Excellent to see the Conservatives in Northumberland demonstrating restraint on behalf of the county's taxpayers.
I have come across this story in the Morpeth Herald, about how the Lib Dem administration wants to rebrand "Northumberland County Council" as, er, "Northumberland Council" when it attains unitary status next year.
This article in another local paper quotes the (Lib Dem) council chairman as saying that he feels it is important that the coucil have a new name because it will have "new ways of doing things".
He reckons it will cost a mere £27,000 to rebrand the authority without the word "County" in its title, while opponents are suggesting it will cost a good deal more.
Quite aside from current financial concerns, my memory suggests that the rejigging of Whitehall departments has never come cheap and there's no reason to believe that reprinting letterheads, painting vehicles, replacing signs etc on a county basis would be any better value for money.
So good on Tory group leader Peter Jackson for saying that not a penny should be spent on such a preposterous exercise.
You can vote for yourself on the matter here on the council's website, which even goes so far as to set out the pros and cons of each option. You couldn't make it up.