It's up to Labour to shout about photo ID and postal voting, as polls show Tory ideas to cut off those they’ve damaged and broken through national mismanagement are now cut off from democracy.

 

The electoral reform society has been commenting on the Government plans to cut millions of voters out of their right to vote by introducing voter ID at polling stations from May 2023 they have labelled this change to how people vote as an expensive distraction.

Its estimated that this abysmal attack on people who don’t keep a weather eye on background politics will cost the nation £18,000,000 to administer annually with Council tax payers having to pick up the bill

It's also expected that the chaos that this will cause at polling stations will deter those who do have ID to turn away when they see the size of the queues leaving only those with a postal ballot to have the real ability to affect the national political scene.

Labour canvassers who are out and about in Conservative run Council areas have noted that the Conservatives canvassers when door knocking have kept this change secret from those who say they are voting for other parties or the don’t know/won’t say residents they come across and in many conservative led councils only national advertising is appearing on their websites and social media and is being hidden among all of the other garbage.

It's reported that People have difficulty knowing whether the information they read online is reliable or not. There is a great deal of suspicion regarding both political content online and political campaigning material. But it's known that over one third of people do not yet know that voter ID is required at polling stations.

Labour’s Angela Rayner said the statistics indicated the voter ID scheme would “lock people out of democracy”. The deputy Labour leader said: “This shocking data lifts the lid on the damaging impact the policy could have for marginalised voters.”

She is quite right but the scheme is designed to keep the Tories in office for as long as possible and even though descriptions of tactical voting in Labour’s favour in Scotland have been run out recently on the BBC following the result of the SNP leadership ballot unless Labour candidates and Councillors nationally stop limiting their use of social media then its up to the Labour leadership tp begin to hit the ground running and promote postal voting from the highest level otherwise the majority will be disenfranchised from democracy in future and Labour will still sit top of the public polls with no power where it matters.

Just dump more costs onto Council Taxpayers as Government Grants Slashed.

At the codgers park bench soiree this weekend we were in Astley Park at Seaton Delaval and over our flasks of tea and coffee the chat got around to the environment: and why wouldn’t it in such a lovely and pristine place?. We discussed many different topics eventually leading to the very worrying tale from one of our angling colleagues.

The charity set to look after the surroundings of our waterways, the Canal and Rivers Trust have revealed that it plans to remove most of the bins from towpaths of canals and riversides under their control across Yorkshire and the Northeast. 

The charity said it faces "soaring costs" and the move will save the trust money to pay for waterway repairs. The trust wants other agencies such as councils to become responsible for providing or maintaining bins. The charity says it spent £1.4m nationally emptying bins and clearing fly-tipping from canals in 2022.

Waste management authorities and Unitary Councils are incensed with this latest pressure on their budgets as Austerity 2 kicks in for them and a number of those Councils along with elected Mayors are demanding high level meetings with the Trust, Keep Britain Tidy, Angling organisations and Michael Gove the minister responsible for Council activity, to stop what many believe will become and environmental disaster, not only damaging banksides locally but its thought will also lead to loss of both wildlife and fish stocks.

Angling is one of the highest income earners of revenue for the Canals and Rivers Trust and this 'threatened abuse' to the waterways many people enjoy and love has been critcised heavily by their trade and organising bodies.

It’s time for Councils to move onto your high street?

With the news from the trade body Revo that at least 40% of commercial properties on the High Street will need to be ‘repurposed’ over the next few years.

Huge and costly business rates, the national trend to change to online trading from physically looking at products or seeking commercial advice face to face with shopkeepers, deepening poverty, slashing customer opportunities and higher interest rates for those with mortgages are just some of the reasons people are ignoring their local commercial and market centres.

Revo’s report; published by the Guardian newspaper includes pointers towards what some of this repurposing could be, with leisure and civic purposes being prime on their list.

Civic use of high street sites began to disappear at a quite rapid rate from 1974 with the abolition of urban and rural districts into Borough and District Councils with the sale of prime sites becoming part of many new authorities business plans. Further changes to Councils with the abandonment of tiers and the formatting of Unitary all purpose, Mets, Districts and god forbid Unitary County’s began to force Councils into taking low cost backstreet accommodation into their portfolios as affordability became more important than what's best for our community? and how do we engage with people?

With the growth and in some areas amalgamation of Parish Councils into larger units almost resembling pre 1974 rural and urban districts its time Unitary Council’s, the Police and parish & Town Councils moved back onto the high street to bring life onto the streets once more.

In Northumberland, Labour 2013-2017 set out a market towns strategy they welded into the Councils’ then core strategy to move from centralised workplaces into the communities they serve.

The Market Towns strategy was managed by the then Business Chairperson and Deputy Business Chairperson of the Council Scott Dickinson and Liz Simpson who are now the Leader and Deputy Leader of Northumberland Labour Group.

Councillor Simpson told us “ We were well aware, even before this current crisis that gaps were appearing in our high street that would not be filled by commerce and the Labour Group tried to respond early and move into or create new high street space that would house our staff across the high number of Market Towns we have in Northumberland.” “We always thought it would be good for people to be able to make constant contact with the council as close to where they live as practicably possible”.

Councillor Dickinson followed on with “ It's such a shame that the Council withdrew the Core Strategy in 2017 to support centralisation of services and replaced it with a ‘Local Plan’ that reads like a developers charter and the centralised workplace, County Hall in Morpeth has had a six year modernisation, is almost empty and is difficult for people to find. “ Northumberland Labour Party hope we can revive our Market Towns strategy in future in order to help our staff meet the people we represent on a face to face basis and it would be nice if our larger Parish Councils were able to do the same”.

Hope it happens sooner rather than later     Ed.

ReplyForward

Is NNPA denying commercial growth in the Countryside with its undated stance on dogs?

 

It was a park bench meeting day today and the chat from a number of the codgers centered on the financial state of the parlous National Parks Authority in Northumberland and the wording of its undated Dogs on Leads campaign for 2023.

We, the codgers, see the need for keeping dogs on leads near animals and when ground nesting birds are raising their young but this the third year of the Northumberland National Parks campaign in earnest and it appears that the Authority is flexing its muscles somewhat, is advertising its ban on dogs off leads without a start or end date?

Dog owners across Northumberland are very used to being banned from a small amount of Northumberland’s coastline and beaches by the Northumberland County Council (Dog Control) Public Spaces Protection Order of 2020, throughout Northumberland dogs are not allowed in 

1.  All enclosed children’s play areas at any time of the year. 

2. The section of beach at Newbiggin by the Sea from the breakwater at Church Point to the beach access from the promenade at Sidney Crescent, between 1st May to 30th September each year. 

3. The section of beach at Blyth from the beach access at Beachway to the beach access at the southern end of the Links Road car park, between 1st May to 30th September each year.

Also having lovely coastal Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB) and the Crown Estates as neighbours, Northumberlands dog loving residents are used to some form of time limited restriction at differing times of the year, to ensure nesting birds are not disturbed, but 365 days a year, they are not.

Yet covering almost 25% of the County of Northumberland’s land mass the current campaign from the National Parks Authority, who are going to issue signage to farmers who have rights of way over their land that have no start and end date, shows how controlled by its landowners and the ‘keep away from us’ lobby is in rural Northumberland.

The Northumberland National Parks Authority is so short of cash that it had to get its begging bowl out this year and seek additional funding, DEFRA has agreed to help the Authority by gifting it £440,000 to support services such as visitor centres and park rangers.

The sum being gifted by DEFRA takes the Government's grants to the the National Park above £3 million and gives the Park Authority some time to reconsider plans to balance its budget and create some flexibility to invest in the priorities in the authority's new business plan, which is due to be approved by board members this month.

Reported at their 2022 AGM the Authority has grown the commercial income from £250,000 to over £1 million.

As well as commercial sales the Authority says that the park still faces significant financial pressures over the medium-term due to the ongoing flat-cash annual settlement from Defra. Due to the current funding formula for the National Parks grant, which takes into account area, number of visitors, length of rights of way and heritage features the Northumberland National Park receives a smaller share of DEFRA funding as its the National Park with the fewest visitors.

In recent years Towns and Parishes, shops, businesses, hotel and pub chains and even race tracks have changed their tune towards visitors with dogs and the commercial advantage of encouraging dog owners to visit and use their facilities has brought a huge revenue churn into the limelight. Becoming dog friendly has allowed many areas to bounce back quickly after covid and enjoy rapid financial growth even when taking into account the financial crisis we are going through at present.

We may only be a park bench chat group but even we can see the never ending anti-tourist face presented to dog owners by Northumberland National Parks Authority will not benefit the visitor throughput one little bit, we urge the Authority to think again and at least supply start and finish dates that will give some encouragement to the dog loving higher than average spenders from across the UK that the Park who needs them most, really wants them to be there.

Tory plot to lengthen their lifetime in money making power is working like ‘MAGIC'

LibDems and Labour missing-out on placing the onus on Councils by failing to push postal voting.

The BBC has been looking and reporting on preparations for the May local elections. 

Their published survey suggests that the uptake of Voter Authority Certificates, introduced by the Tories in Government alongside the new requirement for voters to provide photo ID at their polling station, has been extremely low across more densely populated areas with high levels of deprivation. 

The take up has been ‘horrendously low’ in the North-East of England, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Humberside and Lincolnshire. 

Checking on regional BBC news reports it is now believed by Democratic Services Officers in Councils and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that hundreds of thousands of potential voters may currently be without a suitable ID.

The Constitution society published a document on the Tory Governments change in voting law during late 2022 and entitled their work ‘an accident waiting to happen’.

With Labour sitting 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of working people will nullify that lead and organisations working in the field of equality find it abhorrent that neither the LibDems nor Labour have been pushing or advertising to increase the take up of postal voting as the best way to deal with this dreadful anti-democratic legislation.

Editorial Notes

https://consoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/John-Ault-Report.pdf

https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/government-must-not-disenfranchise-low-income-voters-polls

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apply-for-a-postal-vote

Secret Community Critic Upsetting Newbiggin Residents?

A very secretive community critic has appeared in Newbiggin by the Sea in recent years, plaguing the community and upsetting many with his social media rants against local organisations and community champions.

Using the well practised ‘secret skills’ encouraged by potential Tory political candidates, this unreasonably cruel critic never names himself in his rants but those he’s hurt, the residents of this small town or village as some would like to call it and his neighbours know who he is and his ever reducing circle of influence shrinks after each event when his aim appears to be his own personal growth.

It's rumoured, (as it's rumours he constantly creates and hides behind) that he appeared in the village following the bankruptcy of a business he owned in North Tyneside, the time period of which following the collapse of the Tories in that area does not surprise many onlookers.

In his early Newbiggin by the Sea secretive social media rants he decried both local women's groups and their institute setting himself on a path towards villagers or is that small town residents, nodding to each other as he trundles past them in the street.

He then joined a project linked to Northumberland County Council who offered a lease on a piece of land for gardening purposes. Our critical protagonist almost dragged the County Council into a legal process which would have damaged the applications for lottery funding for charities and projects across the County had Newbiggins local community champions not moved rapidly to halt his progress. 

He had made a hefty funding bid for a secondary process to progress his own ideas on behalf of this project which sat clearly outside the lease gifted by Northumberland County Council. He then went on to criticise those who had to sort out his mess.

He has now moved onto another project where he is in the copycat stage of his former tactical takeovers and still without placing his name on supposed positive media stories. He appears to be placing some new community champions front and centre in what we expect is his latest honeypot trap.

Our also unnamed article hopes that some transparency is offered by this person or is he about to drag even more Newbiggin by the Sea community champions through the mire of his making?

Watch this space.

One Month On? Newcastle CAZ income is growing retail trade outside the Toon.

 

Local reporting has illustrated that retail outlets in Newcastle’s outlying suburbs, surrounding towns and areas which are becoming ‘fine-avoidance parking strips’ have recorded growth for the first time in three years, as fines and the fear of fines is changing people's shopping habits. 

In only one month of operation, more than 1,600 drivers were fined for not paying Newcastle's Clean Air Zone (CAZ) charges. 

Newcastle City Council said “1,476 journeys were paid for in the CAZ compared to 1,658 drivers who flouted the toll and were fined. The amount of income generated by the CAZ was £54,327 including £41,975 in toll payments, £7,402 in paid fines, and £4,950 from discounted seven-day passes for taxi drivers”.

An observer from Cramlington reported on her social media that “I have found parking in our town centre quite difficult lately and there’s a definite greater movement of people through both the indoor and outdoor retail areas, I've been told by friends that's because they have stopped travelling into Newcastle to shop in case they get fined.”

Another social media chat from the same area contained “I have come back to Cramlington to do my weekly shop as the Newcastle and Gateshead CAZ rules frighten me.I’m amazed at how crowded the shops are, it seems the new Boyes shop and Food Warehouse are doing very well”.

With Newcastle’s businesses watching the slowdown caused by CAZ and the suburbs beginning to suffer from parking problems by those who must enter the city to work, Council’s need to ensure that the next step into ‘Greenness’ and political parties ‘Green new deals’ are not smitten by city centricity also planners and people in power need to begin to realise that once you get into your car you can shop anywhere. 

This very rapid change in the retail trade experienced by Birmingham who introduced a similar scheme two years ago and now Newcastle/Gateshead must show politicians that people are not going to give up the independence a car brings them by 2030 and the cost of stripping out that independence for those living outside of cities with loads of public transport will be empty city high streets and a disappearing vote!