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.
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