PAPER’S LAZY COUNCIL NEWS

CRUMBRIA: 22/08/2025

THIS week’s Lazy Journalism Award goes to the Penrith snoozepaper, the Slumberland & Westmoreland Imperilled — a regular winner.

The dull-as-dishwater “newspaper” had more than a week to do its job after Wokemoreland & Farcical Council spaffed £165,000 of taxpayers’ money on a computerised room-booking system.

It didn’t.

Instead, churnalists took the bone-idle route. They cut and pasted the half-finished Local Democracy wire copy, tweaked a sentence or two, then toddled off to the council press office for a soothing statement to bolt on the end.

For this copy-and-paste effort, the paper has the brass neck to charge nearly £2.

Once upon a time — under a previous editor — the Herald specialised in holding council leaders’ feet to the fire.

Sometimes until they burned.

Those days are gone.

Journalistic standards continue to sink, week by weak week, despite the paper’s heroic claim to be “Best Barr None”.

It’s no longer even the best news outlet in Penrith, regularly having its arse handed to it by a one-man band with a phone and a spine. (Penrith Town).

The so-called “independent newspaper” has also developed a long-standing allergy to robustly criticising the Lib Dems running the Clowncil — an allergy it somehow never suffered when the Tories were in charge.

The result this week was predictable.

Council bosses were given a free pass, shady Council press officers unleashed, and taxpayers bamboozled with Local Government technobabble.

Consider the Imperilled a NINO. A Newspaper In Name Only.

The questions weren’t asked. The public money has been spaffed and nobody in charge at the Council was embarrassed.

Too timid to ask tough questions. Too scared to stand up for local Taxpayers.

Which tells you exactly how close this alleged newspaper is to the end.

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