Gutter Politics from Northumberland’s Tories won't protect them from four years of deceit

With the Tories in Northumberland reeling from the release of a poll this week which shows that if a general election was held tomorrow Labour would win back Blyth Valley, strengthen their majority in Wansbeck with both Berwick and Hexham becoming very marginal indeed through long term LibDems now happy to be voting Labour.

Three years in from a General Election you may think this type of Poll doesn’t matter, but were only a few weeks away from the local government elections, being held on May 6th and this poll really does matter. So much so that the Tories as well as having to fight the toxic stigma caused through the recent attempts to bully their  Chief Executive Officer out of her job and in leaked e-mails sit accused of Corruption, Racism, Dodgy land dealings and mismanagement. Accusations which led to the sacking from office of the former Leader of Council, Peter Jackson.

They are also clearly in deep trouble through their well publicised mismanagement of ADVANCE Northumberland a company the Tories set up at great cost following their poisoning of the Brand of its predecessor ARCH, along with the handling of the use of public finance and the accusations that they have altered the minutes of a Cabinet Meeting of Council to cover their tracks in saving the face of the Tory chairperson of the Company, Councillor Richard Wearmouth.

This element of their reign has led to the removal £8m from Social Services reserves, much needed finance to help those in greatest need after the pandemic is over and they have appeared in Private Eye on this issue as they were going to use much needed by residents Covid finance and that auspicious magazine has exposed the Tories attempts at a cover up.

The mire doesn’t end there for the Tories in Northumberland as the recruitment of candidates to fight this election has thrown up some very dubious characters indeed, turning Conservatives off voting altogether in this election as it harks back to the days of the ‘Nasty Party’ an image many don’t wish to be tarred with again.

We will see the outcome on May 6th but the polls have been very accurate of late at predicting change and in Northumberland that change can only be for the better.

 

Tories Planning Changes to make it easy to change High Streets into HMO Ghetto’s

 

Left behind Towns will suffer most

 

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick has announced the introduction of a change to planning rules that will allow empty shops to be turned into flats, cafés or restaurants more easily. Full planning applications will no longer be required to convert retail premises for residential use.

 

The move is part of a package of measures aimed at revitalising high streets and town centres, which will also introduce a “fast track” scheme for extending public buildings, such as schools, colleges and hospitals.

 

Property owners will be able to cash in on a feast of changes that include easing demolition on non listed buildings.

 

Its expected that in inner city areas empty shops will be changed into luxury flats or high class terraced housing but in the left behind Towns in particular East Coast towns suffering from former industrial decline, with high levels of poverty and deprivation and where residents have experienced problems linked with the growth of homes of multiple occupancy that commercial property owners will cash in on the Tories changes.

 

Councillor Kath Nisbet of Croft Ward in Blyth has many worries about these changes as HMO’s have been forced through using permitted development rights in the Town Centre she is a representative for.

 

Councillor Nisbet told us: “ I’m not alone in hating this news of changes to planning law by the Conservative Government, we have recently had HMO’s rejected by planning committee forced through on permitted development rights and the local people of Blyth hate it.”

 

“They fear lots of people hanging around their Town Centre during the day and for the elderly who have to use local high street shops due to the lack of public transport to take them to out of town supermarkets the fear of crime is much worse for them than the crime itself. But with the Tories at all levels concerned more about profit than people what can you expect.”

Tories Let Down

 Northumberland’s Largest Towns

 

Northumberland Tory Leader Peter Jacksons and Glen Sanderson’s manifesto was entitled ‘A County that works for everyone’.

 

People in Blyth and Ashington know that his pre-election promise in 2017 to the voters in his heartlands that ‘we will deliver nothing in Blyth and Ashington’ is the mantra his Group follows as they abandon their manifesto promises daily.

 

The people of Northumberland’s largest town, Blyth, and its neighbour Ashington have noticed the delivery of this element of politics and have been complaining about it in their droves. Services in Blyth and Ashington have been drastically reduced yet townsfolk put more finance into a cleansing and grounds maintenance partnership with Tory Cllr. Glen Sanderson, the portfolio holder for Local Services and now Leader of a failed County Council team than any others.

 

The Labour-led Blyth and Ashington Town Council’s are having to deal with the fall out from their constituents. As Northumberland Tories laugh from a distance.

 

Both Town Council’s entered into a partnership agreement in 2014 when a Labour administration sat in County Hall. They invested in a full set of flail grass cutting machines and employed additional staff to augment the County Council team to deliver ‘more and better’ services for their constituents. They also spend a minimum of £250,000 each and every year to help maintain the agreed level of ‘superior service’.

 

Here’s a link to one of the partnership agreements

http://www.blythtowncouncil.org.uk/widescope/resources/blythtowncouncilpartnershipagreementfinal.pdf

 

Up until May 2017 the additional employees and the work on the ground was far better than some neighbouring towns, who either paid much less or didn’t pay for an enhanced or superior service at all.

 

Looking around the County at neighbouring towns and villages local people notice how the services have slipped. Weed spraying, grass cutting and some park areas are looking worn out as the Tories cut back on manpower and service levels to deliver for their heartlands and the latest figures of spend have driven up the budget to over £900,000. Yet Glen Sanderson and his team are seeking redundancies from Local Services as they are to make serious cutbacks in South East Northumberland. They have now told your Town Councils the service is only to be ‘enhanced’. The Tories have failed you badly.

 

Local Councillors have called a meeting of the partnerships to get the service back on track, but are concerned that swathes of the town are so badly maintained, gateway projects in Cowpen and Kitty Brewster have been halted, improvements to the Home Zone in Croft has been scrapped, Peoples Park grassed areas look worn out, the Hirst Welfare is going back hard and being run down by the Tories while the Leader of Council states in the press he is going to spend £600M on infrastructure, 10% in his own ward and Ponteland the area his disgraced former Leader Peter  Lords over, Luckily something he also failed to do up until now! .

 

Town Councillors are horrified with claims from outgoing local services staff that the workforce and the machinery required to deliver a superior service has already been moved to surrounding areas away from the people who pay. People need to rectify this and ensure the Tories are kept away from your Council’s finances in future!

Keir, One Next Week!

 

Tories can’t find links to former party Leader and they hate it, 

(Daily Mirror text)

Next week marks the first anniversary of Keir Starmer's election as Labour leader.

It was Starmer's misfortune that he took over a bruised and demoralised party at the height of a pandemic.

Stamping your mark as the leader of the opposition is hard enough at the best of times but it is especially challenging when the public was calling on political leaders to work together in the national interest.

While navigating this tricky situation Starmer set himself two goals: to demonstrate that Labour was under new management and to start the long, arduous task of rebuilding the party's support.

The first he has accomplished reasonably well.

Boris Johnson's attempts at PMQs to link Starmer to the old leadership are unconvincing because the change is so obvious.

This has not been entirely painless. The left, understandably, are defensive of Corbyn's record and feel slighted.

There is criticism that Starmer, by trying to reach out to people who don't already vote for Labour, which is generally a good idea for parties that wish to win elections, is taking the left of the party for granted.

These grumbles have grown deeper as Labour struggles to eat into the Conservatives' stubbornly resilient poll lead.

Starmer passes what George Osborne has described as the Camp David test – he looks like a Prime Minister in waiting – but there are questions about his ability to inspire.

 

As the Times noted recently, when he was a lawyer he was deemed better in front of the judge than in front of the jury.

The leader's office is sanguine about the progress so far.

This primarily because of the way the pandemic has disrupted the political weather patterns.

The national conservation has been dominated by lockdowns, jab rates, travel plans and pub passports.

Starmer has not yet had the opportunity to address a packed party conference hall, denying him the chance to speak to the party faithful and the stage on which to introduce himself to the public.

Allies argue people do not know him because they have not yet had the chance to meet him.

 

What is an independent conservative?

In Northumberland, conservatives tend to follow their name and  ensure conservation and conservatism is front and centre in both their thinking and their actions.

Looking around at what the Conservatives with a capital C have conserved over the last four years in which they have run the single unitary county council for Northumberland, in the views of the many they have conserved everything but the Councils cash which they are famous for wasting and delivered nothing of worth anywhere in the County.

The brown and preserved furniture owners who make up Northumberland conservatives in office have ruined the finances of the County Council in support of their cronies and have been accused of corruption following the well reported unlawful suspension of the Council’s Chief Executive.

In Newsham we appear to have a new breed of Conservative who has popped up on a facebook page to tell everyone and anyone who is bothered to listen or read that he is an Independent Conservaitive.

That may be to separate himself from his tarnished cohorts at County Hall or it may be that his furniture isn’t brown enough  or he may have committed the primary sin of being black balled at the Lodge.

This new breed has been openly praising the local Tory MP and to that end we contacted the Labour County Councillor for Newsham Ward, Councillor Deirdre Campbell and asked her opinion, she told us.

“Its disappointing that Conservatives have to run and hide behind the independent badge, this man on his social media page is cosying up to Ian Levy MP and therefore a distinction between his politics and the Tory MP’s Levy’s politics is completely clouded in mystery and appears to be welded as one”.

“I suspect that he is simply waiting to stand at the post and be whipped by the Tories if he manages to win a seat so the question must be asked if this Tory calling himself an independent conservative is really in for following his name and is CONNING the public at large and the voters in Newsham who have been let down by the Tories at County Hall for the last four years and their Government for the last decade”. 

Why Tory decisions in favour of ADVANCE Northumberland will damage the County?

The recent well reported decision from Northumberland Conservatives to bail out the private company which replaced the former Labour regeneration platform ARCH which auditors could find nothing malicious to report on and the police found not to be involved in any criminal activity to transfer £8M of pubic money from the Adult Care reserve fund to bail out the company and its Chairperson Richard Wearmouth.

This obvious to most normal people gross misuse of public funds, covered up by the use of word ‘reserves’ by the Tories is not only damaging to the Council’s finances as a whole but it will hit many wards and eventually families and individuals across Northumberland very hard indeed as the County is home to an ageing population and the changes to integrated care being rolled out from September 2021 will require the use of those reserves to keep a basic service to elderly people running smoothly.

We caught up with Councillor Lynne Grimshaw who represents Bothal ward in Ashington South East Northumberland at the very edge of the rural coalfield, she told us.: “I was shocked when the news of this transfer of funds was announced by Councillor Oliver of Corbidge following Labour challenge against the use of Covid funds to cover ADVANCE’s failings.” 

“Bothal ward has a very high number of people of the third age and there is even an estate of social bungalows centred in the patch”.

“Funds for future elderly care will be needed very soon after the pandemic ends as local people in Bothal ward and across the County will require extra help to get themselves back into normal routines and the County Council adult care system which relies on day care and luncheon clubs requires those now spent reserves to bolster the reopening of premises and kitchens which may have stood idle for over a year”.

“in my view this move by the Tories is very short term thinking indeed and their methods of changing their minds when tackled by the Labour Leadership will bring enormous problems for the future.”

Where’s the Blyth Relief Road?

When last in power, Labour in Northumberland went all out to build a new northern relief road for Morpeth to ease pollution problems for residents in Morpeth improving their health and to ease pressure from the A189 by splitting the traffic attempting to access the A1 from the towns and villages which make up South East Northumberland and the rural coalfield.

Following on from the success of the new highway, cash was set aside by the Labour administration to set about designing and settling a route to build a relief road for the Counties largest Town, Blyth, to bring similar benefits for residents and reduce pollution levels on both Cowpen and Laverock Hall Road.

After a consultation period a finalised route was planned out and following the May 2017 local Government elections the incoming Tory administration ran out story after story about what they were going to deliver for Blyth.

The route is in two parts, an incoming route from the A189 and a cross town route along the old mineral line from Cowpen to Newsham. The Tories have recently been questioned by Labour Councillors and have had to admit there’s no cash for matched funding to develop this highway.

Cowpen County Council candidate Margaret Richardson spoke with us to express her disdain, after visiting the site of the cross town road in Cowpen she said: “It is typical of how the Tories treat residents in the Town of Blyth”. “They have promised the earth since 2017 and only delivered the tarmacing of one piece of road in Cowpen over the last four years.”

“Their accounts are a shambles and they have spent over £100m on roads in rural areas yet can't produce enough cash to match the Highways Agency funding for this project and have sent it back to rot on their shelves but can find £8m to bail out their mates at ADVANCE Northumberland”.

“If elected on May 6th I will fight tooth and nail to get this highways project off the ground and begin to improve the health of Cowpens residents who have suffered an extra four years from the pollution problems brought about by the abandonment of this project and the Tories ungenuine back turning plan they have run out against Blyth for the last four years!”