Tory Council’s MI5 Thinking Does not Line-Up with Rishi Sunak’s View

At our park bench meeting this week, actually a prom bench meeting, we were in Newbiggin by the Sea, the topic of conversation which arose was how will Northumberland County Council ever achieve Best Value in line with the Localism Act 2011 and guidance on behalf of its residents when it has decided as an administration that its too much bother to attempt to achieve it over the last six years so let’s remain an undercover operator, the public will never notice.

During 2019 when Minister for Local Government, Rishi Sunak took a long hard look at how Councils using the Leader and Cabinet or Executive models needed to act on behalf of the public in regards to being scrutinised by their peers, how they needed to line up with the Localism Act of 2011 and how the public received scrutinised information openly and on a regular and ongoing basis.

He issued a report: (Link Below) which explained the Law as it stands and issued guidance to help Councils ‘get it right first time every time’. The motto of the delivery of Best Value on behalf of businesses, Council taxpayers and residents from all walks of life.

By following the Law and the guidance issued by the current Prime Minister, Councils who deal with matters in an open and honest fashion could place them on the road towards reaching the Leader and Cabinet models goal of delivering Best Value every day of every year on behalf of its residents.

In Northumberland it appears that since May 2017 members of the County Councils Cabinet have not been able to understand or possibly don’t have the ability to read Rishi Sunak’s excellent guidance or follow his simple instructions on the matter of how important scrutiny both post and pre of decisions a Council makes or takes is in an auditors thinking on whether a Council can and has achieved Best Value on behalf of its residents.

 Northumberland County Council has failed over the last six years to persuade their Government appointed external auditors (they have had two, ‘huffed one and the latest toughs it out for politeness we believe’)  that they understand how or even how to make an attempt to deliver best value as secrecy in all quarters prevails throughout the Council.

Thomas More, in his famous book Utopia wrote: “There are no taverns, no ale-houses, nor stews among them, nor any other occasions of corrupting each other, of getting into corners, or forming themselves into parties; all men live in full view, so that all are obliged both to perform their ordinary task and to employ themselves well in their spare hours.”

We can’t really see Utopia as a practise among Northumberland Conservatives as the impetus within clashes with Rudyard Kipling’s view of the world.

But we the park bench Codgers who always meet in full view and the public at large would love to see Northumberland Conservatives report results of scrutiny investigations widely as instructed by their Prime Minister. We expect that just like their last six years in charge of your life, lying down and dying in the County’s ditches and gutters in the name of political dominance, Northumberland’s Conservatives will wish to say NO to delivering Best Value on behalf of residents forever?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/800048/Statutory_Guidance_on_Overview_and_Scrutiny_in_Local_and_Combined_Authorities.pdf

Northumberland need to get ‘Levelling Roads’ and halt levelling UP?.

With the sad news that Tory led Northumberland is the third worst County for potholes in England sitting just behind Tory led Derbyshire, and its ditto County Lancashire.

The facts printed in local north east Newspapers show a long term deterioration of the Counties highways since May 2017 and the ascendance of the Morpeth only Conservatives into high office.

Unfortunately for the reputation the current Leader, Councillor Glen Sanderson has been sullied by this sad news as he was responsible for Highways and Public Works from May 2017 until September 2020 when the former Ultra Right Wing Tory leader, Councillor Peter Jackson was ousted from Office with Councillor Sanderson taking leadership of the nasties, dumping the mess he left in his portfolio onto the unsuspecting shepherd from the National Park, Councillor John Riddle.

Figures show that potholes dipped in the first years of Councillor Riddle’s reign to about double that of when Labour’s old sage Councillor Swithenbank was responsible for the service.

Northumberland Conservatives who this year pushed a secret budget through its secret Cabinet and didn’t shed a light on its contents to its Labour, Liberal and Independent opposition members until the starter was about to lift the wire, have at this time left the Council in an insidious debt situation. They are committed to borrowing massively taking the County debt beyond £1.2Bn to cover off inflationary pressures on its ‘Levelling Up’ programme leaving the Counties highways like grapes in the early winter to rot on the vine.

Sitting behind Shropshire and North Yorkshire in the rurality league the fixation, fascination and attraction of Morpeth has led Northumberland Conservatives to ignoring the needs of its residents who need to travel by road everywhere as the County is famous for its lack of public transport.

Residents are furious with the state of the roads, with Councillor Sanderson telling the world he was going to rid the County of potholes in 2019 after he persuaded the County Council to purchase anther paviour machine to repair the potholes, and in recent weeks we have had the Tories using social media to blame the utility companies for what is their responsibility.

If it is the Utility Companies to blame why has Councillor Sanderson  allowed highways inspectors to retire early and/or take redundancy? Also when will he be starting a scheme to train new ones?

Local Social Media is beginning to ask the questions about when people will get their potholes repaired soundly and with the Government figures showing highway renewal in Northumberland is now on course to be once in every 116 years the furious are becoming the desperate and questions are leant towards the spend on County Hall and if the glamour levelling up schemes should e abandoned and the planned borrowing steered towards the County’s disastrous highways.

 

Taking £ hundreds of thousands from Cramlington South West Sector residents in Council Tax

Will Cloudy Glen give the ‘make a noise for Cramlington’ group a safe crossing? When on TV he fell at the first!

On Saturday 15th April 2023, two events of local interest took place. Firstly an 80-1 shot, Cloudy Glen, ran in the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree and watched by 600 Million viewers worldwide, fell at the first fence. It's been widely rumoured for several days on social media that the horse was named in honour of the leader of Northumberland County Council, Cloudy Glen Sanderson and events on TV news immediately after the racing finished hardened in that view to most Northumbrians.

Earlier in the day residents of Cramlingtons estates on its south west sector marched from their homes up to the Town Centre to display their unity in demanding a safe crossing be built by Glen Sanderson’s County Council, a Unitary all purpose Council for Northumberland across one of Northumberland’s busiest highways and bus routes Fisher Lane the A1068 linking the A1/A19 junction with one of the two main highway entry points into the South East of the County from the rest of the UK.

The demands of the marchers are simple, loud and clear for most people to understand but the ultra-right wing Tory farmer and Council leader, welded in with his fallen namesake, Cloudy Glen as he gave a positively bad tempered interview on TV offering that the Council with build the residents a footpath with ‘Council Money’ to get them up to the A192 junction.

The problem with that outburst from Cloudy is that if residents return from work, school or shopping from the South, the huge city of Newcastle sits to the south of Fisher Lane, by public transport they will still have to dodge 4 lanes of traffic as he said he would have to meet with his colleagues to discuss putting a safe traffic light controlled crossing from the bus stop to the estate.

Cloudy of course must not have looked at the Council income sheet for the South West sector in Cramlington when last year he announced one of the nations highest Council Tax bills to the unitary Councils unsuspecting residents and this year he hardened in his cloudiness by piling more pain onto taxpayers with another maximum settlement.

The Councillor for the sector, Councillor Barry Flux, Tory business chairperson of the Council wasn’t shown on television. Social media has it that he was going to turn out from his base in Alnwick only someone was lying on his shirt tails. 

Barry, being the Council’s business chair is the colleague who Cloudy Glen will have to meet with to decide is he should spend some of the residents own hard earned cash which they pay the Council as well as the massive allowances Glen and Barry receive for the part time jobs they have as Councillors on a safe crossing for the children, parents and grandparents who need to travel to these estates by public transport then dodge the high speed traffic on a 4 lane verging into two lane highway.

Get real Glen and either stick with the farming or both yourself and Barry Flux should resign as in real life you fell at the first fence with Cramlingtons South West sector residents.

Tougher Benefit Sanctions may be worse than the ‘highland clearances’ in England's rural areas and fishing towns.

At a meeting of Northumberland County Council’s Care and Wellbeing committee set up to help the Counties diverse communities, councillors were issued with a report on the jobless in Northumberland  in the report were stark figures have revealed that tens of thousands of people in Northumberland are not working due to economic inactivity. Councillors also learned that 7.6% of the Counties population had no qualifications at all.

Cramlington Conservative Councillor Dr Paul Ezhilchelvan, a born lucky spoon fed life long learner, went on a rant and said: "I was horrified to read that 7.6% of the working age population have no educational qualifications. I asked what that means and they don't even have GCSEs."That is appalling, because their lives are wasted. Their future is demolished by this, whatever the reason.

"We need to address this issue. They could be filling in positions that we are finding it hard to fill in."

His unwanted, dismal and abysmal rant against local society lines up perfectly with how his Government views rural and fishing communities in general and how his shockingly superior outburst is sure to get him a knighthood from the sunakatists and borisites he obviously lines up with.

The treatment of farmers, horticulturalists, meat and fishing industry workers has been abysmal following BREXIT but this article isn't another attack against brexiteers, no its a worrying view of what the carpetbaggers in high office have in train to ensure even when they are stripped from power that they will be able to dine on the wealth they have divisively removed from others, that wealth is their lifestyles and the communities they dwell in.

The nasty party members, borisites and sunakatist Tories are planning to strip the countryside and coastal towns and villages of their working class populations once and for all to ensure the danger to their growth plans for personal wealth aren't stymied by softy Conservatives who may still have an unhardened heart.

The Tories who have led us as a nation to believe that every benefit claimant and unemployed person is nothing but a scrounger who is bleeding the state and who throws away their walking stick and dances the flamenco when they get off the plane in Alicante. They also insist that person is your next door neighbour and their current plans will show that the extension of their partition politics will break communities even faster than both the irish famines and the highland clearances.

Red blooded nasties are baying for tougher benefit sanctions to force the rural working class into jobs well away from their current homes leaving lifestyles they have developed and satisfied on very low incomes bolstered by benefits (still leaving them on very low incomes), forcing them onto a jobs market and into work that neither suits them or their new employers. Leaving properties worth small fortunes that Tory carpetbaggers can pick up on the cheap and sell on to those with cash seeking the quieter life.

The blues have doubled down on the benefit sanctions issue this week.

On plans to ramp up benefit sanctions. Those sanctions result in 

claimants being fined if they do not meet job search requirements.

Its reported Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he was toughening up on the application of benefit sanctions. More people will have to face having their benefits cut if they do not meet requirements and find a job. Single parents and carers will be scooped up in this latest attack.

They are also going to attack head on those claiming disability payments, even following a report to say that disabled people are regularly experiencing psychological distress as a result of undergoing the nasties health assessment call ins.

Its expected that the distance which people are expected to travel for interview will be extended leaving unemployed residents of rural and coastal fishing communities in great difficulty as the lack of public transport and more people in these communities on average have less access to a vehicle in the impossible position of having to give up their homes or be starved out. There is no compassion in this harrying of the rural poor.

Councillor Dr Paul Ezhilchelvan’s rant should have been to ask how do the rural poor get to job interviews? and how do we encourage 7.6% of our population back into education? and the big if, can we entice the economically inactive members of society to return to work? As many have found themselves in the position they are in as their jobs were offshored or they were replaced with imported labour or even made redundant from the Council Ezhilchelvan represents all traits of a failing non-thinking Tory Government and Tory Councillors nationwide.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-council-education-qualifications-26691450?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

After the indignity of people not listening to the voices in his head Councillor Oliver demands that Miss Pelling a clerk in the highways department is sacked.

 

With the chair of Northumberland County Council’s Communities and Place Overview and Scrutiny Panel, the mysterious Councillor Nick Oliver proving to everyone that he didn’t bother to read the papers for the meeting of his Committee and instead concentrated on a few back issues of the Beano he found flytipped at his local recycling depot on a day it was shut.

In a dangerous statement, he said he had been thinking hard about changing the way his overview and scrutiny panel worked. For a man whose job it was from 2017-2021 to scrutinise the Councils Audit Panel when he held the post of Financial Portfolio member of the disgraced Councillor Peter Jackson's cabinet a job he completely failed in both his understanding and his practical dealing with finance, particularly when he got himself in a knot by missing payments of business rates from his own family’s firm and got caught out by the press.

Councillor Oliver told his committee that he was changing his scrutiny committee and that in future they would not be given the opportunity to receive the Cabinet's policy reports to read and scrutinise. He said he would allow his committee to check the effects of them on communities after six months.

The stunned committee members fell silent for a moment. Then Labours Councillor Cartie from Wensleydale ward in the Town of Blyth said NO, I’m not having that. It takes six months to get policy understood by staff on the ground so how will we  be able to scrutinise the public's reaction when they won’t have a reaction by then?

She was immediately joined by Councillors Dale and Gallacher who wiped the floor with Councillor Oliver and dumped his suggestions like cold sides of pork onto a marble slab for butchering.

On local known Conservatives social media it has been stated that the almost catastrophically shocked Councillor Oliver whom not a person in the world must have said no to previously had a ‘face like a smacked bum’ following his altercation with opposition members of his brand new committee which is foundering in icy waters while the band plays on. 

The Council which is currently being investigated for its selective view of partition politics with a high priest sitting in a confessional doling out penance instead of answers at every meeting and the opposition members of the Council denied the tools and information required to scope in either an overview and now being denied the ability to scrutinise decisions taken which affect the Counties communities which they represent. 

Councillor Oliver's attempt at thinking seems to be the catalyst of appeasement to the man who brought him back from his disgraceful period of atonement for bringing the Council into disrepute, its Leader Councillor Glen Sanderson. 

The Council is in so much trouble due to the secret nature in which it operates as a minority administration not even sharing good news among its own fractured Conservative jigsaw of miscreants. Therefore not allowing anyone to view Council policy and reports until six months after they have been introduced shows where the Council is heading and why an immediate change of direction is essential to safeguard communities County-Wide.

With the news from the Northern Echo that Northumberland has openly changed policy in secret over its Unilateral Declaration of Independence and is advertising the new nation of Northumberland on its road signs no wonder Councillor Oliver wants to listen to the voices in his head as he ‘gives a little whistle and always lets his conscious be his guide’ Do we now know why he needs to keep Northumberland County Council policy secret for at least six months?!

Notes:
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/23438369.northumberland-road-signs-spelling-error-embarrassment/