It doesn’t matter who Conservative and Unionists vote for as leader the choice is still unbalanced against tradition.

 Conservative and Unionist Party members are about to vote in a new leader following the demise of the Tories pin up boy Boris Johnson who has been and will go down in history as the the most severe individualist and centrally controlling PM since the second world war.

The now accepted policies of ‘New Tory Britain’ are miles away from the middle class traditional Conservative view of how things should work as a ‘One Nation’ society with Britain’s rural and coastal, fishing and farming communities having to look on as power now sits totally with the free market and the leaching of profits to the largest investors who appear not to pay their dues back to the nation they make the profit from.

With Keynes monetary policies forgotten by the Tories, and Conservative Council’s and PCC’s allowed to run wild, confirmed by the news that Police Forces are deciding whether to charge hard pressed Councils if they are called out to an incident that can be labeled as being caused by mental illness rather than crime, society needs to take a step back to understand what society should look like but with the choice between Sunak and Truss the choice is clearly Hobsons.

In Northumberland we are about to see regional Tories pushing their own agendas onto voting party members and the ‘noise’ will be heard right across the peace on social media as Councillor Glen Sanderson’s recent garden party showed, with pictures of the lonely top regional Tory Councillor Richard Wearmouth sitting by himself with the One nation Conservatives milling around rebel Cramlington Councillor Wayne Daley’s table hanging on his every word with Glen Sanderson himself looking lost in the background. Hardly the best team building exercise following the findings within the recently released Max Caller report.

Having a factionalised leading political party in charge of such a diverse County does nothing to help with policy which is now five years behind reality and the will of the Tories to accept that on the ground they as the managers of change haven’t changed things to aid the needs of Communities when levelling up seems to be about infrastructure that can be profitably measured rather than people.

This week a report published by the charity Centrepoint and picked up by Northumberland Labour showed that 49% of young people aged between 16 and 25 have gone to bed hungry over the last year and have missed school and further education as they have struggled to afford to buy food. Labour claim that the County Council wrote out policies for this group in 2017 in favour of supporting educational change in the West of the County.

When coupled with the Northumberland hooray henry’s on social media praising DWP civil servants who want benefit claimants kept on a shelf and not allowed to leave their homes or consider a holiday either in the UK or abroad everyone will see how the choice between Truss and Sunak will maintain damage in society and how Tory led Councils will want that damage to continue as it drives people away from democratic action towards not bothering to vote at all.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/dwp-can-stop-your-universal-27515969

'Mateism' not for Northumberland Tories?

 

It's greasy pole selfism every time!

This week's west area planning committee was graced by the inclusion of a strategic decision. We believe the slippage of a planning matter that will affect a Northumberland village for ever onto a local agenda is a completely political decision and its been well stated on social media that the Leader of Council, Glen Sanderson JP would not have it accepted on to the strategic agenda in case it was turned down by those who know and follow the official rules as planning is supposed to be based on non-political decisions.

The matter, the sale and development of the former farmers mart at Bellingham for very expensive housing has also attracted cash from the North of Tyne Mayor, Jamie Driscoll's brown field site development fund. When issuing the order to aid this site we suspect Mayor Driscoll must not have known that two benefiting shareholders in the former farmers mart site,  Councillors John Ridell and Ian Hutchinson would be sitting on the decision making body. But we here at murky bet he's asking questions now?

A motion against acceptance of the planning application was put forward by a Councillor and sixteen points put forward as to why a decision on this application should not be made by a local committee and needed to be heard by a strategic committee where the North of Tyne Mayor could have his representatives and legal advisors in attendance to ensure a decision he was sponsoring with public funds from across the whole region was lawfully made in a non political fashion.

The motion against acceptance was defeated 5-4 but no reasons for turning down 16 points against the application were given by those who wanted it to succeed and the Northumberland Tories greasy pole was re-wrapped into brown paper to be erected again as soon as mates or members need to use it to fill their pokes to bursting at the next planning debacle from the continuing secret Council.

Dodgy for years Borisites planned to shift the blame for the last six years of malignancy.

 There's a known difference between being a lying, cheating, narcissistic, ideologically aligned Borisite and being a lying, cheating, narcissistic, ideologically aligned member of Northumberland Conservatives but how narrow is that difference, we would really like to know?

Watching last weeks televised debate on the extended Max Caller report was like viewing an old episode of Blake7, with a rapidly spinning deputy leader of Council, Richard Wearmouth making a complete and utter fool of himself in trying to move his critically locked in group away from the rigours, exposure and expected instruction following of the Masonic Lodge, attempting a leaning towards a direct slur on the actions of an independent Councillor who was embroiled with him in the poisoning of the Company ARCH and the Labour opposition both pre and post May 2017 through dodgy facebook pages and disgraceful emails directed at those they didn't care for.

This is on the back of their latest bullying attacks on their fellow men and women by spending public cash on having their prime employments investigated for as we know some derive income by working for MP's and others work for trade unions, and a number for charities and the NHS who hate their organisations to be exposed to the standard nastiness of the Tory Party in order to simply damage the futures of opposition councillors. We here, gazing through the murk, believe it's time that employers began asking  if workers are members of the disgraced at all levels Conservatives!

Of course with the spinning Conservatives planning to bring RL Stevenson's character Dick Johnson back from the briny to issue black spots to those they hate they caught themselves out yet again with the rudderless Tory leader, Glen Sanderson so enraged with the failures of his nasty crew following councillors telling the truth about their own experiences of hatred by the Conservatives that he was seen to almost break down on camera, but what does he expect, he has no control over his team and has allowed his crew to run wild and free in the manner of all bucolic borisites ever since 2020 when he had the opportunity to stop the rot and end the secret council.

One of the Councillors they tried to do in this week has exposed their antics in the local press and pressure has been brought to bare so much that according to open social media sites in Morpeth some Conservatives have admitted their involvement in the hate campaigns although we believe some of their change of direction comes after Councillor Wearmouths close friend from North Shields, Liam Bone, was caught openly attacking the former Labour Leader of North Tyneside Councillor Jim Allan who is very ill indeed and is having to stand down. We believe this incident shows the regional Tories in their true shades of darkness and we all now know that with Councillor Wearmouth being a top regional Tory, 'Northumberland residents deserve much better than the Conservatives'.

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/20263228.northumberland-county-councillor-georgina-hill-alleges-plot-silence/

Being fourth in the queue will deny Northumberland the strong Chief Executive it wants, needs and deserves.

 

The Max Caller report on the disastrous state of Tory Governance at County Hall in Morpeth and his demands for new Leadership and Management in top office brings out the question of who will we as residents get after a tiny glimpse of what's been going on since May 2017 has been exposed to public scrutiny.

His report doesn’t quite shed light on how bad it's been, with Councillors believing they are the officers of the Council and staff fighting back. His new governance report replaces the model written and promoted by the Current Leader of Council in 2021 Glen Sanderson, which apparently was just as bad as the Peter Jackson version introduced by the Tories on their election into office in 2017 if two Tory leaders can’t get it right then a new Leader needs to be sought who isn’t a freemason and can handle the pressures of bringing all parties together to resolve the needs of the electorate.

Then we need to ask who or even how will they get the right Chief Executive into office when we have four Unitary Councils now vying for top bods with two of them as actual neighbours of Northumberland.

Somerset has come out as the top job for the top person offering a starting salary of around £200,000 way above the level of pay Councillors Wearmouth and Sanderson want to pay in Northumberland as they whinged at their now forced out CEO’s pay all of the time. 

Then our neighbours are next, Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness with newly elected Councillors talking about ‘Total Package Costs’ and not just
wages, being well over a quarter of a million pound per year, leaving Northumberland’s dodgy one party cabinet with the dilemma of upsetting Conservatives who are also taxpayers alliance members or going for a second rate CEO who has an olympic gold in a martial art or who holds a lonsdale belt to be able to fight their own corner and knock back the urges for power of the Morpeth Mob.

What a dilemma!

Chopper Shapps lowers AMT’s chances at next General Election!

Since 7^th May 2015 the Tories current business secretary Anne Marie Trevelyan MP has traded in the County of Northumberland solely on the dual carriageway extension of the A1 trunk road north from her former home town of Morpeth as she’s desperate to raise it from its current back lane status.

 

Grant Shapps, her cabinet colleague and secretary of state for transport, promised both AMT and Northumberland’s road using residents that he would sort this project out and begin progress on making the A1 safer for locals, traders and travellers through the County.

His promise was not like the massive Tory loyalty bonuses of huge capital spending on the A1, quadrupling and tripling lanes through all of the other English Counties the former ‘Great North Road’ runs through. His promise, to dual a further few miles of what must be one of the nations most dangerous highways is being stalled on a regular and ongoing basis due to the concern that the Lib-Dems will run riot again in North Northumberland and Morpeth at the next elections with the nations media illustrating recently that Labour will take Hexham, Blyth Valley and Wansbeck seats at the next General Election and move the Tories out from their seats in the Tyne Valley, South East Northumberland and the Rural Coalfield at the Locals.

 

Shapps latest snub to England's most Northern County and a massive low cost snub it is, instead of deciding to invest very little making a decision on the A1 in March 22, (that's when he put back his decision until June 22,) he has now promised to ‘look at things’ as he put it in December 22. We will not hold our breath.

 

It's exciting that we are watching the demise of the Tories at all levels, because in Northumberland we do not get any sort of equal share when it comes to Government capital spend on infrastructure as its believed in Westminster that they will win three seats here because of our sheep like nature and simply accept that we only deserve the high tax and high NI Tories as our masters.

 

We here at Murky will be watching their demise with absolute glee as this has to be the worst government for the North since ‘Bad Prince John’ and according to the release of information through the press in the last few weeks, the worst Unitary Council ever.

 

Has the Leader’s antics blown the cover on 8000 new green jobs in the River Blyth Basin?

 

2022’s longest day showed the disgraceful actions of the Leader of the County Council, Glen Sanderson JP live on your tv sets in your living rooms.

A special meeting of Council was held to take on board the report of the Leader’s ‘contractor’ Max Caller, a top bod when it comes to assessing Councils on behalf of the government.

The results of the Caller report was that Councillors of all groups MUST work together to safeguard the future of the Unitary County Council.

The Tories were well rehearsed with the usual cries of it wasn’t us it wasn't us from across the hall with the Chairman of the meeting, Councillor Barry Flux showing himself up when challenging an Independent Councillor, Georgina Hill when she was asking some pertinent questions from her constituents. It was quite embarrassing for the Tories as those questions were ones which the report should have picked up.

All in all, it went quite well with the Labour Party accepting of the report, knowing that without their acceptance things could only get worse for residents of the County and the Independent Councillors voicing matters hurled at them by their constituents and rightly so, UNTIL :

The Leader of Council started to sum up, then in an instant burst out with his rendition of the worst political speech ever, and blew the meeting and the developed good will of others apart when he began to point the ‘fickle finger of shame and fate’ at opposition councillors within the room, its was You and You and You and You he spun on blaming everyone but his own secretive council and its even more secretive one party cabinet who have two meetings each month one in private to do the deals and one on public to nod matters through.

The Council working together and developing a harmonious relationship with both the Local Enterprise Partnership and the leader of the City of Newcastle Council, the Mayor of North Tyneside Met and the Mayor for the North of Tyne region is essential to the support needed for the new green jobs being planned for the River Blyth basin.

The Office of National Statistics has just published its data on the green economy which revealed that an annual spend of £200,000 is necessary to support a ‘green job’ and that 42% of employment is temporary, elementary low paid jobs which indicates that £1.6Bn must be brought down annually via the levelling up system to produce the jobs promised in Northumberland. Much of which will be sucked up by Tory shareholders and profiteers and never find its way into the local economy but that apart.

The unbelievable antics of Councillor Sanderson and the constant blame game culture the Tories believe in whether in or out of Administration of Councils may have put the annual drawdown of funds as large as this in jeopardy and if the Tories want to continue to work with other Councils, the LEP and the Mayor they have to change rapidly, but it's now believed by all others in the room that they can’t and don’t really want the towns of the South East Northumberland, the Tyne Valley and Rural Coalfields of the County to prosper at all and are producing enough spin to stop things happening.

Councillor Sanderson needs to come clean and decide if his party wish to pursue the levelling up agenda on offer or simply does he and his mates want to have oversight of a county full of second homes and deprivation, the choice is yours Northumberland Conservatives and you can’t blame other for the mess you have laid at the feet of the residents of this wonderful County Northumberland since May 2017.

Exactly as we suspect, Max Caller can’t stop the bullying at County Hall

 

The link below illustrates perfectly the problems Max Caller the Government’s investigator into all that's wrong in Local Government won’t be able to correct in Northumberland County Council.

We have reported on several occasions regarding the antics of Councillor Wearmouth who reports opposition Councillors to the standards board if their opinion differs from his high and mighty impression of himself.

We suspect that at this moment in time he is beavering away at his laptop conjuring up magnificent words to upset and displace the confidence of a Councillor he has conned and wronged in the past as her opinion on Council owned companies differs from his. (many of those companies were set up by Councillor Wearmouth in his own image).

Independent Councillor Hill’s opinion of Councillor Wearmouth’s council owned arms length ADVANCE Northumberland differs from his. In the past 2017-21 Councillor Hill sat at the right hand of Northumberland Tories and managed the chair of the Council's audit committee. In that role she oversaw and fulfilled much of the agenda Councillor Wearmouth created then suddenly in 2021 he ditched her and as a strong woman scorned, her true thoughts will out and she has become a thorn in the side of Councillor Wearmouths deplorable spin machine.

We’re sure we will hear more from the septic sore this spat has opened up and we here at Murky will ensure you hear all about it!

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/people/councillor-calls-for-abolition-of-advance-northumberland-after-report-revelations-3733273