South East Northumberland but it looks to us here at Murky that Councillor Sanderson is afraid to speak to the majority of people who through Tory mismanagement are suffering at more levels than the wealthy, well dressed gentleman farmer Councillor Sanderson understands or would even think of.

The other Councils who are to be part of this deal are holding similar events in central places where their population dwells or can get to easily.

To attend you need a ticket so that the speaker in this case Councillor Sanderson knows or can avoid at the meeting.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/devolution-consultation-event-tickets-530639124907

Some online consultation will be held and can be accessed from this link: https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/About/North-East-Devolution-Consultation.aspx

The concern for most people is that this isn’t a devolution deal at all it's just an attempt by the Tories in Government to hoist a City Centric Mayor onto a vast area of rurality and as Micheal Gove has already announced two, yes two RDA’s for the North East to ensure development is centrally controlled from Government and not devolved through what will be a puppet mayor.

A year on and the Northumberland Tory Leader is repeating the same old story?

Taking borrowing soaring over £1.2Bn and cutting £17.5m from Council revenue doesn’t bode well for either children or the elderly now or in the future.

One year on from Councillor Glen Sandersons "call to action" at the authority's inequalities summit, his promises are almost identical yet the needs of both children in poverty and the wait for social care to keep the elderly in their own homes has grown considerably as his Government lets people across the County languish in poverty without hope.

It's time his ‘call for action’ was centered on welding his own group of disparate factionalised nasties into one unit so that the Council can move forward at a pace instead of languishing in a period of respin of hollow promises he is now much less likely to be able to deliver that than when he first spun his tale. 

Known Conservative social media shows that instead of appeasement between the factions which make up the broad right of his party that threats are now being hurled between mobs with a similar passion to that his party’s national government when levelling up disparity and brexit problems exacerbating a recession gets mentioned, even without the negativity of the return to power of Liz Truss who’s free market let’s fertilise the money trees dying flowers administration killed off opportunities to help children and the elderly for decades to come.

Councillor Sanderson’s messages to the public should be about hurling letters at his Government to help in the care and education field and not get lost in the hype around austerity spewed out by a dying administration in Westminster. 

An example of the maelstrom he has been caught up in is the building of a Special Free School in the town of Blyth which ‘costs the Council nothing to deliver this brilliant service’ report he put out after January’s 2023 children's services scrutiny panel met. He obviously hadn’t noticed that the Education and Skills department of his Government deduct funding for places at established special free schools from local authority high needs allocations and pay it directly to schools. It may not cost the Council anything to develop a free school but the loss of an asset in the land transfer and the reduction in high level funding which will reduce the spend on other schools in the County seems to be a damaging move for children other than those attending the special free school or is that a spinning conundrum that the Tory’s think people may not notice?

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-improve-chances-deprived-children-25887333

Will Northumberland’s new officers be brave enough to protect the local plan and say NO?

New brush normally sweeps clean, but can it?

As most people who read the press across Northumberland you may have noticed that the Council has recruited a ‘brand new’ chief executive and social media from the Tories state that a new officer team is being recruited and formed to serve the new CO’s needs.

Included in the list being fielded is that a new head of planning has been recruited.

As readers of this blog know, the Caller report on poor leadership from the administration, secrecy, bullying, lack of teamwork, dreadful lack of communication with the public highlighting spin over truthfulness, disparate training of Councillors, and the fear of officers to say NO to the Cabinet members which should be prime in directing the Council forward, is now being spun as nothing special by the Tories. 

Those same Tories obviously hadn’t noticed (or want to keep it secret) that Mr Caller also heavily criticised the administration of the Council in its performances on planning. Other bodies including professional developers and businessmen can’t believe that Northumberland has produced a local plan following the Northumberland Tories destruction in 2017 of the Council's emerging core strategy, the New Local Plan allows villages and market towns to be slowly strangled and die, whilst the 4% of land which makes up the South-East of the County and houses well over half of the Counties population at this moment in time is to be allowed to grow to the Hong Kong new territories housing density levels. 

So six months after the release to Cabinet members of Mr Caller’s report things hadn’t improved one jot and long-serving cabinet member, a planning application had been submitted to the Local Planning Committee for the North of the County to develop a new home in Bamburgh, totally outside of the Council’s Local Plan. Cllr Guy Renner Thompson explained that he felt the development was one the village needed, and even called on other councillors to show Christmas spirit. He went on to say “I would implore you to allow it. Bamburgh needs more people. They have lost the school many years ago, there’s no post office and the village shop is still there – but it needs people to keep it going.

The Cabinet of the Council had agreed the new local plan in March 2022 12 weeks before the Caller report yet here we have a Cabinet Member pushing through a development outside the plan without a valid planning reason for doing so.

Councillor Renner Thompson was quite right in his statement to the area planning committee that villages need people to survive, therefore we have to ask why did he not say that when the new local plan was brought to his cabinet to ensure that all new homes are to be dumped in the South East of the County as it doesn’t affect rural towns and villages, when he knows that empty villages and market towns where only elderly people and second home tourists live is not healthy and he should get his cabinet to take the plan back in conjunction with the new head of planning and get a proper plan for growth from Berwick to Old Hartley that will benefit business, young people, those who need social housing in the countryside to work in rural areas and begin to open up the County turning the remaining 96% of the area into a vibrant place to live, work and bring up families who want to stay near their home bases.

We just have to hope that new officers and the new chief executive can say NO and not allow themselves to be bullied into improper decision making by infighting Tory Councillors who use dodgy decision making as weapons against their internal enemies within their own political group.

Notes

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/family-granted-permission-for-new-home-in-bamburgh-despite-planners-concerns-3965660