Sunderland's doing it, Hartlepool's onto it, South Tyneside sorting it and Redcar is racing to catch up.

 

Sunderland's doing it, Hartlepool's onto it, South Tyneside sorting it and Redcar is racing to catch up.This week with it being the school holidays and for a while bright and sunny, we codgers met in Astley Park for our regular chat as some of us have sitting duties to perform, either kids or pets or in two cases both..

The topic quickly got round to what's happening on the regional local government front as we had agreed previously not to debate the national picture as it seems to be getting brighter each day through the political shift at Westminster.

A few of us had noticed another spread in the Northern Echo about saving our quickly eroding regional coastline through the use of that long lost natural resource, the European Oyster which it's expected by environmentalists to become residentially homed in the Tees estuary and use its filtration system to clean up years and years of polluted waterway as well as protect the southern part of the regions beaches from further erosion.

A little while ago, Hartlepool announced their oyster nursery project to help build up oyster numbers along with their long term aim to aid the larger Teesside project populate their much needed now started plan to help to clean up and protect their very busy once heavily polluted estuary.

Moving northwards up the coast, in Sunderland they began a nursery a few years ago and have expanded the project to include specially designed oyster blocks near Whitburn to begin the formation of a much larger self sustaining reef to clean and protect a large section of coastline.

These projects may not be the final answer to much speeding erosion of land and rising sea waters may simply ignore them but evidence from other parts of the globe clearly show that the re-establishment of oyster beds can and does make a difference.

That said we codgers are more interested in what can be done to protect Northumberland’s dwindling shorelines with noticeable erosion taking place from Lynemouth bay to Blyth beach with particularly high levels of beach scouring taking place at both Cambois and Lynemouth bay with footpaths at both sites in danger of disappearing without some help.

Newbiggin by the Sea was protected with a well designed groin trapping sand from the longshore drift and rebuilding the beach over the last almost three decades but costs to save other sites using similar methodology may be prohibitive and protection using shellfish seems to be a secondary option and a small trial was announced with a test undertaken at Blyth marina to start a small test nursery.

One of the most exposed areas sits just outside of Newbiggin by the Sea’s groin, the long term erosion at the side of St. Bartholomew's Church at Newbiggin point the erosion has now allowed its churchyard to flood. It was reported on social media that Labour Councillor Liz Simpson was in contact with environmentalists who were hoping to reintroduce limpets and whelks back to the rocks at the point to help slow the erosion and Councillors since she was deposed from her County Council seat seem to have lost interest in the scheme failing locals who have registered their displeasure and the erosion problems that have beset their area.

Blyth has a site that is home to 13 oyster nurseries and the Port of Blyth authority have boasted about the number of young oysters that will drift out to populate areas surrounding the Port. Not much evidence has been shown in the locale to show the sites these creatures have chosen to make their home and concerned folk need Northumberland County Council must concentrate efforts and like other regional partners must show that erosion by the sea is a prime interest for a council with such a long coastal fishing and sailing history and is now promoting long distance walking and cycling routes along our shoreline and trying to establish better protection using shellfish to help rebuild south east Northumberland’s diminishing coastline.

The council and its planners may be using the long promised inclusion of two additional offshore windfarms to be sites near Lynemouth and North Tyneside before embarking on greater protection but as it seems other projects may have overtaken the small windfarms idea as huge areas of the north sea are being filled with hard working windfarms. If that is so the Council has no excuse to begin to save our shorelines and make a real attempt at showing local people that Tories can and do care about local people from the counties south-east and that only building two cinemas in a decade won't save our shorelines.

Notes:

Oysters return to Middlesbrough after 100 years thanks to 'hotel' | The Northern Echo https://share.google/2tPL4I0svdTqYfx7w

The Wild Oysters Project: Tyne & Wear - Groundwork https://share.google/CFKg108DdyKzFdNiL

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BXmYfoLRi/

Marine Environment - Port of Blyth | Leading UK Offshore Energy Support Base https://share.google/z6zHHvCxJqGMOqyZP

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/20/enacted

Explosive division has closed off scrutiny at Northumberland County Council?

 Reform UK, slipping in popularity through the public scrutiny of Leader Farage’s antics have recently shown how split they are as a party.

A change of group leader in May let in Cowpen Ward Councillor Rick Baker whose support for Farage’s anti net zero policies has threatened jobs centred on this huge industry based around the Town and the wider river Blyth estuary. Like the wider Reform UK party, he is an outspoken critic of Net Zero policies. He views them as "unsustainable nonsense" that burdens taxpayers with unnecessary costs, instead of advocating for the protection of energy security and the local economy with locals on social media voicing the opinion of anti net zero = anti Blyth workers!

The Reform party are split into at least two factions with the now titled anti Blyth Rick Baker holding court over the larger group who are politically struggling against a team led by Blyth Mayor and former Northumberland Reform Group leader Councillor Mark Peart who has also spoken out against the Tory led County Council’s attitude towards net zero and has been critical of the port of Blyth’s tree planting spend that's designed to attempt to lower carbon dioxide levels around the estuary.

Councillor Peart's criticism of the cluster of data centres planned for Cambois is a worrying and weakening factor when scrutiny of Council decision making is undertaken  as he and his new group leader Rick Baker both have fixed views that sit outside Council policy on net zero issues yet separate factional voting has weakened their ability as the second largest group on the County Council to challenge decisions through the scrutiny process. It doesn’t help ordinary folk at all as the weakness of division shows an inability of challenge, leaving true challenge of this dysfunctional Tory led Council in the hands of the Labour Group.

At Council meetings we have regularly seen the two factions of Reform disagree with each other through their voting patterns and group loyalty seems to onlookers as being at an all time low for political parties operating at a unitary all purpose county council level.

Comments on social media over these noticeable splits grew after the Blyth Town Council (led by Reform)  held a civic awards ceremony. The public watched in disbelief when the Mayor of Blyth had to undertake a solo act in giving out 78 awards to people from Blyth’s wider community for their good works with a rush at the end of the function by other Reform members to get into the photo shoot.

Reformists need to remember that as they grow weaker through the press and media challenging their political top brass their chances of seat retention will drift quite rapidly. So factions of Reform Northumberland we codgers ask to to keep up challenging each other and  watch your votes drifting like the Lib Dems in the past and disappearing down the pan.

Is it REFORM’s Blyth twin hatters** or Northumberland’s Tories acting like Mussolini in Blyth?

 

It’s a known fact that Bennito Mussolini the fascist leader of Italy from 1922-1943 tried his level best to change the Nations history through imagery of himself as a Roman Leader, along with censoring the press, being over negative with scenario (like some reporters on breakfast television) and stopping democratic elections with his party enlisting their own into public office.

(We will stay away from his warmongering and slaughter of people In Ethiopia and Albania) as it's difficult to think that we will declare war on Cumbria or they will return the nasties of war against Northumberland folk but we can’t read the runes if right-wing division within communities grows even more unhealthily.

Sounds very much like the slip to the right from Northumberland Conservatives and the stated aims of the ‘lets make the rich richer’ at our workers expense REFORM UK.

Here in Blyth the destruction of its history has begun to race ahead through the accepted by Blyth Reformers and delivered by Northumberland Conservatives LOW-MOW policy with weeds surrounding the historic display of public art centred on the Town's past and the Twin Hatters going into denial that they have the responsibility to maintain that history and therefore its public art.

The Town's litter and weed problems have grown out of all proportion Low-Mow excludes the service cut of litter picking before grass cutting leaving litter only slashed by mowers every seven weeks or so. This winter with no cuts being paid for by the Town Council litter is expected to sit for months before being butchered into shreds and the process of filth will continue on into infinity.

As the blame game from both parties continue, both Conservative and Reform in an attempt to blind side local people, residents will lose the public art display of Mining, Shipbuilding, Exploring and Explorers who sailed from Blyth as those historical stories decay as they become even more weed covered and litter strewn.

Its time both political party entities realise they were democratically elected to look after Northumberland’s largest Town including others and they both need to get a grip of reality and deliver ‘best value’ instead of ‘best blame’ strategies and get our town shifted from a growing slum area into the pristine coastal town that broke the mould of east coast towns that Blyth Valley Borough Council had developed to give residents pride in their communities. 

What sort of pride is being delivered by the divisive policies delivered by the unthinking ultra right that local folk can see getting worse each and every day?.

NOTES:

** In local government, "twin hatters" (also commonly known as "dual-hatted" councillors) are elected representatives who serve simultaneously on two different tiers of local authorities. A very common example is a politician who serves as both a District/Borough Councillor and a County or Town/Parish Councillor.