When does fighting your political corner become bullying of Council Officers?

The Blue on blue rants from the various factions among the Conservative group/s on Northumberland County Council wanting to ensure spend and service delivery is enhanced on the ground in their patch has spilled out into the open in recent weeks.

This Conservative led Council still reeling from the myriad of investigations into the high level bullying of staff with Councillors denying any involvement (as one would expect from Conservatives using Boris Johnson as a fine example of honesty and integrity) has turned Northumberland’s political scene completely on its head with a public rant from Cramlington Conservative Councillors against officers working for the Councils local services department.

Cramlington, Northumberland’s largest township under Tory control at both Parish and County level, with its Councillors playing all edges and sideways to illustrate how they are the ‘it wasn’t us mister’ legion it’s those from Morpeth to blame for all the bother, showed by their latest action that their volume level may be turned down but the equaliser tone is identical in that bullying and the Civil War actions by Northumberland Conservatives cannot be segregated between townships nor individual Councillors and splitting away from the core does not cure the epidemic and itus of bad behaviour developed in line with their National representatives over the last 13 years of dreadful treatment of the public at large and both Civil Servants and Council employees in particular.

The nub of this most recent act of bullying is the fact that Cramlington conservatives tried to highjack schemes paid for by other parish councils without paying for them, using cash pots levered into local services from parish and town councils to safeguard local employment and pressurise the County Council local services into providing similar levels of service in Cramlington to those areas who coughed up the double charging cash. Unfortunately after six years of not achieving best value on behalf of the Counties residents their service thefts failed and Cramlington ultra-right wingers took umbrage in public.

They have probably undertaken this threatening exercise as they have lazyboned it politically and instead of putting in some effort to pour oil onto the factionalised Tory groups at County Hall and get the factions to work together and drive the secrecy out of Northumberland's Council treatment of the public and its officers and staff they have sat back like ancient residents of Lincoln and turned yellow into the bargain until they have been forced to show their meanness and underhand ways in public!

Constituents countywide are now taking notice and polls show the Tories are slipping away from their traditional voters across huge rural counties like Northumberland and now they are definitely out of touch in townships like Cramlington, as they can’t define a difference in attitude with their moron colleagues who keep the ‘secret code’ closer to their chests and only let their outbursts be heard in secret.