CRUMBRIA: 07/06/2026
TEDIOUS Carlisle tabloid, the News & Shrug, has managed to miss another sitting-duck scoop.
The alleged newspaper – which has all the dynamism of a shop window dummy when it comes to Council coverage – recently did another of its under-cooked reports about complaints against local councillors.
Buried beneath tonnes of distracting committee paper waffle was the fact that a mystery town or parish council somewhere in Crumberland is currently the subject of no fewer than 11 separate conduct complaints.
Meetings have been rocked by “disrespectful conduct between councillors, breakdowns in relationships, factional behaviour, misunderstanding of governance procedures and poor conduct towards clerks.”
Ouch!
It sounds like a few ripples in the normally tranquil pond of grassroots local government, where good-natured souls in cardigans once spent hours arguing the toss over fingerposts and footways.
But that, of course, was before political rabies took over the country.
Yet sloth-like sleuths on the paper appear to have asked no questions and lifted no phones to find out the only thing worth knowing: which frigging Council is involved?
Churnalists also didn’t bother to find out whether the catalogue of complaints were made by members of the public, councillors, clerks or one particularly busy axe-grinder with a broadband connection and the Monitoring Officer on speed dial.
Instead, the former newspaper killed any interest in its story under competing and confusing figures lifted entirely from the Council papers.
This is what happens when “local democracy reporting” is reduced to opening a PDF.
Par for the course at the News & Shrug, which still insists to readers that it is the home of “trusted local journalism.”
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A short walk off Askam Pier is the prize to the first person who messages the Chronic with the name of the offending Council.
Read it & weep: Ward councillors were subject to some complaints
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