This government is engaged in a toxic culture war to divert attention from its failures

Article by Allan Hepple from Cramlington

The torrent of racism suffered by members of the England Team is nothing short of disgraceful. The support they received from mainly young people was remarkable and sadly at odds with messages from government. Despite Priti Patel, Home Secretary, saying it was “gesture politics”, their message in taking the knee in each game demonstrated their commitment to end racism and demand equality and should be applauded not vilified. The team after all is racially diverse much like the country

It is no surprise that young people have a different view challenging and rejecting the government’s toxic culture war. 

Of course, this government are perpetrating the culture war to defect attention from their failures to govern fand the evidence is clear 

• Priti Patel’s - who as one commentator said is likely to switch off your life support to charge her mobile phone – from ‘gesture politics’, photo shoots of evicting asylum seekers to criminalising genuine asylum seekers, against international law, in her Nationality and Borders Bill and 

• Johnson’s description of those of African dissent as ‘piccaninies’ and ‘watermelon smiles and Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’

• Not denouncing the minority of England fans booing their own players taking the knee

The UK has always been a welcoming country where difference has been accepted and tolerated. But the government as Tyrone Ming’s said ‘stokes’ the culture war giving license to racists to boo and send racist messages on social media to England players

Their focus should not be on a culture war but on the real problems facing this country: -

• A fractured and underfunded NHS

• Increasing child and pensioner poverty

• The mess created by Brexit not least the disaster of the Northern Ireland protocol

• Tackling unemployment and particularly youth unemployment

• Supporting businesses and people still affected by Brexit

This is an agenda and priorities we can all support I’m sure.

Privatisation of the NHS here we come!

 The Layman welcomes the new Journalists from Cramlington,  Alan Hepple former Northumberland County Councillor and ex town councillor. 

We should all be very worried about the Tory Health and Care bill, which should be called the Corporate Takeover Bill. The bill will reshape the NHS to provide 42 new integrated care systems (ICS) placing private health care companies at the heart of the NHS. ICS boards, upon which private health companies will sit, will be responsible for commissioning health and local council care services. It could see private health companies being awaded contracts without going through a tender process. Labour should and must oppose this Tory bill!

Northumberland gigafactory Planning Permission approved

 

Northumberland County Council has approved plans for an electric vehicle battery "gigafactory" that could create up to 3,000 jobs. Britishvolt has secured planning permission for the facility, which will be built on the 235-acre site of the former Blyth power station. Britishvolt says the facility will be operational by 2023, and will bring "much needed" employment to the area. By 2027, the plant is expected to be producing enough batteries for 300,000 electric cars a year.

 

Alex Wallace, Labour’s County Councillor for Sleekburn ward where the gigafactory is to be sited said: “This is transformational, Britishvolt has worked hard to engage with us locally and we very much hope that will continue.

“I know opportunities like this come along rarely. To see Cambois and Northumberland leading the way in green energy car battery production is wonderful. It has my full support.”

 

Council’s opposition Deputy Leader, Liz Simpson said: “This is brilliant news for Northumberland, Wansbeck and Blyth Valley that planning has been agreed to move this project one step further forward”, “The plant which is predicted to provide jobs for up to 3000 people and will draw in other industries to resettle in South East Northumberland will certainly help the local economy which has suffered from a lack of investment for decades”. “We now have to see the corporate plans of the Council to ensure that such a large plant and its additional industries can be integrated into the local environment and ensure undue pressure is not unfairly placed on existing communities as our current vital services infrastructure will require major investment to ensure that schools, housing, health services and the Unitary County Council along with its Parish Colleagues can absorb the massive change that’s about to arrive on our doorsteps”.

Rearranging the Deckchairs on the Titanic will certainly lead to a further catastrophic split in Northumberland Conservatives?

Ian Levy MP has issued a news article, printed in the News Post Leader stating that Blyth Valley will exist after the Boundary Commission’s national consultation on changes designed to draw in 10 additional safe conservative seats and further reduce the power of any opposition party to remove the Tories from Government in future.

These proposals have already been knocked back by Parliament on two previous occasions and abandoned but PM Boris Johnson decided that as the proposals aid his party he would remove the final vote on decision making by MP’s and redefine the Boundary Commission, gifting it the ability to operate as a type of NGO, outside of democratic regulation and historical acceptance by the people and for the people and make changes willy nilly as it sees fit.

The proposals, to slash back the number of constituencies across the UK (probably to allow everyone to sit down in the about to be newly modernised at great expense Palace of Westminster) contains proposals which show that people are only numbers and that traditional boundaries and historical communities are to be defined by algorithms in future and that history doesn’t matter, changing people's view of locality forever.

So how does that work in reality and why is Ian Levy’s promise to retain Byth Valley intact a non-starter?

Firstly, the Boundary Commission has decided that it no longer has to take the population of an area into consideration when playing out its numbers game and will only work on the number of folk registered to vote.

Secondly in Northumberland the Commission has decided that one constituency has to disappear and as only Blyth Valley has anywhere near enough voters to meet the requirements of the commission its voting populus must be shared to help out areas containing less voter numbers (not people you notice).

The proposals for Northumberland contain two outside of Northumberland cross boundary constituencies and may weaken the Conservatives from an overall perspective in the longer term and MP’s may force through an early election in 2023 in order to miss the changes until 2028.

But the proposal that is most interesting is one we will call Seaton Valley with Whitley Bay as during 1973 referendums were held across Seaton Valley which was much larger than today and some communities decided to join up with Blyth Valley a District Council dominated by a historical County and others with North Tyneside a proposed at that time Metropolitan Borough Council sitting within a new County structure that was eventually abolished.

Now that people are back in public life with talk circulating more freely in pubs and clubs we are led to believe that the top Tory from Cramlington, County Councillor Wayne Daley covets this seat but as you will see from the article link below Ian Levy is desperate to hang onto Cramlington and is backed by the Morpeth Mob who would use their current standing to slash and burn all other constituencies to save their man and leave Wayne Daley who opposed the mobs unlovable leader Ghengis Peter Jackson and aided his removal from office.

So as voters across North Tyneside, Durham and Northumberland who are now linked together through the numbers game and not democracy we will have to watch this emerging picture and see how much support is gifted to Ian Levy by those sitting in their capital of the North, Morpeth, well below Boris Johnson but may be influential from a County Boundary perspective.

https://www.newspostleader.co.uk/news/politics/mp-column-blyth-valley-will-not-be-abolished-3268295

A public service announcement from the Layman remember to Register to vote to receive help?

 Tory Britain

Killing off Democracy!

Will you need help from your MP or Councillor?

Then register to vote!

Are you a renter in trouble with your landlord, about to become homeless, have noisy neighbours, suffering anti-social behaviour or will you simply need an official signature to have your passport renewed etc., then the actions of the Tory Government leading towards the proposed Boundary Commission changes will change who gets that help forever.

In the past, residents or citizens could expect help with their problems by making contact through their MP’s offices. MP’s would then either have it dealt with or guide those in need to their Councillors to help with more localised issues. Everyone mattered as representation was a two way street and good help led towards ensuring or at least expecting that at any next election those who had been helped would ensure their cross went into the right box.

But circumstance has changed previous expectations enormously. Many live in the belief they can hide from society by ignoring democracy, remaining outside the register of electors and let society pass them by. Thats about to change?

Last winter Boris Johnson decided that in order to make his Conservative Party remain in power for evermore, he would agree to reduce the number of MP’s and set the Boundary Commission free from the constraints of Parliament and accept their plan to gift his party 10 additional seats. 

The Boundary Commission immediately decided that their changes would not be based on the number of people who dwell in an area and expect democratic help when they need it, their numbers game for change would only be based on the number of people who are registered to vote, massively changing areas with high levels of deprivation filled with people who feel left behind, large numbers of private landlords, food banks, students and itinerant workers who may have lost all interest in politics.

These changes make those not registered to vote irrelevant to society from a political perspective and lowers the availability for the opposition parties and charities to demonstrate need as now that the process of change has begun through this months consultation on new boundary changes the released figures from this huge alteration to the demographics of a nation will colour investments into social need and shift towards reporting on and policing the gaps in the register and not the people in need who fill those gaps, slashing help for poorer areas nationally.

For those who believe we should have a single party nation, kill off democracy and be run by those who only point towards levelling up and don’t deliver on it then you may have won the day. For everyone else, Register to Vote NOW! 

https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

Northumberland Labour’s Deputy Leader’s ‘Green Credentials’ accepted by G7 as a way forward for the world's oceans.

January 2021 and we here at the Laymen managed to track down and interview the now Deputy Leader of Northumberland Labour Group, Councillor Liz Simpson regarding her green plans for Northumberland’s future.

She explained how for years she has wanted to bring oyster beds back to the County of Northumberland to help slow coastal erosion and improve the area's sea and tidal waters quality.

https://alaymansviewofpoliticsnorthumberland.blogspot.com/2021_01_01_archive.html

Others interested in the ‘rewilding’ field managed to secure funding from charitable sources and began sowing oysters from bases in Blyth and Sunderland marinas during april of this year. Further enhancing Councillor Simpsons belief that Oysters can help with the long term improvements to our shoreline.

This weeks G7 Meeting of the world's richest nations then pointed to rewilding with native oysters in the battle to clean our seas from pollution, hardening in at the highest level the importance to the oceans cleanliness by the reintroduction of both farmed and wild oysters to bring back the balance required to increase food and fish stocks in our seas.  with channel 4 News reporting on a small Scottish communities endevours to rewild their area. https://www.channel4.com/news/the-argyll-community-fighting-to-save-a-small-part-of-the-ocean-one-oyster-at-a-time

We here at the Laymen wish to praise Councillor Simpson for her look into the future and know she will stay ahead of the game and keep Labour in Northumberland in a positive position on green issues as time moves on.

Businesses extremely wary as No10 urged to rethink June 21 end to lockdown.

 

 

Poverty expected to increase as more families find themselves falling onto the unemployment register if lockdown stays in place!

 

Business leaders have warned of the harmful impact of any change to the proposed dates to ease the current lockdown rules in England. Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said it would be "devastating" for the sector if they are not able to fully reopen in June, with many hospitalityvenues currently operating at 60% capacity because of social distancing rules.

 

Other organisations are also concerned that the control feature and the constant wave of having the PM on TV every teatime improving his and his Governments standing in the public eye as the recent local government election results have proven will be the catalyst for decision making by No10 and not medical evidence.

 

There are signs the UK is in the early stages of a third wave of coronavirus infections, a scientist advising the Government has said.

 

Prof Ravi Gupta, from the University of Cambridge, said although new cases are "relatively low" the B.1.617.2 variant has fuelled "exponential growth". He said ending Covid restrictions in England on 21 June should be postponed "by a few weeks whilst we gather more intelligence".

 

Environment Secretary George Eustice said the Government could not rule out a delay to the planned lockdown easing, but said: “We have to make that judgment a couple of weeks before. It will only be by then that we will see the impact of the latest easement we made on 17 May”.

 

Trade Unions are concerned that many businesses will not survive any further lockdowns and warn the Government that they must ensure their figures are accurate before setting course for leading Britain into a slump.