DEPUTY LEADER’S IMAGE UPDATE

CRUMBRIA: 7.03.2026

COUNCIL moles tell the Chronic that some very urgent business was undertaken at Crumberland Council this week.

A mere day after the Labour-daft majority waved through this year’s budget (Council Tax up 4.99% and £32 million of ‘savings’), an attention-grabbing change was quietly made to the Council’s website.

What could this urgent online undertaking be?

Why another new and updated official portrait photo of Cllr Lisa Hinton, deputy Labour leader of the Council!

The precise reasons for this serious, ‘selfie-style’ image refresh — and whether Cllr Hinton co-ordinated the change while on Council premises for budget day — are, of course, entirely speculative.

At the end of the day, it’s her photo and she can do what she likes with it.

Yet some might say this kind of ‘tinkering’ is emblematic of our times: a modern political class more keen on curating the public image and photo opportunity than fixing the pothole or the budget?

The Chronic, naturally, would never dream of drawing such crude parallels.

But the change puts the senior Labour Cabinet member in a class of her own — she’s the only councillor in Crumbria to have a ‘bespoke’ photo on a Council website.

The mugshots of all 45 other Councillors in Crumberland – professionally taken four long years ago – remain as they were taken back in May 2022.

All that being said, the website’s main landing page for Councillors has yet to catch up.

Stubbornly persisting is this photograph (left) – could it soon undergo a ‘Stalinesque’ disappearance from the official record?

Because this photograph (right) – has now long been lost having also previously been her official portrait on the Council’s website.

We say, though, that if Cllr Hinton can cut pennies as well as she can cut pounds, she should be put in charge of Crumberland’s disastrous finances immediately.