Will the ‘new mixture’ gift the local taxdodger the chance to run once again for Parliament?

 

The news that REFORM UK Ltd., has been found out in Northumberland has not come as a shock to most north-east based observers.

The reform group in the county was made up of ex-UKIP, BNP and oddball fascist chancers spreading racist fear through the mechanisms of Northumberland County Councils freedom of information scheme.

Infighting at a level not seen since Danelaw migrants ruled across Northumbria has dragged them down into life's maelstrom with bitter fireballs hurled verbally in public as internal control among the fascists who make up the bulk of the reform team completely collapses around their ears.

The battle scarred members of that team who have mostly sat silent and failed to tackle or even challenge the leading group of Tories on the County Council appear to have split through problems coming to light about their beliefs and lack of populist common sense, with the left being able to point quite clearly towards their former BREXIT lies and failures which kept ordinary people in their place through a low wage culture based on lies and inflationary need making millionaires into billionaires a culture openly preached by the owners of REFORM UK Ltd., every day whilst in a similar vein of culture sharing is harped back to by the Tories whose backers have sewn up their pockets and they urgently need to extend their membership numbers to be able to sponsor any future elections.

That's why the last fourteen years of austerity makes it clear that Tory policy in that regard didn’t reward hard work and people now try all ways to stay on benefits as it's more lucrative than lower grade employment as benefits offset inflation while wages haven’t kept pace at all.

The other right-wing chancers making up Northumberland County Council the conservatives, who are fully to blame for the state of the nation as well as the County as they rush to forget their faux pas years, see this as an opportunity to ditch the ever greedy and wanton independent group who they are having to nurture with promises of huge cash burning localised ward projects and see this breakdown of their fellows (and we codgers don’t use the term fellows lightly as both parties sit welded to the anti-female don’t take paracetamol when your pregnant blame culture), as an opportunity to add to their ranks people who unfortunately see the world through the same shattered panes as themselves.

The Conservatives have openly advertised their wish to embrace Reforms County and Parish Council teams and suck the flag flying commando rioting culture into their ranks to cast further pain on a public they seem to think deserves it.

One who may ‘and this is conjecture’ see this as a valuable chance is a Reform Town and County Councillor for Blyth, Barry Elliott who openly wears the technicolour dreamcoat as he has tried all parties to aid his way into Parliament but pushing out the failed Ian Levy could get him there but he has to cross another floor to gain that traction.

This story will no doubt run and run so we codgers will have to label it

EPISODE 1.

What are Northumberland Conservatives going to do with the Council’s constitution breakers?

 

With the Conservatives nationally stampeding towards a takeover of REFORM UK Ltd., Northumberland Conservatives seem to be ignoring reform opposition members faux pas, probably just in case they are vying with each other for County Council seats in the ‘New Transformer’ Party UK Co. LTD’. 

It's expected that the now disgraced tax dodger Mr Farage will be forced by public opinion strengthened by ACTIVE UK members on social media to resign with full on Tory toff Jacob Reece Mogg lined up to take his place.

But just in case we codgers have read the runes incorrectly we need to ask what if anything is the Leader of Northumberland County Council, labeled dysfunctional, going to do to ensure Councillors on this massive authority follow the rules of constitution and in some cases the laws of the land.

We have a Town littered with flags which are being used to signal the rise of the right, a Town where right wing activists have displayed racist comments at the Towns  monument to the fallen, a monument naming those who fought and died protecting the world from the extreme right wing views of the Nazis, now being glorified by Citizens who have ‘decided to forget’. Councillors on this Council are littered with those who have broken the Nolan principles and possibly the equality laws of the UK.

Let's begin by looking at the Nolan principles: which contains the need for Leaders of Councils to uphold those principles has this Leader decided to ignore them? 

A local Bedlington councillor has written to the press (article in the editorial notes) the Leader of Council has responded in the weakest way possible, drifting from the Nolan principles as far as he possibly can. With Universities supporting the view that flags put up for the enhancement of the ultra right of politics is frightening off the Bedlington Councillor’s residents.

The Leader of Council whose rose tinted glasses must have missed the huge higher education development rising from the ground right beside Ashington Town Centre whose students may feel the same way as their peers.

We next want to know what the Leadership group of the Council is going to do about Councillor Fitzgerald, an elected member who seems to be going to the extreme and is possibly an anti-multiculturalist in his personal beliefs when he demanded at a full council meeting that only Christian values should be taught in schools. Putting this mess on the back burner raises several issues and the Council’s leader needs to act quickly and not in his usual dysfunctional fashion.

The next collapse of the Council's very weak constitution has raised its head placing even more pressure on the Council’s Leader.

A Councillors who it was reported can not take part in any discussion on the Council’s budget as he owes the Council money. 

It's come to light through a freedom of information request that Councillor Barry Elliott representing Newsham in Blyth owes the Council more than £10,000 in unpaid Council Tax. Yet the Council’s leadership has allowed him to raise issues about finance and sit on the Council’s audit committee, a complete breach of the Nolan principles. 

Councillor Elliott has expressed the view that the Council needs to spend its revenue cash reserves. It appears that the Councillor who wants to be heavily involved in the Council’s finance does not understand how those finances need to be protected and what they can be legally used for while ignoring his responsibilities towards the public purse by allowing his debts to accumulate yearly denying the Council the opportunity to spend Councillor Elliott's cash to benefit the Counties communities.

Will anything be done by the Council’s Leadership group to resolve some of these issues or have the caretakers at county hall in Morpeth removed the tacks holding down the carpet yet again so that matters can be swept under?

Notes:

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/warning-that-flying-of-flags-is-causing-divide-among-residents-of-northumberland-town-5318054

https://inews.co.uk/news/flag-wars-scaring-overseas-students-unis-cash-crisis-3915643?srsltid=AfmBOor_UJiRmQX4TEMxudZhe3qD5RFVD1rghjTIj1Diyh2G3ecuFYfz

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/25464542.reform-uk-councillor-calls-religious-education-changes/

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/reform-councillor-claims-studying-non-christian-religion-could-brainwash-children/ar-AA1MtrJy

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/08/report-describes-fear-and-intimidation-at-northumberland-county-councill

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-reform-councillor-calls-council-32258991

Slashing the regeneration of Ashington budget while borrowing to build an academy school the Council has no involvement in is a dysfunction too far

 

From 2015-2017 Northumberland Conservatives ran a campaign against any spend in Ashington, a town with the second highest level of deprivation in this huge county.

But looking at other poorer areas, they have backed away from Capital projects to improve those areas as much as they can, the need for a new swimming pool in Prudhoe is a prime example of their hatred of those living in areas of deprivation.

The Conservatives have raised council tax at the highest rate allowed plus sticking folk with the huge extra of the social services precept each and every year since 2018 yet still mismanaged a huge overspend of £7.5m in the social services/children’s services area this year.

This overspend is so large it couldn’t be massaged into hiding by the secret cabinet as they weren’t strong enough to flatten the lump down under their pantomime magic carpet which adorns the leaders office.

On Wednesday 10 October 2025 the council is expected to accept slashing the Ashington regeneration budget to support the capital borrowing of cash to finish the environmental works, stations etc on the Northumberland rail line project. Costs were forced up through the lack of fixed price contracting and the Council not finishing the GRIP studies for the line and agreeing acceptance of a GRIP and a half that has led to this dysfunctional mess stealing the headlines.

That’s not all that will affect the Councils poorer areas as in the last two weeks the Council Leader has agreed to borrow to build a new high school in Berwick. It’s an academy school which is meant to be developed by a sponsor. It seems the education sponsors have hidden from this new build as the redundancy/pension costs to shed 60 teaching staff in order to open the new school runs into £ millions and it’s expected the Council will have to ruin service delivery across the Ashington and Blyth area to cover the stretch in their revenue budget this mess will cost.

All in all the issues found in the Max Caller report and the BEST report are coming home to roost and it’s noticeable the Councils finance guru Councillor Nick Oliver appears to have gone into hiding under a stone ever since he was promised the cash to build a cycleway near his home just in case anyone noticed.

Northumberland: God help all who sail in her!

Northumberland County Council Budget Crisis Consultation

 

Northumberland Tories are desperate to get people to join in with this years budget consultation.

This Council labeled as dysfunctional by a senior government inspector has continued in its secretive ways for the last eight years and has not delivered BEST VALUE to residents over any of their years in office.

It has moved from crisis to crisis and has no answers to the basic needs of its residents yet likes to borrow oodles of cash to deliver beauty projects at the expense of the people its meant to serve.

To join in with this consultation at a time of great need for many, residents have to feel confident their thoughts will somehow shape the improvements that will deliver respite from their suffering and to do that some basic information is required or social media will be filled with an unbelievable level of anti-government rhetoric from the few Tories left who haven’t succumbed to the boat people party of hatred and racism.

Residents of Northumberland need to forget the race to the bottom and tell the council what they really need to make their lives better.

We codgers have made a small number of suggestions following our regular trawl of social media to find what people are talking about. Those same people need to engage in numbers with this consultation and tell the world on social media what they are telling their Council.

Where’s the basic information the public need?

Lets take a look at what the public needs to be able to shape Northumberland’s massive budget setting and ask on social media whats going on.

Housing League Tables? Where does Northumberland sit in the housing delivery league tables?

With the reports last year that 14,000 families are desperate for social housing what has the council done in last years budget to increase the numbers of social housing across the county,  all we could find in our news media trawl was a promise to alter a few council garages into homes and a fight at planning to insist that Bernicia, a social housing provider, sets aside 8 homes in Seahouses to stop all of the homes they are developing in that small town becoming holiday lets. The only way to cure the problems people need is a proper plan to build more Council Housing and remember affordability is one of the reasons people can enter the homefinder scramble. Lets hope the 14,000 who need Council Housing and their relatives tell the Council so.

Transport requirements in both rural and urban areas?

The Council whether it likes it or not is responsible for transport across the County and can’t just spend £millions on an unfinished railway line in the South-East of the County.

Bus and road transport must become more front and centre as the rail line moves towards a finish during the forthcoming budget cycle.

The transport noise we can find other than comments on the proposed traffic calming on Felton Bridge which seems to be prevalent at the moment centres on buses and traffic congestion spots with ‘more buses Wooler to Berwick as the school closure programme hots up’ along with Cowpen Road bypass as being seen as more essential than a rail line being the most prevalent items to comment on if public opinion is to shape this budget at all?

Cost of social care?

The Council appears to be concentrating its efforts for more affordable social care in Blyth with plans to build a new home to be run by them or their contractors situated right next door to Blyths cottage hospital facility.

Great you may say but what about other areas with dementia patients costing families more than £1,000 per week if social media is to be believed. If true, charges of that magnitude need questioning in this budget cycle and families being stripped of their inheritance even more rapidly than the very vocal farmers its a matter of great concern to many as their loved ones age.

The rowback in street cleansing and grounds maintenance in order to borrow more for posh projects is riling many?

County wide social media is full of expressions of being let down as Northumberland County Council issues out some of the highest tax bills in England.

The state of everywhere is often questioned and the answer seems to be its good for the environment. Is it? Litter strewn verges doesn’t seem to attract more grasshoppers or hedgehogs and probably turns them away to other areas. The height of grass at highway corners and hedges overgrown must increase the possibility of danger for both drivers and pedestrians.

In this article we are simply trying to get Northumberland’s residents to think about how they would like to see changes made to help them and their families get the best value they can from their Council and lobby their Councillors from a distance to colour their democratic vision to wring the best they can from the massive payments residents make.

Links below will help you engage.

Good Luck.

Notes

https://www.citizensadvicenorthumberland.org.uk/northumberland-consultation-now-open/

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/24472231.14-000-residents-northumberland-council-housing-waiting-list/#:~:text=Notices-,14%2C000%20residents%20on%20Northumberland%20Council%20Housing%20waiting%20list,classify%20as%20'affordable%20homes'.

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25415361.cost-living-crisis-tipping-hexham-people-over-edge/