Comment – Page 30 – thecumbriachronic.co.uk

CRUMBRIA: 20.3.2026

THE stories they did, and the stories they didn’t. We buy and read the Crumbrian comics so that you don’t waste your money.

PENRITH’s piss poor weekly snoozepaper continues to exist in an Eden Valley vacuum.

Despite grandiose in-house delusions of being the local farming bible — it somehow forgot last month’s 25th anniversary of foot-and-mouth disease so there was no lip-quivering “look back/lessons learned” type treatment.

Passing the sleepy newspaper by this week was the small matter of, er, the war on Iran and what it could mean for farmers.

Why should events in the Strait of Hormuz matter to this ooh-arr corner of Cumbria?

Because 20% of global oil and 30% of global fertiliser goes through it. And when it doesn’t, it drives up the costs of red diesel and fertiliser for Old MacDonald’s everywhere, especially rural Penrith and Eden.

So what was the local paper’s swashbuckling response to this latest hammer blow to farmers?

Absolutely diddly squat.

The paper’s dire ‘Farm & Countryside’ double-page spread didn’t give the crisis a word.

Nor too did the paper’s “special” 28-page farming pullout.

Space was found in the paper, however, for two circulated handouts and ‘action’ photographs of local Labour MP Martyr Campbell-Savours, patron saint of Cumbrian farmers.

One about a chinwag he had with a minister about the rising costs of heating oil (above). The other was about his tour of a new housing estate.

Farming wasn’t mentioned in either story.

The snoring Penrith paper also failed to get anybody along to the first meeting IN PENRITH of the new £11.2 million-a-year Mayoral Office — the Crumbria Combined Gravy Train.

Readers were told that it was a “historic meeting”, despite the minor drawback that nobody from the paper went to record it.

***Historically insignificant to attend, though.***

“Mr Fryer welcomed everybody to the inaugural meeting of the board,” the paper noted in its thin and incomplete report of proceedings.

As Jonathan Davies, editor of Penrith Town News, put it on the day:

“Very poor show from the BBC, ITV, Newsquest…at the inaugural meeting of the new Cumbria Combined Authority.

“Penrith Town News was the only media present in the room at the meeting today.”

The meeting took place a mere 0.8 miles from the Imperilled’s office.

A bridge too far for Penrith’s crack newsgathering operation or was it worried about conserving fuel?

****

HAVING been ticked off by the Chronic for its strange Bermuda Triangle tendency — whereby stories awkward for Labour-daft Crumberland Council DISAPPEAR from the Times & Starmer, there was evidence this week in the paper of a slap-dash rebalancing of its political and council content.

On page 15, readers were treated to a rare story about the Conservatives.

“Top Tory says Badenoch could revitalise party!” the Times & Starmer headline screamed.

(In other news: Tory Backs Tory Leader — World Exclusive!)

While churnalists on the Workington paper (based in Carlisle) might finally be broadening which politicians they ring up, they have not shaken off their addiction to single-source stories and printing the flaming obvious.

Asking local Tories how in love they are with their leader is North Korean-style propaganda, not journalism.

It’s rather like sister paper, the News & Shrug, Carlisle, doing an article this week about how the local Green Party claimed that voters are flocking to join because of party leader ‘Crack’ Polanski, the famous hypnotits.

If you missed it, read the Chronic’s catch-up: “Paper’s Green Party Love In”

***

***The Crumberland Council accounts story was not used in the Times & Starmer this week and neither was Crumberland’s Council’s “Sanctuary” row.***

Elsewhere, on page 10 of this week’s Times & Starmer, came a piece from a Council meeting 10 days ago.

It was headlined: “Bid to reduce sickness absence at Crumberland Council!”

Over 500 dreary words bogged down in HR-homeopathy, the article managed to discuss sickness absence at the Labour-daft Council without ever managing to say the Council is Labour-run.

(That’s the Bermuda Triangle back at work!)

It also NEVER revealed how many Council staff are off sick, whether the figure is rising or falling, or how much its costing local Taxpayers.

Readers were merely told that notoriously expensive “agency staff” usage is high, although how high was also left unexplored. (It’ll be millions, easy.)

There was a time when factually incomplete swill like this would have been flung back at the work shy hack responsible with a firm encouragement up the arse to do it.

ASAFP.

Such quaint old traditions have not survived the Scroogequest Crumbria era.

***

Also noticeable are the glaringly obvious stories with potential that the alleged newspaper now quietly tucks away.

Buried at the bottom of page eight of the Times & Starmer was a piece that very meekly pointed out that 900 more people were out of work locally in January 2026 than there were a year earlier.

What happened to Keirnocchio’s “Going for growth strategy?” (Unless it was a growth in the number of people never planning to vote Labour ever again?)

The man’s about as popular as an arrow through the neck with the gas bill attached.

Under BoJo or Sunak, statistics of this kind would have been chased up by feverish hacks on the paper with demands made for the local Conservative MP (Mark Jenkinson) to explain himself.

Yet the world’s greatest ever living politician, local Labour MP Tosh MacAlister, was again mercifully spared this type of ‘flashlight-up-the-arsehole’ scrutiny from the Times & Starmer.

THAT NEW LOOK PAPER IN FULL!