Fears of Lower Aggregate Demand may bring on post-Covid and Brexit Stagflation

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With the social media platforms alight with raging cost of food from our primary supermarkets and the quietened by Government media guru’s last quarter fall in UKGDP to -20% and when coupled with Gove’s constant denials of all and everything on differing political platforms we seem to have missed the slippage into a ‘Bear Market’ mentality among economists.

The Dow Jones index agreed that the Western economies had slipped into an uncompromising position on March 11^th 2020 when the stock exchanges across most major countries had caused the index to fall by 20% from its previous 12 month average.

This led the very well respected economist Lord Robert Skidelsky of Warwick University to speak out on Bloomberg TV on the possibility of the UK entering a period of lower demand, that as the real unemployment levels following the Covid 19 Pandemic and the evident slippage by the Johnson/Cummings Government into a no deal Brexit will lead the nation by the nose into a period of ‘Lower Aggregate Demand’ and inflation similar to the 1970’s ‘Stagflation’ period when as the inflation reached its peak brought misery to millions as we experienced 15% mortgage rates to keep savings at a reasonable level and taxes down.

This ‘new wave’ Tory Government made up of many neoliberals who embrace market-oriented reform policies such as eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers and reducing state influence in the economy through austerity and privatisation among other reforming policies are driving the no-deal agenda which economists believe will lead to raging inflation and high unemployment.

In Northumberland 34,000 people are currently furloughed, receiving 80% of their ‘normal salary’ we can’t predict their future prospects as a huge percentage of those people work in the Tyneside Conurbation and are not measured in the County GDP figures, but needless to say we may find that matters begin to unravel from 15^th June 2020 the change from furlough to Universal Credit will begin for some, and with 10% of under 24’s already unemployed the scene for spending less will see its curtains rapidly raising.
 

Conservatives preparing to Concrete over your County Cummings and Jenrick about to change planning laws to favour developers.

The change over from Theresa May to Boris Johnson as Leader of the Conservative Party has changed the way top Tories think about managing the UK. For years the Conservatives have sat back on matters that drive progress at a local level running campaign after campaign on their wish to control planning in their locale and conserve what they have. Its often been said that you can tell a good Tory by the amount of ‘brown furniture’ they have in their homes, and in many respects that true. But Boris Johnson thinks completely differently to most of his cohorts and on the advice of his man Dominic Cummings in forcing an election on the nation last December called it right and damaged his enemies beyond belief. That campaign was extremely costly in cash term to the Tory party but on installing Mr Johnson into No. 10 his Cummings his prime advisor came up with a plan to hook up the Tories in the long term with a sector who’s profits have grown and grown for the last seven decades, Construction! The construction industry has only one hurdle to cross to ensure it grows even faster in future,’Planning Laws’. They are a very simple process that attempts to ensure the long term aims of Councils and the wants of the Nation are fulfilled whist protecting people and the Countryside whenever possible. Hiccup’s in Planning Law can take years of wrangling to resolve and can be extremely costly to developers in both time and cash, cash that they can’t donate to the Tory Party because its locked up. Its been reported that Mr Cummings the PM’s notorious senior advisor, had identified a shake up of the planning system as the Tories biggest priority as soon as Mr Johnson assumed the throne as Prime Minister with a huge majority. He saw it as a major obstruction to growth in one the countries largest sectors, the housing market. The PM has also told Parliament that he is going to launch a series of infrastructure projects to kick start the economy after Covid 19 and Brexit and his experience of planning in a previous life as the Mayor of London coupled with his parties HS2 and Cross rail arguments have steered him towards acceptance of the Cummings plan. Cummings who is a very clever spin doctor has had Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s department work up new rules on the back of the Labour Party’s long term slogan when Councillors are arguing for more social housing, that of ‘People wish to live in towns and villages in which they were either born or brought up’. This is a major change from Conservative beliefs as it puts pressure on Parish Plans, Local Plans and Core Strategies but this is the direction that Policy Exchange the Tory right wing think tank wish to take Planning Law and the Conservative Government in the near future. To that end Ministers are waiting with baited breath to launch a White Paper that will delver change which will effect every City, Town and Village in England and change the way Utility Companies and Councils have to work in future. Leaked plans include the introduction of a zonal planning system and the use of ‘special planning zones which will allow developers to ’bypass’ the bureaucracy of the planning system and to start building almost as soon as they have done a deal on the land. Robert Jenrick when questioned said he ‘wants to rethink planning from its first principles’. Jenrick is pushing a massive and dramatic extension of permitted development rights where developers can see vacant buildings demolished then immediately replaced with housing without the need for planning permission. Developments will be fast tracked through the system if they meet high design standards, putting pressure on village and County Town settings to accept higher population numbers into their communities, something that will be hated by the ‘Brown Furniture’ property owners. Its to be followed on by more bubble thinking from the Tories through the creation of special planning zones that would see Government investment in infratructure to open up sites for private development and zonal planning systems will stop your local Council being involved in planning outcomes. Jenrick is expecting the Tories ‘New Wave’ MP’s whom are mostly urban based to carry this white paper through its various Parliamentary stages, then the new Tories can sit back and watch their coffers grow. https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/rethinking-the-planning-system-for-the-21st-century/

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/872091/Planning_for_the_Future.pdf

We the Laymen would love to see the Northumberland public included in decisions being made by their ‘Secret Council’ but it appears Labour Councils have time for their residents but Tory’s believe they know whats best for you and yours.

Durham County Council consult the public on the management of their ‘Street Space’
Northumberland haven’t bothered!


County Durham Council has begun a full public consultation about how your high streets and street space should look and be managed following the pandemic.


They have offered the public across the County the opportunity to comment and lobby their Council through the following process:

County Durham has been allocated just over £460,000 from the Reopening the high streets safety fund, with the main headings for funding being action plans, information campaigns and changes to the physical environment. It’s not a huge amount of money but if you want to lobby to involve your high street and your council in the process please contact Graham.Wood@durham.gov.uk and Wendy.Benson@durham.gov.uk.


They are also consulting the public on how their streets should look:

 

• Durham County Council consultation to identify locations where the current street layout could be improved to enable social distancing and to encourage travel by foot and cycle.  The govt announced a national £2 billion COVID response fund to be used to try and facilitate these forms of transport.  Please could you share the information via your social media and other communication methods so that as many people can respond as possible.  The consultation is quick and requires identifying locations on a map and providing notes about the location/issue.

Street Space County Durham consultation
Durham County Council are inviting you to take part in a Street Space County Durham consultation. The consultation runs until 31st July! You can access it through the link above and through the DCC website.
Background
Help us to identify locations in your neighbourhood that you feel need to have additional space provided temporarily to protect public health, by supporting social distancing in public spaces.
We want to encourage people to travel on foot and by bike during the coronavirus restrictions and into recovery. The government has made funding available as part of its emergency response to COVID-19. To enable us to apply for these funding opportunities, we need to know where measures are required. 
Temporary emergency measures using barriers, fencing or bollards could be used to:
·create pop-up cycle lanes
·reduce through traffic on certain roads
·reallocate road space to create wider pavements
·introducing 20 mph streets
·adding extra cycle parking
·remove street 'furniture' like pedestrian guard rails that are no longer required.
The consultation is specifically focussed on emergency measures to address social distancing for people on foot and on bikes. Please do not add long-term aspirational projects as these are not relevant for this consultation.
This online consultation uses Commonplace, an external website.
Please share with your friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, groups and clubs. We want to reach as many people as we can!

There’s nowhere to hide for Johnson’s new wave members as recession and Sumaks planned austerity scheme hits pensioners, public servants, the service industry and industrial sectors this autumn.

 

With both the Bank of England and the Times newspaper predicting a long period of mass unemployment and the UK economy now being completely ignored by both Trumps Government and the EU states, recession in our most major employment and spending sectors now seems inevitable.

This will bring huge numbers of people in contact with Ian Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit and Council Tax rebate schemes for the first time. Following on from the vicious debt trap of a badly managed Covid 19 period and Sumaks early end to his crutch of furlough schemes Autumn 2020 will be a bleak time for all.

The UK’s economic output dropped 15% in the second quarter of this year with only the essential supermarket chains predicting a rise in fortunes for the time being, but with the popular press predicting anywhere between two and five million unemployed the inevitability of the third quarter looking even worse than the early months of lockdown with Britain falling into an official recession looking more likely than ever.

Experts from Durham business school reminded us last month that during the 2008-9 recession the world economy contracted by 0.6% and caused untold misery to millions but they and others are predicting a 1.5% downturn with even the giant Chinese and Russian markets being caught up in this this massive retraction of trade in which its expected to take a decade or more to recover the lost ground economically.

The Tories only clue towards a response is to hint towards freezing state pensions and capping public sector pay rises including the NHS for at least two years, effectively using austerity to manage the economy creating a three tier society of the poor, the underclass and the Tories. Its an economy model which will sink the service sector for almost a decade.

Just to put this in perspective, Unite the union is predicting that over a third of the 3.2M who work in the hospitality sector will lose their jobs due to the way the Government reacted ridiculously late in introducing safety measures putting the economy before people and allowing massive events like the Cheltenham Festival take place also allowing the Prime Minister to miss Cobra meetings when he should have been steering the nation towards safety.

We laymen are sure some of Johnsons new wave MP’s do have a thought process but we would like to lay the type of odds that were found at Cheltenham that their thought process is fully engaged in worrying about the wages they will lose than bothering to think about how they can minimise the effects of their policy decisions on the electorate.




 

Distorting History through Denial brings Cramlington Councillors into Question.

The distortion of historical events is something the has happened on a number of well known occasions, usually to hide the awful truth from being run out into the public domain or to have victors vilified during war situations.

The now known facts relating to the US Governments treatment of its native people which led to possibly the best general of his time Chief Sitting Bull organising his troops to beat the US General Custer is one such example. The distorted outcome from Government hailed Custer as hero and Sitting Bull as monster.

The above example may be from a higher league than the story we laymen are sharing with our readership but the outcome is similar, with the reputations of top Northumberland County Councillors being brought into disrepute through the distortion of historical truth.

In 2009 the then Cramlington Parish Council chose to change from from the most minor local government position and emerge like a butterfly as one of the Governments new Town Councils. To embrace this new world status the Council needed to move from having a chairperson to embracing mayoralty.

The then Chairperson of the Council was the well known local Councillor the late Brian Pickering. He stepped up to the plate with the backing of his fellow Councillors and became the First Mayor of Cramlington Town Council an onerous civic job that took up much of his family-time.
Sadly Brian passed away during 2011. In his memory, his family would like to have the Town Council recognise his civic service and his role as the first Mayor of Cramlington.

His passing was announced by the current Deputy Leader of Northumberland County Council, Wayne Daley, who was and still is a Cramlington Town Councillor. His facebook message was also commented on by the current Vice Chairman of the County Council, Barry Flux also a Cramlington Town Councillor.
FACEBOOK:
14^th Jan 2011 16:49
Northburn Area – Councillor Wayne Daley and Councillor Helen Welsh.
It is with sadness that I have to announce the death of Conservative Councillor and colleague, Brian Pickering. Brian passed away on Thursday and has been both a borough and town councillor. He until recently was the first ever Mayor of Cramlington & represented Cramlington North ward. Briaan will be sadly missed.

Comment
Barry Flux
Brian was the Chairman of BVCA when I was selected as PCC for Blyth Valley in 2008. Brian always cared about cramlington and was well known across the Town.
He was extremely proud and honored to be Cramlington's first ever mayor and for being the first mayor of our town he will always be part of the towns history.
We were honored that Brian and Jean came along to our wedding in 2009, and mine and Pams thoughts go out to Jean and the rest of the family.
We are aware through our lay sources that the denial of the above historical fact has got quite nasty and that the auspicious body that looks after Town and Parish Councils, Northumberland ALC are so involved with trying to resolve the issues and have Brian Pickering remembered as the first mayor they are attempting to go through a resolution procedure.
We lay people think its much simpler than that, the above leading Councillors need to stop acting like US republicans of the 1870’s, put their hands up and repair history by admitting they were wrong.
But will they?

Will Councils be able to adjust to a new shopping order?

Councils at all levels have been struggling with the survival of their high streets for the last three decades.

Various Government initiatives, Regional Development Agencies and more recently Local Enterprise Partnerships have been regularly engaged in this battle to ensure the bottom is missed during their reign.

With our high streets almost closed down and hundreds of people who have sunk their savings into creating a small niche market for themselves have been out on social media feeling they will never get back to recouping the losses they have suffered due to the world-wide pandemic that is Covid 19.

There is some light on the horizon for these traders, the fantastically clever Dr. Chris Smith, senior virologist at Cambridge University explained to the nation that it’s very difficult to catch Covid 19 outdoors!

So the question Councils must find the answer too is, what if we turn our local shopping outlets onto the street until public safety can be ensured through the production of a vaccine?

To those reading this, it sounds really easy, as most of us have experienced card payments via mobile phone when purchasing clothes or shoes at our local markets,and have had to queue civilly on the same markets when buying fruit and veg or meat, sweets or dried goods, almost but unknowingly practising social distancing. But Councils move in mysterious ways and thinking progressively or outside the box isn’t high on their list of priorities.

Thinking outside the box’, whats that got to do with shopping in the open air? we laymen hear you ask. In the world of beadledom selling your wares in front of your property is the sharp intake of breath you expect from second hand car salesmen, for Councils its ‘Street Trading’, a function that needs licensing and inspecting and can build up the number of staff in your department if your paid on a responsibility allowance basis.

Trading on the empty squares that were once full of people in our town centres is ‘Market Trading’ a function that has been much maligned through bureaucracy and even more Red Tape than a Holy Roman Emperor can shake a wobbly stick at. Councils talk of charters and distancing and how you can’t trade within xxx miles of a charter market and in many cases they have been like that since the Magna Carta was signed.

The Councils at every level who get this right will win the race to save their high streets, those who don’t need to bulldoze the empty shops and bus people out to the successful areas.

Unless Councils begin a massive shift immediately, work rapidly and together to deliver safe outdoor experiences for the time being without looking back in anger coveting their old ways we never know, we may all experience a feeling shift and gain an impression that value for money is being delivered for our Council Tax and Business Rate payments.

Come on Councils, forget regeneration and think your way towards getting this nation safely through 2020-2021 financial year and beyond without doing more damage to our centres of commerce than the pandemic.




 

What is the Truth behind the Closure of Local Waste and Recycling Centres?

On 24^th March, Northumberland County Council issued the following information:


 Please note, all Household Waste Recovery Centres are closed until further notice due to Government guidelines regarding coronavirus (COVID-19).

Household Waste Recovery Centres - Service Update

This information was last updated 24 March 2020.

In light of government advice to stay at home and avoid all but essential travel, our provider Suez has advised that all Household Waste Recovery Centres (HWRCs) will close until further notice, from 24th March 2020. We ask all our residents to store their unwanted items until we are able to open the sites again. Thank you.
This was then followed by a message issued on social media stating that Suez the company that runs Waste Recovery sites in Northumberland had decided to close its sites to protect their workforce.

The County Council followed up with this message on their web site:
Northumberland
The council said: “We are continuing to provide waste collection services to Northumberland residents, including kerbside collections, bulky waste collections. We will respond to advice from the government and Public Health England, and will keep residents informed of changes to our waste services.”
The Government issued the following

The government is encouraging councils to keep their HWRCs open to ensure that bulky waste can continue to be disposed of – but only if social distancing guidelines can be adhered to, which many authorities are struggling to guarantee. Fifteen days prior to the decision being taken to close the Centres across the County, 9^th April 2020 a document was issued into the public domain by Suez UK in it they explain how Social Distancing can be organised at Waste and Recycling Centres operated by them


file:///C:/Users/commu/Downloads/COVID19andHWRCOperations202048-3S.pdf
A poll conducted by Suez, which operates several of the North East’s tips on behalf of local authorities, found that not one of the 128 councils surveyed considers a trip to the tip to be an essential journey.
On 23^rd April Chronicle Live reported : Tips across the North East are set to stay shut during the coronavirus lockdown, despite beginning to re-open elsewhere in the UK. North East councils have confirmed that they have not changed their stance
Northumberland County Council said its closures and the suspension of its bulky waste removal service was “being kept under constant review, with the council looking at all options for helping residents”.
Social media is filling up with demands for skips to be placed at strategic places and in response it was reported by West based Councillors from the Administration that they have been instructed to discourage DIY, which is recognised as therapeutic in helping people overcome mental anguish.
With Northumberland County Council and the NHS being inseparable across the County, even sharing top officers across both structures surely discouraging DIY and not following Government guidelines nor their own contractors method statement for Social Distancing does seem like a lack of decent leadership, strategic thinking and truthfulness is rampant in Northumberland.