UNABLE to find any fault with the local MP’s voting record and unfavourable stories about Crumberland Council being either lost, ignored, or unused, the job of holding politicians to account in West Cumbria appears to have been abandoned to furious letter writers cheesed off with the Times & Star’s red-tinted specs.
In the Workington paper’s Letters Page this week, both Josh MacAlister MP and Keirnocchio were torched in a blazing polemic.
The letter, “When Will The PM’s Promises Come True?,” touched on local Council Tax rises, among other topics.
But the weekly “newspaper” blunders on seemingly in denial of local/national decision-making.
This week, the paper published Council press releases on pages 2, 5, and 8.
This was followed by other Council-related stories on pages 7, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21 and 28.
References to the local MP were, mercifully, restricted to a pair of half-page articles on 16 and 18; the latter being his weekly column.
In this orgy of ELEVEN Council stories, the only critical Council story published in the Times & (Red) Star was about cash-strapped Crumberland Council having to conjure up £15 million out of thin air last year to spend on ‘agency’ staff.
Written from Carlisle, the story was moodily booted down the pecking order in the Workington paper to a distant page 16, despite being a genuine journalistic exclusive in the finest traditions of holding our Town Hall mandarins to account.
It was also shortened to fit a box at the bottom of the page.
The prominent story above? A positive Page Lead fluff piece about the Labour MP “celebrating” National Tourism Week, complete with a four-column photo of His nibs.
(Arguably not the most burning issue of the day in Workington.)
The downgrading of another article that does not show the Council in the most favourable of lights speaks volumes about news attitudes on the paper.
In last week’s edition, compilers chose not to publish in the paper a Council story available to it from a sister title, the News & Scar. That one concerned matters of an important financial nature at Labour-run Crumberland Council.
The News & Scar story went: “Cumberland Council is addressing the issues raised by a damning 50-page Government report.”
Among them were “significant overspends and unmet savings targets”.
This on-a-plate story never saw the light of day among the pages of the Workington paper. It’s a decision that defies explanation. Especially given the 10 Council fluff pieces that a person/persons unknown chose ahead of it this week.
In a constituency where not everyone likes Starmer’s version of ‘Labour’, and where the Conservatives and Reform UK polled a combined total of 41% at the 2024 General Election – the paper’s journalistic decisions could well be putting it on a path to self-destruction and feeding suspicions that its only interest is in telling one side of the political story.
Holding elected officials to account and striking a political balance are key reasons why local papers exist. If those principles no longer exist, what’s the point of buying the local paper, readers may well decide.
In terms of sales last year, the T&S was hovering along around the 3,000-a-week mark – a world away from the 25,000+ of two decades back.
It is possible to foresee a time when the young Churnos responsible for this leftward swerve are sitting in a Job Centre still concussed by the impact of their newspaper having to make redundancies that might have been avoided had it covered local politics a bit more impartially.
That would be a real pity for the area and all concerned.
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Result: ⚽⚽⚽
Crumberland Council PR All-Stars: 10
Times & (Red) Star Brigade: 1
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thecumbriachronic.co.uk 
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