Who’s going to help you when you need it?

 

Adult Care going to the dogs.

     Over the last 10 years the Tories have been slashing Adult Care budgets through their austerity programs and now Council’s  fear they can no longer fulfil their obligations in future as the Tory spin doctors turn the public's eye from the needy to the Governments pathetic ‘save the NHS campaign’ designed to blind the public into believing the NHS will help you if you wish to stay in your own home when you get older. That is not their role and the Government knows it!

 

Its known around 2m older people, are denied help with basic tasks like washing, dressing and eating. Charities helping older people and Labour voices from across the North East accused the Government of failing to act to address the problem, and criticised many councils and the Tory led Local Government Association for failing to speak out on their inability to meet their duties to safeguard older residents. 

A recent survey by the Care and Support Alliance found that three in 10 of those who experienced difficulties with day-to-day activities over the last twelve months had received no support, with a quarter having asked for help but not received it

In Northumberland those Labour Voices have been pointing towards a bleak future as £8m held in reserve to meet the needs of elderly people has been earmarked and moved out to bankroll the Tory’s private company ADVANCE Northumberland a company effectively bust, with its workers only hope to have a Labour administration take over the County Council. Northumberland’s Labour Leader Susan Dungworth has promised to put a trust board in charge of the company and link it closer to the Council to work on real time shovel ready regeneration work on the Councils behalf and pull away from speculative money losing development projects. But this will not save or replace the £8m already wasted by the Tories.

Recently released Government figures show that 17% of Northumberland single female pensioners and 16% of single male pensioners live in poverty and can’t afford to pay for help yet the Tories plan is to increase service charges in this sector well above inflation if returned to office on May 6th.

The North East pensioners association have been lobbying for extra cash for this sector for a number of years and they know the NHS can’t help, so Councils need to join with them and others in the lobbying sector and form a consistent front at least at North of Tyne level locally and keep the interests of the elderly well up the list and in the public eye on the matter of need.

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.”