Levelling down has got Labour active right across Northumberland?

With the right wing press indicating that 9,000 levelling up jobs in the river Blyth estuary are slipping down to Somerset. 

In Bedlington, headlines for their long awaited commanded by Tories 'make a noise stormtroopers' regeneration, is that their new anchor store is to be Greggs, with wags asking the questions regarding health and wellbeing of the baked bean and sausage slice and whether Morpeth Conservatives will be bringing in that companies chefs to tempt workers back to the Tories near empty County Hall?

It's also been noticed by members of our park bench group that when taking taxis to weddings and funerals the cab traders are now edging back towards complaining about their licensing experiences at County Hall and how the Conservatives have stripped the fat from their customers and believe it or not, that Brexit is a failure. A comedian on social media remarked that taxi drivers may go back to voting for anyone but the Tories when they wake up to the fact that the Northumberland rail line when open links with the metro service at Northumberland Park and their custom will be whisked to the airport without receiving an earful.

But back to Labours activity:

It's been noted that 'big meetings' are scheduled in Blyth and Ashington over the next few weeks and party branches are rousing the dead to get out and help, while the Tories spend the warmer weather in their villas in the balearics.Some of that activity will be to make the post of North-East Mayor safe for Labour but much is to do with a possible collapse of the County Councils broken administration.

We are also led to believe the LibDems are rolling out a plan to loosen the failing A1 Marie Trevelyan's supporting Councillors from their seats in the North.

The murky group believe Northumberland Tories are now in a woeful position with reports of their failing regime being about to collapse as multiple investigations into the various factions turning into a fiasco as the fickle fingers of fate begin to point directly at certain characters sitting on the benches of power.

Those beliefs are backed up with the popular rumour on social media that to protect themselves from disgrace through the Council's standards board they have appointed Prudhoes 'raging bull' Tory Councillor Gordon Stewart, a bad tempered ex-cop’s best mate, Chris Barrett, a long serving ultra right wing Conservative and once a school caretaker? as the 'independent' advisor to the Councils Standards Board.

You couldn't make it up!

If you have any belief in levelling up you might have to!

Andy Cooper’s brilliant article in the north east bylines only scratches the surface of Northumberlands ‘Local Plan’ problems

May 2017 the Tory lothario & fall guy Councillor Peter Jackson, famous for two of things he did whilst toxifying the County Council was to state that County Hall “only needed a lick of paint” with the extremely expensive remodeling of that building running into its sixth year of abusive waste of public cash and his signing of the International Agreement with Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust a happening he and his Tory mob mates from Morpeth have openly denied ever since.

Unfortunately the regular writers who point out Britain's only secretive council’s failings may have missed the biggest failings of all, the removal of the Council’s core strategy from inspection by Government, the issuing of arguably the worst legal advice in local government history over its reinstatement and the Core Strategies replacement with a divisive local plan which Andy Copper’s article exposes in Hexham. ‘The complete and utter lack of social housing in all of Northumberlands market towns as the Local Plan dumps the national housing numbers into the South-East and Amble areas to cover off the Government’s ridiculous wishes.

Social and affordable housing relies on the profit level which developers can scoop up. The dumping of huge estates of cheap by National and County price standards four bed detached young executive homes into urban Northumberland denies the Council access to funds to build or even buy up homes to redevelop for affordable rent levels.

After six years of housing manipulation by the Tories in office at the palatial and almost void County Hall in Morpeth the effects of a dodgy local plan is beginning to hit home hard with ultra right-wing rural Tories complaining about the closure of schools,the rundown of high streets and trade disappearing out of the tourist season as the missing social housing and the inability to build through nimby fear of Tory councillors has led to a disfunctional future for Conservatives who reside outside of Castle Morpeth and some within those bounds who don’t cow tow to the mob in charge.

https://northeastbylines.co.uk/no-housing-justice-in-picturesque-hexham/

Morpeth miscreants Culling Tory officers who work closely with Tories from other factions?

Civil war has broken out between the various Tory factions on Northumberland County Council.

General Sanderson and his sidekick rear-Admiral Wearmouth top bod members of the famous Castle Morpeth clan have begun a major cull of Council officers who work closely with Tories residing or representing the we’ll never ‘get nowt’ (NGN) areas of the County.

Using dodgy legal advice to kick their wider groups friends into touch, members of the Castle Morpeth Clan (CMC), have begun their slash and burn project to empty their luxurious ‘palace of withering promises’ County Hall at Loansdean, Morpeth with rumours abounding regarding its severance from the public estate being imminent.

The Generals recruitment of flexible officers who operate from hundreds of miles away, who don’t need to shelter in Northumberland’s most expensive office space and if he wins this war, by removing many of the remaining centralised officers it will leave the office based workforce across the County so small that it can easily be distributed across its public works depots and/or fire stations or possibly in a waiting room on the Northumberland line.

By the time the hosanna trumpets the Labour Party in during 2025 their Leader and chief guerilla fighter for the opposition Scotty the-one will only need to look for an empty shop in Blyth as the warring parties of the leading warring clans shrink each others side severely.

We Codgers,  from our park bench position looking in, have been wondering about the rumours of an assessment of Leisure Centres County-wide being undertaken at present. At first it crossed our minds that asset stripping was the ultimate aim but the assessment may be looking for space to hold council and committee meetings as we’re sure flexible officers will need flexible war torn Councillors to mould into shape and bump their wages up.

Between the lines may be the best place to operate at this moment in time. Scotty the-one attacking from the hedgerows should be able to ensure the factions, both NGN and CMC, keep it up openly until they destroy the Valhalla of Castle Morpeth and erase it from the Sagas forever

Levelling what? Culture hub gets a high cost operator and no liaison with current offer organisations.

 

The news let out by the operator selected by Northumberland Conservatives, Whitley Bay’s JAM JAR who have been chosen to deliver Conservative Culture in the town of Blyth is that they have the green light to get this show on the road.

This leak brought out community leaders from across the Town to ask the questions of where do they fit in?

Blyth nas a number of charitable and community initiative companies who deliver local well defined culture operations right across Blyth with very little support from the Conservatives at County Hall who are commissioning this monolith using so called levelling up money when most community leaders don’t think it's required at all.

The news report seems to have upset those who may have thought that inclusion and not exclusion is the way of changing culture in society when the history of Communities working together Blyth has sits like the elephant in the room.

The Town has been well covered off over time with a series of Community Centres, Town Centre Youth Provision, a well attended Theatre also showing movies, sports clubs, village halls and the Towns churches working together, competition is certainly not the name of the game whatever political colour operates from County Hall in Morpeth.

Therefore it seems people need to have a number of questions answered and they don’t include a high powered news report from a contractor who isn’t used to working in an area where service users have very little surplus to support businesses.

It may be that the County Council is fully funding this operation from the £2.1m surplus it has found under the doormat at County Hall after they had informed the world they had a £17m shortfall in their accounts. If so, why can’t the other operators who have been sitting in Blyth for decades get access to funding and deliver the ‘Culture message’ as written in whatever contract JAM JAR has been saddled with?

Or is it going to end up with a rift between tradition and the newbies or will it simply be a service that succeeds while the stressed community leaders have to find a novel way of coping with a ‘big brother’ operation sitting on their doorstep in a brand new low maintenance and low energy use building while they struggle to find the funds to keep their operations on track.

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/jam-jar-cinema-to-open-in-blyth-as-part-of-new-culture-hub-as-council-approves-funding-for-project-4135430

Tories Protecting Investors: Domestic Solar Grid Connections Can Take 15 years Say MP’s

 

The Government's ambition to install 70GW of solar by 2035 may not happen due to a lack of grid connectivity causing long delays for businesses, according to the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. 

A cross party group of MP’s found that In some cases, customers are having to wait up to 15 years to secure a connection for solar installations due to three key issues: 

1:     a lack of physical infrastructure, 

2:     poor availability of data on solar photovoltaic generation 

3:     and a “queueing system” of applications where developers apply for grid connections without planning permission. 

In Northumberland, the Conservative led County Council have covered over the car park of their totally expensive to run monolithic County Hall in the town they have covered in aspic in order to save £250,000 per year. A great saving in anyone's book.

But unlike those domestic residents who have invested their savings on a solar array on their home and have to wait 15 years for a connection to help pay off their outlay, the Council is fully equipped with a grid collection from day one. 

This lets keep Conservative farmer/councillors cars dry when they bother to turn up for meetings project, is awaiting beautification to ensure its worthy of sitting next to the wondrously expensive to modernise very empty building of County Hall itself and we are led to believe that they have also purchased a powered rickshaw to ferry those same gentlemen from car to office in order to keep their kashmir collared expensive wool suits spotless as Morpeth sits above 55༠ North and rain is a regular and ongoing occurrence.

The  Commons Environmental Audit Committee recommended that the Government consider affordable loans for households and a VAT discount for household battery storage. It is launching another inquiry into the lack of connectivity in the UK and potential barriers to low-carbon technologies. Of course it would be best to start that investigation by interviewing their Council Colleagues from Northumberland who seem to know how it's done.

We hope members of the public sitting on this waiting list also get in touch with their County Council to get equal help to ensure they also get a grid connection.

We would also bring your attention to the empty car park as workers are still working from home worrying about being seen on the premises as it appears to be the catalyst for redundancy. But with the Council's new team engaged in recent months that are employed on a flexi basis and can work from towns hundreds of miles away, the staff shouldn’t be afraid as they may never get to know who their new boss is?

So the other question has to be why save £250,000 on electricity simply to leave a light on to let the burglars see where they are.

£1M saving is a politically motivated disaster

  

That will lead to continued bullying within Northumberland County Council.

Described as being as much use as a ‘spurtle with your cornflakes’ by a well known Tory from the North of the County when he got the job as Leader of Northumberland County Council, Councillor Sanderson, wealthy farmer as well as a local long serving and seriously well paid top peer for the Tory led Local Government Association, Councillor Glen Sanderson has now proven his own party members criticism.

His brag or should we say one of his brags was that he would save £1m on the County Councils wages bill when he restructured following a serious and still ongoing investigation into the bullying, lying, secret nature of his administration which is getting severely worse in recent months.

Councillor Sanderson who according to his fellow Tories is well known bad tempered grouch, has done nothing to restore the faith in the group he leads with either officers of the Council or the watching public, a public who only get to glimpse the goings on through the cracks in the walls of the ‘Palace of the North’ where his throne is sat at County Hall, Loansdean, Morpeth.

The secrecy with which he is ordained and with which he controls both his minority administrations Councillors in Office and his equally numbered Opposition Councillors through the use of military intelligence style security administered by his close associates, illustrate he has no skills to perform such a duty himself, is abominable. He tells the opposition nothing at all and that also extends to any Tory he doesn’t get on with, leading to a shambolic and bucolic mess the halitosis of which permeates all over Northumberland.

To achieve his aim and back up his brag he now has Officers doubling up on jobs, weakening one of the largest Unitary Local Authorities in Britain by his assumption that expertise in any field of work is not what's required to deliver for the people he is meant to serve. We wonder whether he carries that adage into his life as a Gentleman Farmer?

This is where you the reader has to ask if when you make contact with the Council can you speak with someone who actually knows about the business you have made the call about, will you get to that someone who is a great officer and knows everything about your problem? or have you met that person's ‘dissociative identity’ and have you felt fobbed off after your call?

Our worry as the codgers is one of leopards and spots and that top councillors from the administration don’t quite get the fact that ‘They are the Council’ and have to be answerable to the people. Once you get onto one of those top Councillors and relay that you have spoken with a person who didn’t fully grasp your problem or how to solve it, will that Councillor demand action at the top of his or her voice and will that be classified as ‘bullying’ and the Council of which they are it, will move back to lining its pawns up in front of the Kings, Queens Bishops and Knights and square one will loom again!

NORTH TYNESIDE CONSERVATIVES BULLYING SCANDAL

  The following letter has been submitted to the Evening Chronicle newspaper by former Tory councillor Alison Austin.

It’s a bit rich of North Tyneside Conservatives to be feigning horror over a two-year-old story of alleged bullying within Labour (which has not been confirmed by the alleged victim, who remains an active member of the Labour party).

I was a member of the local Conservatives for thirty years, many of them as a councillor.  Following a change of leadership in 2020, bullying and misogyny became standard.

It began when two colleagues and I co-signed an email expressing concerns about the truth of an article on the local Conservative Facebook page.  My colleagues, both men, received friendly responses inviting them for a chat.  I was told I was a troublemaker, and an investigation would be launched into my attempts to derail their leadership (something which they have since managed to achieve without any help from me!).

Then a female candidate was replaced with a male when she wanted to run a positive campaign as opposed to the use of fake news and underhand tactics which has become standard within the Tory Group.

I worked hard to support the male candidate for my ward after I decided to stand down from the council, including covering for him when he was out of the country, but when I expressed concern at the content of one of his final leaflets, I received an abusive and misogynistic email telling me my opinion wasn’t important and I should keep out of his campaign.

I was subjected to false accusations of fraud but when I asked for evidence, none was ever produced.  No wrongdoing at all was ever identified, but that hasn’t stopped the local Conservatives from spreading their lies about me, even now.

For the last two years I have been hounded on social media.  One Conservative councillor hides like a coward behind a whole stable of false profiles to attack me with nasty lies and insults.  Two days ago, “someone” cloned my Facebook page and used it to make vile comments attacking the two independent candidates in the elections on May 4th.

Recently the three councillors for St Mary’s ward resigned from Conservative party, saying they had been subjected to bullying, intimidation, and false accusations, just as I was.

All seven of the Conservatives’ target coastal wards on May 4th have male candidates; the local Tories are a Boys’ Club and it is quite clear that they have a problem with women.  Especially strong women, who refuse to be cowed by their bullying and intimidation.