Real Northumberland Murky

Friday, 22 March 2024

Red Wall’ Councillors told in No Uncertain Terms that people don’t want Blyth’s Levelling Up destruction. Mistrust is rising.

The ‘Whole’ Story No 3

On Wednesday 20 March 2024 the crumbling Conservatives had an opportunity to own up to the shabby way they have treated and are hellbent on continuing to treat the residents of its largest Town,Blyth.

Under the cover of the reputationally damaged Michael Gove stardust program, ‘levelling up’ they have decided to continue with the practise of creating another ‘Whole’ as they've become to be labelled in a Town in South East Northumberland as part of their equalisation program of ruination in order to stamp their own culture plans onto long term Labour voting areas.

The telling off from Blyth’s Labour Councillors about the mess Blyth Town Centre’s in and the delays in building the Cowpen Road bypass and relief road fell on the usual deaf ears and the Tory’s delivered their standard stretched business promises that will take many segments of the Town plans dashing towards the twelfth of never as the now famous cash dispensers to the rich are almost devoid of wealth having burnt the Councils reserves on the altar of Mammon leaving the Tories third practise in retail hole building well on track to become a feature in the Town of Blyth.

The feature follows on from a very twisted consultation that took place without the public knowing until it was too late that Conservative Councillors from the ‘secret cabinet’ had agreed to buy the Keel Row shopping centre from Northumberland Estates for an undisclosed sum in order to pull it down and leave Blyth almost ‘retailess’ and residents fuming at the methodology of deceit used to con them into agreement with their earlier plans.

The Conservatives didn’t bother to apologise, but they did expose to the public that they are melting away in front of the public's eyes, with Cllr Daniel Carr seeing the light and telling the world that he’s courting the Labour Party, buying their beer at the local Wetherspoons on a regular basis.

Other Conservatives have already come out in favour of Reform. Research shows that one in three elected Conservative Councillors favour Reforms policies to the current Government on many issues in particular the ideas regarding refugees and asylum seekers.

Reform who sit just behind the Conservatives in third place according to the most recent polling data are releasing information through social media. Locally it's rumoured that their membership is growing rapidly in Seghill, Ponteland and Morpeth with cluster groups in a number of other Conservative voting areas.

We therefore have to ask if the Conservative Party will be fielding candidates at the next Local Government elections in May 2025 or will Labour be pitching against a Reformed UKIP?

The ultra right secret Tory’s of Northumberland may use the time left to destroy anything that may assist the next Labour administration with Michael Gove’s failed housing policies and his improvement plans leading to the weakening of housing targets is freeing up councils to axe planning permission from developments.

The Financial Times has reported that Gove’s decision to remove mandatory house building targets and cut the land councils need to allocate for housing is already resulting in local authorities overturning planning approvals for new developments.Right across Northumberland the anti-build strategic planning committee are gnawing at the bit to clear out the developers from everywhere but South East Northumberland.

What sort of future will Northumberland be left with when the secret society is voted out of office?

https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-red-wall-voting-intention-16-march-2024/

https://bylinetimes.com/2024/03/12/two-thirds-of-reform-uks-councillors-come-from-conservative-defections/

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/town_of_blyth#incoming-2587772

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Economy-Regeneration/Programmes/Town-Centre-Regeneration/Energising-Blyth/Consultation.aspx#:~:text=In%20December%202020%2C%20the%20government,with%20delivery%20from%202022%20onwards.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/21/dan-barker-tory-manchester-mayoral-candidate-defects-to-reform-uk

Tuesday, 19 March 2024

We’ve spent it, we’ve shifted it back, we’ve spent it The money go-round of the Ashington ‘Whole’?

Part two of the ‘Whole Story’

Being secretive, basing figures on debauched unhinged contempt for others, only talking with friends or those who can provide one with something and backstabbing those on the edge of your scene eventually leads to twisted minds and shocking behavioural circumstances.

The creation of Ashington ‘Whole’ is the epitome of ruthlessness, backstabbing a complete community that's the real truth behind the spin from the famous Morpeth Mob.

Let's look at the history of a company in 'real public ownership', sitting in the possession of the council taxpayers of the County of Northumberland?

The company in question has an easily traceable past, it started out on its journey as a regeneration company, set up by Wansbeck District Council to protect people's former colliery homes and help ordinary folk cope and not be left behind as society changed dramatically from manufacturing, mining and sea fishing into a service sector based economy. It was a brilliant success in the geographically restricted area of Wansbeck District.

When the County of Northumberland was set up in 2008 as the then largest unitary rural all purpose council in England, the Wansbeck company was transferred leaving oodles of funds from the sale of its former football stadium to help develop a new leisure centre close to the centre of one of its largest yet second poorest townships, Ashington, and develop a new football stadium for its local team.

These developments were undertaken and delivered by the company ARCH, a metamorphosis of the Wansbeck District Council regeneration company, guided by the Council with Councillors in abundance on its board.

Northumberland Conservatives were very close to ARCH when they power shared with the LibDems but when labour won the 2013 election this successful arms length company was poisoned by the Tories on their ‘Matters’ sites and the well publicised manifesto commitment ‘we will close down ARCH’ from Councillor Peter Jackson who sat on the board from 2008 sounded its death knell.

The abandonment of the ‘Peoples Company’ ARCH halted the development of a modern Council Office block in Ashington leaving the second ‘Whole’ in our trilogy.

This ‘Whole’ or Hole as AI from google doesn’t recognise the local version has become so famous it appears on Google Earth as a named site of cultural interest.

The base rhetoric from Northumberland Conservatives that eventually led to the formation of the ‘Whole’ was that Labour would not only build council houses on the wide expanse of meadows outside the front doors of the wealthy in Darras Hall Ponteland they were going to spend £80m moving from County Hall in Morpeth that in the words of Peter Jackson only required a ‘lick of paint’ into the den of iniquity 5 miles from the current site in Ashington.

Our investigations and FOI requests have found that Labour had a report on the state of County Hall developed for 5000 office staff that would cost £13 million to repair from a top of the tree quality surveyor and out of the blue a housing development company offered £40m to purchase the site of County Hall. Sitting with a well developed plan to build a modern comfortable cheap to run office block to suit the much smaller local government workforce for £32m complete with a 200 seater cinema within its Council Chamber set up as its only used for full council meetings six times a year, This project would be loading £8m into the Councils reserve funds.

Instead Peter Jackson who during 2019 announced in the chronicle £17m was to be spent on his ‘lick of paint’ following his abandonment of the money making scheme of moving to Ashington although in complete denial he still insisted that the £32m Build in Ashington was going to cost £80m. Over estimation must be a farmer thing? A recent FOI extended the cost by an additional £15m as it contained scheduled repairs and maintenance costs. That is all on top of the contractor payoff costs which the BBC reported as £5.6m leading the totals sitting at £37.6m, no culture centre completed and the Councils reserves stripped out and an old County Hall sitting half repaired outside Morpeth.

The ‘Whole still remains but in line with Blyth a levelling up conservative culture hub and cinema is planned for the site with the cash being shifted to and from the site on a number of occasions at the whim of the Tories

But recently as its an election year the Government have gifted some funds to level up Ashington but they seem not to include the cinema which Ashington could have had seven years ago integrated into a wonderful new County Hall, which unlike the Morpeth model set outside the Town in Morpeths leafy suburbs and of no benefit to the Town, Ashingtons County Hall was designed to sit smack bang in the Town centre and benefit the retail sector of this very deprived area through trade with Council Staff………to be continued!

Notes and Links

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ashington+Hole/@55.1845901,-1.5693981,15z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x487e0db94c79049d:0x4df619bd82fbcea0!8m2!3d55.1845901!4d-1.5693981!16s%2Fg%2F11v64sjmrk?entry=ttu

https://www.facebook.com/theashingtonhole/?locale=en_GB

https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/northumberland-names-contractor-for-32m-hq

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-hall-morpeth-ashington-17094073

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/northumberland_county_council

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/ashington-levelling-up-bid-rejected-26082877

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/conservatives-last-ditch-bid-stop-11883587

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/ashington-hole-levelling-up-money-26489531

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/cinema-project-at-s

o-called-ashington-hole-site-will-finish-on-time-despite-slippage-says-council-leader-4420696

https://www.northumberlandconservatives.org.uk/sites/www.northumberlandconservatives.org.uk/files/2017-03/Northumberland%20Manifesto.pdf

https://m.facebook.com/story.php/?id=100068106543198&story_fbid=1568305196883830

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-44357744

https://www.northumberlandconservatives.org.uk/news/county-works-everyone-northumberland-conservatives-countywide-manifesto

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/News/2024/Jan/Council-set-to-acquire-sites-to-transform-Ashingto.aspx

Sunday, 17 March 2024

Well, Well, Well The story of the three little ‘Wholes’

Or is it five or six now?

This is Part 1 of a trilogy that may become part of a quadrilogy surrounding the now famous ‘Conservative ‘Wholes’ in Northumberland and how levelling up is failing communities.

Whole One: Bedlington.

Led by the Morpeth Mob during the 210’s the Northumberland Conservatives began a program of stifling all progress by both the LibDem and Labour administrations on regeneration and improvement projects to deny what today would be labeled levelling up areas to residents they were hoped at that time to serve.

Invented and untrue statements were run out on a regular and ongoing basis on all sorts of matters which has led to the mess many Northumberland towns residents find themselves in today primarily due to the arrogance of members of the apron wearing members of the Morpeth mob.

The first ‘Whole we must discuss has to be Pipers Place development in Bedlington Northumberland. As the County Council has recently lost its prime contractor SURGO owing £152 m to suppliers including we are led to believe the huge local developer Bellway who are owed at least £1.1m.

The Morpeth mob and their supporters who would probably be cut off through the Government's latest ‘Prevent’ strategy, placed a number of stymying rumours out and about regarding Bedlington with one notable activity surrounding the age of a tree on the site where Labour were developing Lidl to extend the towns offer for residents. The rumoured tree was said to be 100yrs old and held great sentimental value to residents of Bedlington. The Council’s experts in tree age believed it was planted in 1974 when the former social services offices were built on the site making the sentiment only 35 yrs old, but anything to halt progress is seen by some to be better than nothing.

The Morpeth mob cleverly decided to tap into the Bedlington Communist protest group, ‘Make a noise for Bedlington’ and through contacts via the apron wearers from both towns hoisted the campaign from the left to the ultra right and did everything but burn the Reichstag.

Preempting the release of the regeneration plans for town by the Labour Party in office at the time the public were riled by the Morpeth mob. They held protest marches in the Town during 2015 & 2016 to force their way up the spend list of the County Council all went quiet after the election in May 2017 and the Local MP Ian Lavery wrote to the then Tory Leader, Councillor Peter Jackson to try to ensure the projects completion.

Seven years on the project is still ongoing with the Tories at County Hall sitting on their hands with its prime contractor for the site having gone to the wall. It's been reported in the newspapers serving the County that those same Tories have depleted the Council’s cash reserves blamed mainly on unequal capital spend focussing on the boundaries of former Castle Morpeth District to pave their streets with Gold.

It's also been reported in the regional press that the one party cabinet has set aside cash they may have once been able to direct to bring in a new contractor to buy back a site in cambois where their business failures have been exposed rigorously by the National Press and the promised creation of 8000 jobs to level up the County have failed. Pipers Place is at a standstill.