UK election: Prospects of aspiring Muslim MPs
Elham Asaad Buaras
The prospects of having more Muslim candidates elected at the General Election are much brighter than in 2005. Although there are around the same number standing (80 compared to 79 in 2005), more will be elected than in 2005, including several women, from various parties. As has become customary, The Muslim News presents the most comprehensive analysis of the various chances and challenges faced by the aspiring MPs.
The capital is divided into 73 seats, making it a major factor on the make-up of the next Government. Nineteen (4 Labour, 1 Tory, 6 Lib Dems and 8 others) Muslim Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) are contesting 16 seats, the highest number of all the regions.
In 1997 rows of formerly safe London Tory seats fell in Labour's landslide victory. In 2005 the Tories recovered in the suburbs, while the Labour vote fell in some of the more liberal inner city areas, making a number of seats highly marginal. In 2008 Labour suffered a further blow when Boris Johnson was elected Mayor. Despite this, many polls have London as one of the lower-swing regions in the election.
Key Tory contests are in outer London seats that went Labour in 1997 - Brentford & Isleworth, Eltham, Enfield North, Finchley & Golders Green, Harrow East and Hendon. Others tenuously marginal seats include Battersea and Westminster North. The Lib Dems will try to hold off the Tories in 5 southern seats, and will target several Labour ones in the inner city such as Islington South & Finsbury and Holborn & St Pancras. Boundary changes create a new Brent Central seat forcing Labour's Dawn Butler MP and Lib Dems Sarah Teather MP to fight it out. In Barking & Dagenham, the far-right British National Party (BNP) will be mounting their most serious assault, a seat where their first councillor was elected in 2006. A London-wide YouGov poll put the BNP on 3%, its highest figure.
In the East End the battle to secure the coveted Muslim vote in the Respect held Bethnal Green & Bow is expected to be hard fought, but Labour's Bangladeshi-born Rushanara Ali is well placed to become one of several female Muslim MPs, a first in the UK. For the first time in its history, the seat with a 39% Muslim population is guaranteed a Muslim MP as all the front runners are Muslims. Ali's chances of regaining the Labour safe seat lost by Oona King to George Galloway in 2005 are boosted by the fact that only 823 votes separate the parties and that Labour have listed it as number 18 target seat.
Oxford University Graduate, Ali, who has worked with a local social innovation think tank focused, promptly publicised her anti-war view, an issue that cost King her seat: "I was opposed to the war in Iraq. I understand the sentiments that many people felt around that, but we need to focus around the local issues that many people are very worried about, like health, jobs and life chances. Labour can deliver and care about this community. I'm running for one reason alone and that is to unite the East End. We need to move past the divisions in the community to tackle the issues that matter to local people, like community safety, jobs and housing."
Ali is be up against leader of Respect group on Tower Hamlets Council, Abjol Miah, and not Galloway who has departed to the newly created Poplar & Limehouse, where he is be up against Jim Fitzpatrick, MP. Miah praised Respect's achievements, which include "stop[ing] eleven stock transfers (selling off estates to private landlords); with others won a referendum on the right of people to choose if they want a local directly elected Mayor; made social housing and parking rip offs a political issue for the Council; championed fairer taxes and at every turn fought racism and promoted good community relations. We have stood in solidarity with those facing job cuts, university closures and Trust schools." He insisted that Labour's infighting will jeopardize their chances. "New Labour in the area is in total disarray: for years faction fights have paralysed them and betrayed the interests of local people."
The Tory's sole Muslim PPC in the capital, Zahir Khan, denied Bethnal Green & Bow is a two horse race between Respect and Labour PPCs. "There isn't an incumbent MP defending a seat so the slate is clean. I think it's an open field and no one is guaranteed." Khan said he is confident the Tories will come to power and that the Muslim community should engage with parties other than Labour. "It's important that the Muslim and Asian communities engage with the party in power, we've historically voted for the opposition." He also urged for voters "to vote wisely. In the last election we voted for Galloway out of anger, and he could not deliver anything because he is one person fighting against the system."
Broadcast journalist Ajmal Masroor, 39, insisted the Lib Dems will play a vital role in the elections. "If there's a hung Parliament the balance of power would be decided by the Lib Dems." Masroor, a community development and youth worker, will hope to raise the Lib Dems poor showing Bethnal Green & Bow when the party came fourth with only 4,928 of the vote. "Lib Dems have the best programme for tackling the tirade of Islamophobic and draconian and anti-human liberty legislation that the Government has pursued and the Conservatives have supported, and finally bread-and-butter issues such as cutting income tax to £10,000 as well as looking to abolish Council Tax and taking people out of misery and debt by cutting tuition fees, these are ground breaking policies." He also praised his party's international policies: "Lib Dems has been consistently against the Iraq war, injustices that have been perpetrated against the Palestinians. In fact Nick Clegg has asked for a trade embargo against Israel and an end to a privileged trade relation that it has with the EU."
Green PPC and anti-war campaigner, Farid Bakht, is also contesting Bethnal Green & Bow. Bakht, who is the International Coordinator on the party's National Executive Committee, wants to bring "polarisation" and unity to the borough. Hackney-born Bakht, says he wants to protect young people against any cuts to education, abolish student tuition fees and help train them.
The other Muslim PPCs standing in Bethnal Green & Bow include; Haji Mahmood Choudhury (Independent), Ahmed Malik (Independent), Hasib Hikmat (United Voice)
The Green Party has also fielded a total of 72 PPCs in the capital among them Melan Zahra Fardouee (Kensington & Chelsea) and former academic researcher Anne Gray, 65, (Tottenham). Gray supports the local campaigns to save the Whittington Hospital A&E and challenge health service privatisation. She also campaigns on civil liberties and solidarity with Palestine.
Newly created Poplar & Limehouse is one of only two seats where two incumbents fight it out. Environment Minister and Poplar & Canning Town MP, Jim Fitzpatrick will duel against Bethnal Green & Bow MP George Galloway. The rise of Respect and the resulting splitting of the Labour vote combined with gentrification in areas around Canary Wharf have meant that the nationally safe Labour seat of Poplar & Limehouse is now a Tory target seat requiring a swing of fewer than 6%. Fitzpatrick said a vote for Galloway would benefit the Tories adding, "Respect can influence none of that because they are a minor protest group, which does not perform well in the council, which does not have credible [international development] policies, which will not be in power."
He suggested that Galloway's record as MP for Bethnal Green & Bow will repel some voters. "People voted for George Galloway because they didn't know him as well as they do now. The problem that he has had having to pay back money to the House of Commons, having to compensate a member of staff who he sacked by email, having a poor parliamentary record in terms of speaking and voting, spending as much of his time outside parliament… demonstrates that George Galloway's record is one that people really need to look very closely at before they decide to vote for him again."
Galloway staunchly defended his parliamentary record. "My expenses as MP for Bethnal Green & Bow are zero, I'm the only London MP whose expenses were zero, and the money paid back was for a telephone bill from 6 years ago that was wrongly applied to a budget by the finance office staff," he said.
He highlighted Fitzpatrick's own voting record: "Most votes are either for the Prime Minister's motion or for the leader of the opposition amendment…and I seldom vote for either. However, I did vote against the war and he voted for it, I did vote against identity cards and he voted for them, I did vote against tuition fees for students and he voted for them, I did vote against the so-called anti-terror legislation and he voted for it. I did vote to demand a ceasefire in Lebanon and he voted against it, I could go on."
Occupational therapist, Mohammed Hoque and Kabir Mahmud will both stand as Independent PPC's in Polar & Limehouse.
Respect PPC Samad Billo and the Lib Dem's Johar Khan are both vying for Enfield Southgate. But the contest is expected to be between Labour PPC Bambos Charalambous and incumbent Tory MP David Burrowes who in 2005 ousted Labour's Stephen Twigg, by 8.7% swing.
In Croydon North, Respect PPC Mohammed Shaikh is to take his anti-war and anti- public sector cuts message to the Labour stronghold (31.7%) seat.
The Labour selection for the east London seat of Walthamstow has attracted some controversy from Labour activists. Neil Gerrard, MP, is standing down and his replacement Stella Creasy was selected through an all women shortlist, which some have criticised as missing an opportunity to select a male Black or Asian PPC for a seat that has both Afro-Caribbean communities (17%) and Asian (17.8%) populations. Lib Dems PPC Farid Ahmed is trying to narrow the Labour majority of 7,993 in 2005 he came second with 9,330 of the votes an impressive 12.5% increase from the 2001 election.
Labour MP, Sadiq Khan, won the Tooting seat with 43.1% of the vote in the last General Election. The Transport Minister has become the first Muslim to sit in on cabinet meetings. He is expected to successfully defend his 5,381 majority but faces possible consequence of a backlash against the Government.
Khan won the seat in 2005, but with a greatly reduced majority. Labour's share of the vote fell by 11% to 43% turning this into a three-way contest with the Tory on 30% and the Lib Dems, whose vote share rose by more than any other party, on nearly 20%. Lib Dems have selected Nasser Butt as their PPC for Tooting. Butt is one of the party's senior human rights activists, a long time campaigner for the party. Tory PPC Mark Clarke said the "popularity" of the Tory council would be an advantage in fighting for the 6.1% swing needed if Tooting is to go Tory.
Labour is trying to regain their Wimbledon seat from the Tories; the Greater London seat has exchanged hands from the Tories and Labour since the 1992 elections. Lib Dems PPC Shas Sheehan will want to break that trend. Although the Lib Dems came in at third with 18.1% of the vote in 2005, they did however increase their vote by 5.1 % for the first time.
Greenwich & Woolwich is currently held by Labour's Nick Raynsford. The Lib Dems who came in at second with 20.7% of the vote have selected 26 year old estate agent, Joseph Lee, as their PPC. Leader of the Tory group on Greenwich Council, Councillor Spencer Drury, is standing on behalf of the Tories.
Sonia Klein, 41, is standing for Ilford North, Labour target number 28, a seat lost by Labour MP Linda Perham to the Tories in 2005. The Senior Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers will hope to overturn the notional majority of 4%. Klein's manifesto centres on economic development and social Justice.
She said, "We need inward investment to create new jobs. We have a lot of assets in Ilford which we're not making the most of. We have great creativity and talent which we can combine together to put Ilford on the map."
The north-west London seat of Harrow East with many Asian voters includes Kenton, Wealdstone and Stanmore. Its border has been redrawn somewhat in the 2010 boundary review. The seat is considered a Tory target (56) and their PPC Bob Blackman is best placed to benefit from any backlash over the expenses claims of Labour Minister Tony McNulty, MP. According to one poll McNulty's 2005 majority has been reduced from 4,730 (9.3%) to a notional majority of 2,647 (6.2%). Lib Dems Iran born PPC Nahid Boethe is attempting to build on the party's slender success (2.7% vote increase) but the party is expected to remain in third place.
(Source: Muslim News, UK)
Editor © Muhammad Haque
FIGHT FOR A DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABLE and DIVERSE COUNCIL in Tower Hamlets
First off at 1610 GMT London Saturday 24 May 2014 the EXCLUSIVE Diagnosis of the DEGENERATION of “The Tower Hamlets Labour Party”
Degeneration of Democracy in Tower Hamlets: What did Abbas Uddin "do"?
By © Muhammad Haque
1612 [1552] [1521] Hrs GMT London Saturday 24 May 2014.
HOW Tower Hamlets Labour Party Degenerated out of political existence: Part 1
March 2010:
As we stood momentarily at the entrance to the Brady Centre in Hanbury Street (off Brick Lane London E1), I asked Abbas Uddin "Helal" to tell me what he was doing as "the leader" of the "Tower Hamlets Labour Party".
Abbas Uddin “Helal” was a very busy man.
He has always been a very busy man.
Although I have known him as a “Tower Hamlets resident” for decades, note that word “DECADES”, I have not been able to get him to sit down and talk about the Community for even a good hour in all that time!
What does that say?
I tried to talk to him in October 2004, shortly after the “Cabinet” had “discussed” a report about Crossrail. Abbas Uddin “Helal” promised to sit down with me. When he did sit down, he was “busy”. So I could never get to tell him why he should pay attention and work with the Community.
He said it was “the Party’s decision” to take whatever stand the Tower Hamlets Council was taking on Crossrail.
Because of that, I organised the first EVER open demonstration against “the Council” later that month, on Friday 22 October 2004.
Just how did “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” degenerate out of political existence? Answer: That has had a great deal to do with the likes of its “leading” members typified by Helal Uddin “Abbas”.
Isn’t it astonishing that I am saying that I have not been able to get Helal Uddin “Abbas” to sit down and talk with me for even one hour in DECADES! Back to the start of this Commentary at the entrance to the Brady Centre.
Here is what I said to Abbas: I foresee that the “YES” campaign for a mayor system in Tower Hamlets will get the stamp if we don’t mobilise the Community to say NO. What are you doing? Abbas: I don’t think they will. We are doing the necessary to stop them. Muhammad Haque: Are you sure, Abbas? Abbas: Yes, Bhaisab!
I did not find that assurance representative of the evidence that I was seeing in the Community. There was no activities by the “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” at all about the implications of changing the Council from one of collective democratic organisation to an individual dictatorial undemocratic way.
True, the Labour Party “did” hold meetings. But every single one of those was contrived. And it appeared that Abbas did not want to hold meetings in every part of the Borough. Like in the Whitechapel Ward!
I was forever on the phone at the time with the sole purpose of finding out what, if any, the “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” was doing by way of mobilising a campaign to secure a NO result over the then moving “referendum” that George Galloway had been involved in starting.
Everyone I contacted within the “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” pointed me to “Abbas”. Abbas proved forever elusive, hard to get hold of or when contacted at last, reluctant to answer the urgent questions that mattered. It was not long before evidence emerged that Abbas Uddin had NOT wanted a NO vote in fact.
Question: Why? Because HE wanted to be the elected Mayor himself! That was around March 2010. [To be continued]
Degeneration of Democracy in Tower Hamlets: What did Abbas Uddin "do"?
By © Muhammad Haque
1612 [1552] [1521] Hrs GMT London Saturday 24 May 2014.
HOW Tower Hamlets Labour Party Degenerated out of political existence: Part 1
March 2010:
As we stood momentarily at the entrance to the Brady Centre in Hanbury Street (off Brick Lane London E1), I asked Abbas Uddin "Helal" to tell me what he was doing as "the leader" of the "Tower Hamlets Labour Party".
Abbas Uddin “Helal” was a very busy man.
He has always been a very busy man.
Although I have known him as a “Tower Hamlets resident” for decades, note that word “DECADES”, I have not been able to get him to sit down and talk about the Community for even a good hour in all that time!
What does that say?
I tried to talk to him in October 2004, shortly after the “Cabinet” had “discussed” a report about Crossrail. Abbas Uddin “Helal” promised to sit down with me. When he did sit down, he was “busy”. So I could never get to tell him why he should pay attention and work with the Community.
He said it was “the Party’s decision” to take whatever stand the Tower Hamlets Council was taking on Crossrail.
Because of that, I organised the first EVER open demonstration against “the Council” later that month, on Friday 22 October 2004.
Just how did “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” degenerate out of political existence? Answer: That has had a great deal to do with the likes of its “leading” members typified by Helal Uddin “Abbas”.
Isn’t it astonishing that I am saying that I have not been able to get Helal Uddin “Abbas” to sit down and talk with me for even one hour in DECADES! Back to the start of this Commentary at the entrance to the Brady Centre.
Here is what I said to Abbas: I foresee that the “YES” campaign for a mayor system in Tower Hamlets will get the stamp if we don’t mobilise the Community to say NO. What are you doing? Abbas: I don’t think they will. We are doing the necessary to stop them. Muhammad Haque: Are you sure, Abbas? Abbas: Yes, Bhaisab!
I did not find that assurance representative of the evidence that I was seeing in the Community. There was no activities by the “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” at all about the implications of changing the Council from one of collective democratic organisation to an individual dictatorial undemocratic way.
True, the Labour Party “did” hold meetings. But every single one of those was contrived. And it appeared that Abbas did not want to hold meetings in every part of the Borough. Like in the Whitechapel Ward!
I was forever on the phone at the time with the sole purpose of finding out what, if any, the “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” was doing by way of mobilising a campaign to secure a NO result over the then moving “referendum” that George Galloway had been involved in starting.
Everyone I contacted within the “Tower Hamlets Labour Party” pointed me to “Abbas”. Abbas proved forever elusive, hard to get hold of or when contacted at last, reluctant to answer the urgent questions that mattered. It was not long before evidence emerged that Abbas Uddin had NOT wanted a NO vote in fact.
Question: Why? Because HE wanted to be the elected Mayor himself! That was around March 2010. [To be continued]
The SPECTATOR joins the latest phase of attacks on Tower Hamlets, the Community
1525 [1520] [1518] Hrs GMT London Sunday 13 April 2014
Noting the SPECTATOR having a go at "Tower Hamlets" . More on the SPECTATOR's role.
Here is a comment posted on the SPECTATOR web site that exposes the outfit's affiliation to Boris Johnson.
"You, Sebastian Payne, must be a product of the distorted imagination of a really toxic decomposition of the Neo Con Lib Dumb Laboured idiocy about Society.
How else could you write something so totally ignorant & contradictory as follows?
“The jury is still out on how successful elected mayors are in Britain — compare the rebirth of Bristol to the divisive regime of Tower Hamlets. But with ever-decreasing turnouts and the rapid rise of Ukip, our mainstream parties, politicians and institutions are no longer catering to the needs of voters. Powerful mayors may well be the solution Britain is waiting for.”
You give no evidence for any aspect of your idiotic assertion as you illogically conclude “Powerful mayors may well be the solution Britain is waiting for”!
How crass!
“Power” over who?
“Power” as against what absence of power?
Not a surprise then that you do not countenance accountability,m transparency, audit let alone the needs day to day of ordinary people, in Bristol or in Tower Hamlets.
Given that Boris Johnson has been manufactured by the PR project for the Neo Cons that includes the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, it is very creepy that you have nothing to say by way of analysis on the disaster that has been the London Mayor!"
[To be continued]
The SPECTATOR joins the latest phase of attacks on Tower Hamlets, the Community
1525 [1520] [1518] Hrs GMT London Sunday 13 April 2014
Noting the SPECTATOR having a go at "Tower Hamlets" . More on the SPECTATOR's role.
Here is a comment posted on the SPECTATOR web site that exposes the outfit's affiliation to Boris Johnson.
"You, Sebastian Payne, must be a product of the distorted imagination of a really toxic decomposition of the Neo Con Lib Dumb Laboured idiocy about Society.
How else could you write something so totally ignorant & contradictory as follows?
“The jury is still out on how successful elected mayors are in Britain — compare the rebirth of Bristol to the divisive regime of Tower Hamlets. But with ever-decreasing turnouts and the rapid rise of Ukip, our mainstream parties, politicians and institutions are no longer catering to the needs of voters. Powerful mayors may well be the solution Britain is waiting for.”
You give no evidence for any aspect of your idiotic assertion as you illogically conclude “Powerful mayors may well be the solution Britain is waiting for”!
How crass!
“Power” over who?
“Power” as against what absence of power?
Not a surprise then that you do not countenance accountability,m transparency, audit let alone the needs day to day of ordinary people, in Bristol or in Tower Hamlets.
Given that Boris Johnson has been manufactured by the PR project for the Neo Cons that includes the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, it is very creepy that you have nothing to say by way of analysis on the disaster that has been the London Mayor!"
[To be continued]
BHANGEELAAR! No to Elecetd executuve mayor system AND No to Racists plotting in TH
1435 Hrs GMT London Sunday 13 April 2014.
BHANGEELAAR! Exclusive, original and detailed tweets diagnosing the latest assault on the Community by No 10 Downing Street colluding with Andrew Gilligan at the DailY Telegraph Media Group.
The assault is IN THE FACT that neither Cameron nor Gilligan [seen in this montage by BHANGEELAAR!] has a single word to say about the basic democratic needs of ordinary people in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. More here in the course of the day.
Time to make Tower Hamlets Council accountable to the people of Tower Hamlets
The BHANGEELAAR! Campaign, part of the Movement Defending the Community in the East End of London, is represented by Muhammad Haque. [ Saturday 6 February 2010] Also seen is the lone Lid Dem Councillor on Tower Hamlets Coun cil, Stephanie Eaton, also speaking with a loud hailer backing the NO-to-an-elected-execuive-mayor call. Stephanie Eaton has become a supporter of the Mayor system as well as of the “incumbent” Lutfur Rahman as seen on many occasions in the past four years
The BBC Panorama programme failed to deliver . Too timid, lacked rigour. No tempo! 0712 [0602] GMT London Tuesday 01 April 2014 BHANGEELAAR! the Campaign against an elected executive mayor system in Tower Hamlets. The Contextual review of the BBC’s overhyped, oversold Panorama programme as transmitted on Monday 31 March 2014 -1 Oversold over-hyped Panorama failed to deliver the scrutiny or investigation into Tower Hamlets-1 Someone did a modest re-design on the Panorama logo That displays the extent of over=selling of the episode of the programme By © Muhammad Haque 0602 [0505] Hrs GMT London Tuesday 01 April 2014 That [quoted below] is what the BBC-issued TVGuide published by the likes of STV had boasted before the actual transmission of the episode of the Panorama programme on BBC One at 1930 GMT on Monday 31 March 2014. http://tvguide.stv.tv/show-details/?tvgListingID=400862917&tvgEpisodeID=30911309&tvgShowID=3633754&tvgTitle=The%20Mayor%20and%20Our%20Money%20-%20Panorama “The Mayor and Our Money – Panorama Up and down the country, directly-elected mayors control billions of pounds of public funds. But can this lead to too much power being concentrated into the hands of one politician? John Ware investigates the directly-elected mayor of Tower Hamlets in London – where opponents claim he’s used public funds both to promote himself and to create a local power base that, come election time this May, will help return him to office. Panorama reveals evidence suggesting that, under the mayoral system in Tower Hamlets, accountability and transparency have been put into reverse, with the mayor refusing to answer opposition questions about spending decisions involving millions of pounds of public money – and also how he has injected faith into politics.” Something must have changed between the writing of that hype and the actual final editing and airing of the Panorama episode. For the transmitted episode did not examine the “directly-elected mayors”. It gave no table, no stats, no evidence at all to compare or contrast the “directly-elecetd mayors” and the alternative system. There was no investigation into the state of “democracy” inside the Tower Hamlets Council. There was nothing at all about who had brought about the directly-elecetd mayor system in Tower Hamlets. And why. There was nothing at all about what any of the Opposition councillors had said about the system at all. Neither the Tower Hamlets Council’s Opposition Conservative group nor the Opposition Labour Party group leader was featured. No mentionable clip from the Council Meetings at all, except few seconds showing the Council’s Speaker Lesley Pavitt more than once and the Labour group deputy leader Rachel Saunders stating a very short question. There was no sign of what Tower Hamlets residents generally thought of the Tower Hamlets Council. No reference to the Community in the East End. No investigation into the relationship between Tower Hamlets council and the residents. It looked like a very very strange package. Whatever the BBC had hoped to show must have got seriously derailed at some point just before transmission. Or that the BBC never had done any of the investigations missing from their transmitted version. Which makes this episode of the Panorama as being disproportionately over-hyped and unjustifiably promoted as an investigation that it wasn’t! It did not reveal evidence that demonstrated that “under the mayoral system in Tower Hamlets, accountability and transparency have been put into reverse”. Perhaps the programme had found evidence to substantiate that claim but in the traumatised version that evidence was most emphatically not visible! Finally, this Panorama as transmitted, did not test the veracity of a single one of the claims made by Lutfur Rahman as included in the broadcast clips of the “interview”! This AADHIKRnline fotografixlriinal montage contains images from Saturday 6 February 2010 when the then Campaigners (for some time!!!) agains an elected Mayor system in Tower Hamlets demonstrated in the Hanbury Street, off Brick Lane. The BHANGEELAAR! Campaign, part of the Movement Defending the Community in the East End of London, is represented by Muhammad Haque. [ Saturday 6 February 2010] Also seen is the lone Lid Dem Councillor on Tower Hamlets Coun cil, Stephanie Eaton, also speaking with a loud hailer backing the NO-to-an-elected-execuive-mayor call. Stephanie Eaton has become a supporter of the Mayor system as well as of the “incumbent” Lutfur Rahman as seen on many occasions in the past four years. THIS BHANGEELAAR! diagnosis of the Council will be continued.
Leicester Mercury sheds light on a murky business by the "executive mayor"
IMAGE of Peter Soulsby from the Leicester Mercury WEBSITE
QUESTIONABLE move by Peter Soulsby in Leicester flogging off Leicester public assets under bogus claims
REPORT RETRIEVED AADHIKAROnline the KHOODEELAAR! Campaign Defending the Community in the East End of London, from the Internet portal of LEICESTER MERCURY
Leicester mayor may sell up to 20 more council properties for £1 By Leicester Mercury |
Posted: March 13, 2014 By Dan Martin Leicester mayor Sir Peter Soulsby says up to 20 council-owned properties in Leicester could be sold Comments (27) Sir Peter Soulsby says up to 20 council-owned properties in Leicester could be sold to community groups for nominal sums such as £1. The mayor signalled his intention to councillors who questioned his decisions to dispose of two premises – worth £390,000 in total – for £1 each. Pakistan Youth and Community Association, in Highfields, will be allowed to buy the freehold of the £190,000 premises it has occupied for more than 15 years, while arts charity Leicester Print Workshop has been told it can buy a £200,000 property for £1 if it secures a £300,000 Arts Council grant to help renovate a warehouse in St George Street. Sir Peter has said the deals would help the organisations and, in the case of the workshop, draw in large amounts of investment.
However, councillors, including some of the mayor's Labour colleagues, have said the council should not be parting with valuable assets so cheaply. Sir Peter told his critics: "There have been significant transfers but the number has been quite limited.
"I intend there will be others."
Asked how many properties could be disposed of before next year's council and mayoral elections, he said: "I do not anticipate it will be a very large number but I do know there has been some interest expressed from other groups. "I would suggest it is somewhere between two and 20. "It depends on the level of interest and them being able to demonstrate they would benefit from having the freehold." He declined to say which buildings might be affected or how much they would be transferred for. Former Labour council leader Ross Willmott said: "I am generally not in favour of giving away, even for £1, any of the public assets we hold in trust on behalf of the citizens of Leicester. "The default should be we don't do that because we have been in businessfor several hundred years and are likely to stay in business, whereas community organisations come and go regularly." He said he would prefer groups be offered long leases rather than freehold transfers because once the deal had been done the asset was lost to the council and could be sold. Sir Peter said covenants could be placed to try to prevent that happening, but admitted they could be hard to enforce. He said the council's cash shortage meant it was often no longer possible to offer long-term grants to voluntary groups but giving them the freehold to properties of limited value to the council was a creative way of helping them. He said: "With the asset goes the revenue responsibility." Coun Sue Waddington said: "There's no value in giving away public assets. "There is no guarantee they will be used for what we want them to be used for." Liberal Democrat Nigel Porter said: "We should be trying to hang on to the assets because they are valuable. "I don't think we should be giving stuff away and certainly not 20 freeholds for a quid." Read more: http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/City-mayor-sell-20-council-properties-pound-1/story-20802477-detail/story.html#ixzz2vsKvcvZn
BHANGEELAAR! challenging Tower Hamlets Council Tories to show they really care for democracy
BHANGEELAAR! challenging Tower Hamlets Council Tories to show that they really do care for a democratic borough:
BHANGEELAAR! The CAMPAIGN against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets
What should Peter Golds do now, realistically speaking? If he truly believes in the imperative that his regular pokes at the Council's bureaucracy suggests then we think that he really should join us and we can together progress the movement that can then expose the abusers now abusing our resources and our democratic rights in the Borough.
Peter Golds can do what we have been asking him since before October 2010 to do: openly and sustainably and reliably back our call for the full audit and the scrutiny of the sham referendum dated 06 May 2010.
We have called for an examination of the role that “Dr” Kevan Collins played in that corrupting charade of the ‘referendum’. As strategy, Peter Golds has been in fantasy land on the issue and, as the latest ‘defection’ from the Isle of Dogs area confirms, he is doomed to wither away as far as numbers go. Numbers of ‘elected councillors on Tower Hamlets Council’ that is.
So long as there is a cesspit of greed available with access to public facilities to feed the greedy ones there will be no end of takers for the careerist dope and the opportunistic lure. The only sure way to stop that is to remove the offensively undemocratic diversionary excuse that has been foisted on the people.
Why won’to Peter Golds have the courage to admit that and join us?
Or is he somehow too set in his prejudices to join with us? Would he RATHER let the remaining pretensions of democracy in Tower Hamlets slide out of all recognition than come onboard on the active and the pro-democratic movement that we have been running since 06 February 2010 on this front?
© Muhammad Haque
Honorary Organiser
BHANGEELAAR!
The CAMPAIGN against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets
1400 Hrs GMT Wednesday 03 August 2011
esday 03 August 2011
Muhammad Haque updates diagnosing Ken Livingstone's deeply flawed backing for an elected mayor
1425 [1415 ] Hrs GMT London Saturday 26 February 2011 Muhammad Haque London Commentary continuing the diagnostic update on Ken Livingstone's career plan in London. The following has appeared on the web site of the London DAILY TELEGRAPH in the last hour. the commentary contains a diagnostic of the morass that is tower hamlets council.. which has become even less democratic with the alleged adoption of an elected mayor thing than it had been before! The elected mayor thing was one of Ken Livingstone's zealously plugged 'models' for Tower Hamlets! QUOTING Muhammad Haque London Commentary on the London DAILY TELEGRAPH [Ed West’s blog] : Noting your cryptic aside about Ken Livingstone's 'disclaimer' [quoting:now why would he say that?], perhaps you will allow me to share this little historic update I am making today on Ken Livingstone's constantly changing stance on such matters as 'benefits' and 'rewards' and so on. I have examined the known evidence on Ken Livingstone's career in various London "elected” offices, all maintained and paid for by the people of London and I have yet to come across any independently verifiable entry of one single individual who is not linked with the 'personality' either via a job or a grant or some trade union or a 'patch' in electoral terms [such as, in recent years, the 'Muslims'] who has been a supporter of Ken Livingstone's career plan for the sheer principle of it! I am ethically opposed to the career plans of the likes of Boris Johnson. So what would my preference or choice be? I cannot see Ken Livingstone fitting the objectively verifiable criteria of universal appeal to the democratic demands. Yet he keeps being foisted before me as if he were 'my' 'preferred' 'choice'. To break this really morality and ethics and democracy-free mould, we in London need some truly democratic campaigns. All parts of the population must be able to debate, diagnose and discard the violations that the central Government and the London mayor are imposing on us in every borough in every single area of our existence in the over-hyped city. When Livingstone boasted on BBC Mayor Special editon Question Time [April 2008] that he had LIED to get the 2012 Hosting for London and said that he had done the lying to help 'regenerate' East London, he was let off without being quizzed on the definition of each of the three components of his broadcast bragging: lying, regeneration and East End. Had he been quizzed, there would be no difficulty in showing up that outrage as the three components would not connect. For a start, the East End had never asked for the imposition. Regeneration has not been defined to make ordinary people better off in the East End. The 2012 Hosting does not have any logical or empirical connection with a licence that Livingstone should have been allowed to connect and then perpetrate the lying. In the context of the CONDEM regime's continuation of the 'elected' executive model - for the Police - it is necessary to examine the democratic state of the areas that have been lumbered with elected executive mayor, a 'cause' that Ken Livingstone backed with such blatant ferocity that he was adamant to risk internal and publicly expressed opprobrium from the Blaired party bureaucracy doing it in Tower Hamlets. So undemocratic and dysfunctional has Tower Hamlets Council become since Ken Livingstone's' s fantasy 'executive mayor' mode was allegedly adopted that the Council's budget cannot be passed at a single sitting! It was LIVINGSTONE who had bragged on 6 February 2010 at a hyped up platform he shared with Keith Vaz [from the ‘East End’ borough of Leicester!] that Tower Hamlets Council would function as an efficient and accountable and uncorrupted body if only an elected mayor was allowed to get into post in the name of the people of the inner city deprived area’s local Council! It is time that Ken Livingstone apologised for his touting of the elected mayor thing and did some really serious work on the ground ‘restoring’ his relevance to the democracy movement in London, including Tower Hamlets. 1350 Hrs Saturday 26 February 2011 UNQUOTING Muhammad Haque London Commentary on the London DAILY TELEGRAPH [Ed West’s blog] [To be continued]
CONDEM cuts the heart out of Society! What more does Ed Miliband need before actually OPPOSING ?
1615 Hrs GMT LOndon Thursday 17 February 2011. Editor © Muhammad haque. BHANGEELAAR! updating diagnostics on the Ed Miliband 'leadership' and its absence of impact on the Tower Hamlets [former] Labour Party...BHANGEELAAR! tells the Guardian London Blog today Thursday 17 February 2011 [To be continued] The following has been posted by BHANGEELAAR! on the GUARDIAN London Blog today Thursday 17 February 2011: Your 14 February 2011 response to one commenter means that we can again confirm in very brief terms the evidence of the former Labour Party [which became Blair Labour] controlling bureaucracy either deliberately refusing to investigate complaints [filed between 1980 and 2000] or being intellectually and ethically and morally too challenged and or deficient to recognise the central importance of honesty and integrity in all aspects of “Party membership”. By the contens of your statement and taking into account the reigning and the reining disagreements, diversions, distortions about what latest published and or leaked findings have caused and about what they have not found regarding the alleged internal inquiries about Tower Hamlets 2010, it is clear that the bureaucracy has not changed in what is now supposed to be [the ‘nearly’ ‘Old’] Labour Party. As the failures of the bureaucracy could not go on without the necessary complicity, collusion and collaboration at all levels internally within the ‘Labour Party’, what does the continuing contradictions, confusions and persistent allegations of corruption in and about the Party’s operations in Tower Hamlets say about the impact of Ed Miliband being ‘the leader’ of the Party? And his ‘brand’ of ‘the Party’? For want of a better word, Is HE ‘happy’ with the ‘outcome’ and the ‘situation’? We have been speaking to active members of the former Blaired party as well as of the former Labour Party and of the current Miliband Party in Tower Hamlets. We cannot say that any of them is ‘happy’ with their locations or links. This is truly a crisis that goes far beyond Tower Hamlets and affects the role that Ed Miliband or anyone else may wish ‘the Party’ to play if the outfit is in political power and office as the UK Government again. There are far too many irregularities that dominate ‘the Party’ operations and membership and ‘grassroots’ involvement in Tower Hamlets. If left unaddressd - as they are since Ed Miliband came into Party office - then the prospects of ‘the Party’ being treated as a decisive force for the good of a democratic society in Britain do not look at all tenable let alone credible let alone tangible! BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets 1435 Hrs Thursday 17 February 2011
BHANGEELAAR! diagnosing Dave Hill's Guardian Blog about Tower hamlets - part 1 Sat 12 Feb 2011
Quoting Dave Hill’s concluding paragraph [11 February 2011]: “In the end, the only solution for Labour may be to take its leader Ed Miliband resolutely at his word and rebuild the local party from the ground up, broadening its base and listening to all those it wants to serve more carefully than ever before. That's an easy thing for a hack in Hackney to write and a much, much harder thing for a politician in Tower Hamlets to do. But it sounds rather like democracy.” Unquoting Dave Hill [with emphases added by the commenter below]. We are commenting here to correct some of the misleading contents and insinuations. We shall come back to deal with any other that we find appropriate in due course. We here concentrate on Dave Hill’s “discussion” on the spelling of particular last name and we examine some other aspects of the Dave Hill’s London Blog in perpetuating the discriminatory myths about “local expertise’ by a “colleague” of Dave Hill’s. We start by examine Mr Hill’s statement: “the only solution for Labour may be to take its leader Ed Miliband resolutely at his word and rebuild the local party from the ground up”. What is Ed Miliband? Is he a magician or is a super human? He is neither. As for “rebuilding” of the former Labour Party, Miliband is even less. He has neither the knowledge nor the interest nor the commitment to rebuild democratic accountability anywhere. He is a machine leader of a machine bureaucracy that is banking for his ‘aim to reach the shore of power’ on the bankruptcy of the British political vessel as it is evident via the democracy-denying, democrat deficit Houses of Parliament Whatever Ed Miliband may have puffed on, he is no different on the evidence so far from any of his predecessors in that post when it comes to the fundamental purpose of the Party bureaucracy. When that purpose is ‘relaunched’ in areas like Tower Hamlets during routine ‘periods of elections’, it is as dull, dishonest and unjust and undemocratic as it ever has been. So what secret are you alluding to when you invest all; your rhetorical hopes on Ed Miliband doing the undoable? Do tell. As for us ordinary folk in Tower Hamlets, we see no evidence now and we have found none in their records of the past half century, of the former Labour Party being anything other than a machine vehicle for time-servers, petty careerists and several brazen liars. The same conclusion applies to what is now the “Tower Hamlets Lib Dems”. The several ‘names’ that you have now ‘introduced’ and or promoted about the former Labour Party in Tower Hamlets are as contaminated on their records as could be found in any of the past five decades. Our Movement has drawn attention to those during the past fifty years and demanded action against the crooked behaviour of so many time-serving place men and women in the former Labour Party that the list of the perpetrators and the allegations against them alone would take up more space than is available on your blog comment slot. The former Labour Party has persisted in failing to take action. Why? Because the entire bureaucracy has been itself corrupt. Let any of that bureaucracy's key decision-making obstructors come out and declare themselves and we shall read them the details of their perpetration with ample updater diagnostics. The only thing that is ‘new’ about your promotion of those is your name and your blog, Dave! You are now doing what decades of “Fleet Street” media has done for the corrupotocrcay that is the former Labour Party. About the rest of your concluding Comment, you have not qualified the phrase “a politician in Tower Hamlets”. Without qualification, that phrase is full of misleading and vacuous potential. For the sake of democratic accountability, we shall attempt a working qualification as always in context here. Perhaps by a politician in Tower Hamlets you are referring to those who seek or occupy “elected” posts. Examples include local Tower Hamlets Borough council posts or the London Assembly post/s or the posts of MPs for any of the two Parliamentary constituencies. Secondly you must be meaning the post or position seekers and the postholders in the former Labour Party that is still floated in Tower Hamlets as a bureaucratic version of its former form at the present time. Finally you must be meaning the couriers of the various sub-candidates and sub-post-seekers that make up the number that also serves as ‘the organisation’ of the former Labour Party. On the facts of the contens of your blog, you could not be meaning people in the ordinary population in Tower Hamlets. Had you meant any of us, you would have said something about the Movement that has actually been working to defend the key universal values from which the time-serving opportunists you DO recognise have benefited [personally and in terms of their own careerists factions] without a shadow of a doubt. You also refer to the Conservative Councillors’ group ‘leader’ Peter Golds who has been doing business fort his cause by parading as a ‘Tower Hamlets politician’ although he has yet to come on the record ANYWHERE as representing the concerns and the demands of the ordinary democratically conscious people in Tower Hamlets. We have pointed this out before about Peter Golds and we do so again here, in context. We also point out that you have not expressly examined poverty of any description in your blog. Indeed, you have not even mentioned the word poverty once. In our knowledge of the ordinary lives of the overwhelming majority of ordinary people in Tower Hamlets, there are three types of poverty currently affecting the quality of life for ordinary people in Tower Hamlets. Poverty as experienced and felt and as measurable by income, earnings or none. Secondly poverty as evident in the absence of accountably, transparently democratic representation at any of the local state levels as linked to ‘electoral’ processes. The third type of poverty is in the absence of delivery of the promised or the purported standard of democracy in accordance with ordinary expectations as defined by ethics, morality or due process in most of the state and local agencies and institutions as operating in Tower Hamlets. Although you appear reserved about Peter Golds, you perform a telling act of excusing him. You let Mr Golds off the hook by deciding to not scrutinise him on the allegations that he had INSINUATED. You say (“) Golds’ letter claimed that the Brick Lane restauranteur Shiraj Haque had, "stated to a number of local politicians that he funded the legal action" and that, "This is a reportable donation that has not been reported [to the Electoral Commission] within the [legal] time limit." (”). Who are the “number of local politicians”? We ask because we know [as defined above again] for a fact that there is no such thing as “local politicians” without links, strings and careerist negotiations and or deals. So whatever “local politicians” is supposed to refer to in relation to Peter Golds’ own promotion of his “party'-linked business would be someone [or more than one] who would be found to be already compromised by some other relevant factors vitiating any attempt to bring about an ethical and a democratically accountable atmosphere in Tower Hamlets. That would mean that you should have demonstrably queried Peter Golds’ assertion. Had you done that, you would have found ON THE EVIDENCE that a true investigative examination of his c,aims would have to reveal that Peter Golds was basing HIS bit of the allegations as much on partisan and untenably non-democratic ground as any of his implied Party political opponents would be doing given the same observed and non-democratic and or antidemocratic objective. Your reference to “the Brick Lane restauranteur Shiraj Haque” is also inaccurate and in context significantly misleading. The person you name as “Shiraj Haque” is in fact known in the community simply as Shiraj. This is true of today as it has been since the end of the 1970s when he was first listed in the public domain as an active member of the community in Tower Hamlets. One of the original validators for Shiraj getting INTO the public domain as an active member of the local community in the late 1970s was the campaign that our Movement was conducting at that time in defence of the community following the racist murder of Altab Ali on Thursday 4 May 1978. So the question that arises now , 32 years on, is this: who has been responsible for moderating or altering or amending the community-based persona of Shiraj? Has there been a legal reason why the spelling of his stated last name was or has been changed? If so, what was that legal reason? If none then why haven’t you or to be more practical your ‘local expert’ [‘colleague’] [promoted by you in the past few months as ‘the’ de facto ‘expert’ on “Tower Hamlets”] explained that change in the spelling of the stated last name cited about Shiraj? This is also important in view of the many references to Abbas Uddin “Helal” as made by you and by at least three others in or about “Fleet Street”. One of those, David Cohen, the self-described ‘rescuer of the dispossessed of London’ as promoted via the London EVENING STANDARD, invaded a democratic accountability forum that had been organised by the Spitalfields Small Business Association [SSBA] on 18 October 2010. The SSBA’s Director Kay Jordan, who sat on a chair next to where David Cohen had been sitting before he stood up to launch his invasion, wondered to our campaign within minutes of David Cohen’s invasion, what would have been the best way of stopping Cohen from violating that meeting. And what was his violating act? Why a personal insinuation against Lutfur Rahman and as retailed on behalf of the interests that were promoting Abbas Uddin “Helal” as their chosen courier of the Blaired party band. David Cohen abused the entire local, SSBA-organised meeting, by standing up and demanding to know from Lutfur Rahman why Lutfur Rahman’s alleged supporters had been spreading an allegation about Abbas Uddin “Helal” abusing or beating his [“Abbas Uddin “Helal”:] wife. Abbas Uddin “Helal” himself was absent from the event. And there was no legal, constitutional law, ethical or democratic or electoral reason why Lutfur Rahman had to even comment on that utterance by the invader David Cohen. But Lutfur Rahman did. And ion making a comment “denying” Cohen’s invasive utterance, Lutfur Rahman confounded the Cohen-contrived confusion even further! He proceeded to deny having abused HIS wife! And a suitably timed supportive sounding woman stood up in a row behind where David Cohen was sitting [and or standing, depending on what moment of his invasion he was engaged in] in the audience and stated words to the effect that she supported her husband Lutfur Rahman totally! In his ‘response’ on the same occasion, Lutfur Rahman also said that he would sue anyone who said what Cohen was saying! This part was in fact triggered by the Lib Dems’ John Griffiths whose own utterance [to Lutfur Rahman’s mind and to observers present] represented a repetition in effect of what Cohen had done earlier in the invasive disruption of the proceedings of the SSBA-organised meeting that had been intended to offer local people a say on what the local Tower Hamlets Council should be doing to support the local small businesses and similar initiatives. Considering the fact that David Cohen VIA the London EVENING STANDARD played a promotional part in propping up the campaign propaganda and image for the Lib Dems and the Conservatives in the run up to the 06 May 2010 elections on the alleged basis that Cohen had been “helping” the “DISPOSSESSED” in London [ played as a “counter” to the then Gordon Brown-fronted regime that was, so the “DISPOSSESSED” theme suggested, causing the DISPOSSESSION to areas typified by the East End Borough of Tower Hamlets], his violation of the people who were attending the SSBA-organised meeting on 18 October 2010 showed just how irrational Cohen was, how contemptuous he was of the rights of the people in the East End and how indifferent he was to what we had to say on that day about our “local Council Cohen on that occasion dispossessed us from our democratic say! Our campaign intervened at the right time to ensure that Cohen was not able to carry with him any pretext that he could later retail for the delectation of the likes of Peter Golds in another exaggerated, untrue and untruthful attack on the invented image of our community portraying it as not only being intolerant to “journalists” but also to “free speech”! Cohen abused the kindness and generosity of the meeting and in his abuse he denied that meeting the freedom to exchange views and information about matters to do with the local Council’s financial and democratic conduct. It is clear that in your “accessible” and “sympathetic” “style”, you too are engaged in doing the same. Why else is it that you promote Peter Golds and then fail to show why his alleged allegation to the Metropolitan Police did not go anywhere? Why is it that you refer to everything else about the various allegations about corruption over the Blaired Party's bureaucracy and its handling or mishandling of the selection etc, but fail to even recognise that there has been a fully active campaign against the very constitutional change to Tower Hamlets being lumbered with a post called executive mayor that is the persistent topic of your particular blog posts. Given that two fifths of the stated votes cast in the alleged referendum were in favour of the NO option, how can you treat 40,000 voters as if they did not record their rejection of the bid to change the Council’s particular structure? Given also the fact that Abbas Uddin “Helal” was himself a “campaigner against an elected mayor system” for MONTHS, how is it that you leave that fact out as if it was not the central feature of the evidence of active contempt for ethics and honesty that the Bliared party bureaucracy has been exhibiting at every level over the matter? You state that you had spoken to Joshua Peck but then you do not include any substance. Why mention him then? If you had asked us, we could tell you that the same Joshua Peck had appeared along with our Campaign organiser on at least four platforms at “public” meetings held across Tower Hamlets between 06 February 2010 and 06 May 2010 “speaking and uttering arguments against” a directly elected executive mayor. We could add that without making any noticeable let alone substantiated apology to the Tower Hamlets community and the public the aforesaid Joshua Peck then began to make appearances on the Bliared Party promotional events in the Borough SUPPORTING an elected executive mayor system! He has remained silent on the fact that Bliared party candidates for Council ward votes on 06 May 2010 received far more votes than the NO question got. The significance of this is in the fact that JOSHUA PECK and other such Bliared Party candidates had been claiming that they were “campaigning against an elected mayor system” and that they were claiming that they had been ALSO asking their canvassed voters to vote NO in the allotted box on the referendum/ballot paper [held on the same day, 06 May 2010] as the general election and the London local council elections. All the evidence that we have obtained of the voters behaviour on that day in the in the run up to polling [and referendum on the mayor] day has shown that those who were actually genuinely approached about the serious flaws and the pitfalls of installing a directly elected executive mayor in fact voted NO. That raises the almost certain possibility that those, like Joshua Peck who were claiming to be campaigning for s NO vote on the referendum were doing less to secure a NO outcome than they were doing to get their personal election as councillor guaranteed. This discrepancy was deliberately created as admitted to our campaign organiser by one of Joshua Peck’s co-candidates in February-April 2010. According that candidate for a Council ward in Mile End, their priority was to get elected as councillors! Yet that ‘NO’ campaign ‘speaker at platforms’ kept on making appearances, even though she knew perfectly well that she was not campaigning for NO outcome as much as she ws claiming to be when on the platform. Given the fact that that ‘No’ campaign ‘speaker’ was soon doing the “YES FOR candidate X as mayor” routine in Tower Hamlets during July-October 2010, the claims that anything any of them said at any time was based on ethics, principle or honesty is very difficult to accept. This is the real problem in the former Labour Party., As it is with the PRESENT Tower Hamlets Council, with or without a directly elected executive mayor installed. Contrary to the prejudiced references you make to Tower Hamlets as a whole, the behaviour of the ‘elected councillors’ and their likes is the real problem as against a truly really actually actively democracy-delivering Council. For the reasons we have shown in this detailed factually revealing comment,. the same finding applies to Lutfur Rahman as it does to his alleged detractors. 0750 Hrs Saturday 12 February 2011 BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets
"East London Advertiser"-"owner" ARCHANT exposed again as a tout for Big Business greed ...
0240 [0130] [0018] Hrs GMT London Saturday 05 February 2011. Editor © Muhammad Haque. BHANGEELAAR! the CAMPAIGN against “an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets” is Telling the EAST LONDON ADVERTISER that it has published lies for Crossrail-backer Josh Peck. This is the first part of a series fo BHANGEELAAR diagnostic updates on the matter. Your [“East London Advertiser” online] headline [“My only Tesco connection is—at the checkout, fumes councillor” ] [by-lined to Mike Brooke] is misleading and the contents underneath untrue. Josh Peck was not asked only about TESCO. He was in fact challenged on his links with both TESCO AND Crossrail. His ‘reply’ was delivered with evident accompaniment of a written script which he was looking at as he gave his long winded statement about TESCO. Then he sat down. And he was ‘persuaded’ to stand up again. This time he in effect confessed that there had been another allegation against him. That was the claim, contained in the question from the member of the public concerned, that he had received money from Crossrail as well. “Cllr” Peck denied that he had received money from Crossrail. So why did he stand up that second time to make that SECOND denial at the “Tower Hamlets Council” meeting held on 2 February 2011? Answer: Because a voice came over to him from the very back of the now extended “public gallery” demanding to know if Josh Peck had received money from Crossrail. That voice belonged to one of the main speakers, along with George Galloway and Carole Swords at a meeting held AGAINST CROSSRAIL in Bow West on 7 March 2006 where Josh Peck was roundly condemned as a liar by George Galloway on Crossrail after Peck made a false statement alleging that Galloway had failed to oppose Crossrail in the UK House of Commons. . The speaker at the back of the ‘public gallery’ during the Tower Hamlets Council meeting held on 2 February 2011? Answer: Muahmmad Haque, the Organiser of the Khoodeelaar action in defence of the East End of London. Is there any evidence that Muhammad Haque knows “Cllr” Josh Peck on the relevant records? Answer: There is plenty. Muhammad Haque has been organising the BHANGEELAAR! campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets as you [Mike Brooke] have known. Bhangeelaar is actively advancing the cause of democracy that Josh Peck claimed to be “backing” for a few months in 2010. After a few months, he ‘changed’ his stance and began to BACK an elected mayor system that he had been “honestly campaigning against” for those few weeks!. Before his ‘about turn’ Josh Peck appeared on a platform at the Brady Centre in March 2010 and delivered what sounded very much like an imitation of Muhammad Haque’s significantly established and recorded diagnostic linguistic speech given at several formal and informal gatherings of the “No to a directly elected mayor” campaign in the previous weeks. 0030 Hrs Saturday 05 February 2011 BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets [To be continued]
ARCHANT, owners of 'East London Advertiser', shields Crossrail-lobbyist "Cllr"
0018 Hrs GMT London Saturday 05 February 2011. Editor © Muhammad Haque. BHANGEELAAR! the CAMPAIGN against “an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets” is Telling the EAST LONDON ADVERTISER that it has published lies for Crossrail-backer Josh Peck. This is the first part of a series of BHANGEELAAR diagnostic updates on the matter. Your [“East London Advertiser” online] headline [“My only Tesco connection is—at the checkout, fumes councillor” ] [by-lined to Mike Brooke] is misleading and the contents underneath untrue. Josh Peck was not asked only about TESCO. He was in fact challenged on his links with both TESCO AND Crossrail. His ‘reply’ was delivered with evident accompaniment of a written script which he was looking at as he gave his long winded statement about TESCO. Then he sat down. And he was ‘persuaded’ to stand up again. This time he in effect confessed that there had been another allegation against him. That was the claim, contained in the question from the member of the public concerned, that he had received money from Crossrail as well. “Cllr” Peck denied that he had received money from Crossrail. So why did he stand up that second time to make that SECOND denial at the “Tower Hamlets Council” meeting held on 2 February 2011? Answer: Because a voice came over to him from the very back of the now extended “public gallery” demanding to know if Josh Peck had received money from Crossrail. That voice belonged to one of the main speakers, along with George Galloway and Carole Swords at a meeting held AGAINST CROSSRAIL in Bow West on 7 March 2006 where Josh Peck was roundly condemned as a liar by George Galloway on Crossrail after Peck made a false statement alleging that Galloway had failed to oppose Crossrail in the UK House of Commons. . The speaker at the back of the ‘public gallery’ during the Tower Hamlets Council meeting held on 2 February 2011? Answer: Muahmmad Haque, the Organiser of the Khoodeelaar action in defence of the East End of London. Is there any evidence that Muhammad Haque knows “Cllr” Josh Peck on the relevant records? Answer: There is plenty. Muhammad Haque has been organising the BHANGEELAAR! campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets as you [Mike Brooke] have known. Bhangeelaar is actively advancing the cause of democracy that Josh Peck claimed to be “backing” for a few months in 2010. After a few months, he ‘changed’ his stance and began to BACK an elected mayor system that he had been “honestly campaigning against” for those few weeks!. Before his ‘about turn’ Josh Peck appeared on a platform at the Brady Centre in March 2010 and delivered what sounded very much like an imitation of Muhammad Haque’s significantly established and recorded diagnostic linguistic speech given at several formal and informal gatherings of the “:No to a directly elected mayor” campaign in the previous weeks. 0030 Hrs Saturday 05 February 2011 BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets [To be continued]
CONDEM complacent as they destroy NHS and let 'care' business kill!
2100 Hrs GMT London Monday 31 January 2011. By © Muhammad Haque. CONDEM in the UK are taking Society backwards to Dark Age...[To be continued]
Defending the East End community against Big Biz attacks: into 8th year of Khoodeelaar!
0635 [0555] Hrs GMT London Sunday 30 January 2011. By © Muhammad Haque. The Movement for democratic accountability in the East End of London has been defending the community in the area for decades. Those decades have witnessed the democratic defence being conducted under a number of banners. In context, each banner has been created in response to the given attack on the democratic entitlements of the community. The most prominent and consistently active banner for the past seven years has been the KHOODEELAAR! campaign. Khoodeelaar! is into the 8th campaigning year starting today, Sunday 30 January 2011. On Saturday 31 January 2004, the KHOODEELAAR! campaign was publicly launched with the holding of the first public meeting for the community . It was held at the Montefiore Centre under the initiative of Kay Jordan, the community architect. Kay’s academic background as an architect helped her understanding of the aspects of the Crossrail hole assault that was plotted against the East End. That understanding got enriched by Kay Jordan the universally conscientious human being who used her gifts to embrace as many people as were positively inclined to help the cause of creating a just society. That particular battle for justice that we began on Saturday 31 january 2004 has been making the East End a far more accountable place than it would otherwise have been. The campaign against Big Business agenda Crossrail has not been merely a campaign against a single scam. The Khoodeelaar! campaign has been also a, probably THE community action forum for holding to account all who seek public office in the name of the community, at the expense of the community. The extent of that accountability is not measurable by numbers. The extent of accountability is a function of the environment for democratic accountability that the seekers of Post and the holders of post feel they have entered. The first and the foremost material indication of the level and the quality of that atmosphere is in the degrees go which the area is subjected to unsettlement by BiG Business. Without a stable, settled and secure environment in which the community can carry on ordinary life, there cannot be a locally elected locally accountable 'institution' like the local Council. It is the local Tower Hamlets Council that has been under threat of demolition. But this possibility has not been recognised by the “elected” councillors! Neither in their careers as allownces-collecting “routine-performers” [as in “attending” “functions” including appearing at recorded “council” ‘meetings’ and ‘allowances-linked events’, etc] nor in their positions as “leaders”, however the “office” is dressed up! That the community has had to mobilise the defence of the area against the lethal dislocation attacks by the City of London interests that have been operating via the Crossrail scam [as one ofd their current weapons and ploys] is a most important confirmation of the fact that Tower Hamlets Council has been a failing Council. The Movement which has created the Khoodeelaar! campaign, the 40 year old Movement for the defence of the community in the East End of London, had PREDICTED the state of dysfunction as a democratic local authority into which the Tower Hamlets Council.. has descended now. Our Movement had predicted that even before Eric Pickles was a “leading” councillor in Bradford! And that was a very long time ago. So long ago that Eric Pickles himself looked unrecognisably dissimilar to what he looks like [both in physical extent and in the fat in the shape of bonuses, expenses that he has collected around himself] now as he spiels the absurdities and the unreconstructed idiocies about local communities. But then Pickles can do that. Especially so because local Councils like Tower Hamlets are heading for their own destruction. How this has been happening has been one of our diagnostic work in the campaign to defend democracy and a democratic council for years. Do those who brag and flaunt their “achievements” linked to Tower Hamlets Council realise this? [To be continued]
Kay Jordan marched in Hanbury Street, Princelet street on 17 January 2006 [pictured below]
![Kay Jordan marched in Hanbury Street, Princelet street on 17 January 2006 [pictured below]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dWmk2LlYKZk/TSPzlCUEKNI/AAAAAAAAALk/oUuVMsb0aIw/S760/KHOODEELAAR%2521%2BNo%2Bto%2BCrossrail%2BHole%252C%2BDemo%2Bin%2BHanbury%252C%2BSpelman%252C%2BPrincelet%2BStreets%2Band%2BBrick%2BLane%2BLondon%2BE1%2B17%2BJanuary%2B2006.jpeg)
0810 Hrs GMT London Saturday 15 January 2011 Editor © Muhammad Haque BHANGEELAAR! the Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets this morning again reiterated the fact that on the Council.. there is no active councillors working to hold the Council.. cuts-friendly bureaucracy accountable to the people of the Borough. This diagnostic position is contained in the BHANGEELAAR! comment posted on the "East London Advertiser`" web site in the last hour. Here is the full text of the BHANGEELAAR! diagnostic comment on the CUTS-making 'budget' by the Tower Hamlets Council: [Previous editions] You [The ‘local’ “East London Advertiser”, circulating primarily in the East London Borough ofd Tower Hamlets] state [dated Tuesday 11 january 2011] [Quote]: “An estimated 7,000 families are living in sub-standard council property in Bethnal Green & Bow and in neighbouring Poplar & Limehouse constituency.” [Unquote]. There must be some mistake in that statement, ‘shurely’! FOR DECADES, successions of the cliques in control of Tower Hamlets Council have DENIED any problem whenever substantial challenges have been made to their behaviour over housing needs, housing stock and housing policy in Tower Hamlets. The name “Tower Hamlets Council” is, on the objectively verifiable facts, at the top of the list of all UK ‘local authorities’ with undeniable records of institutional, policy and personnel failures causing, contributing to and perpetuating housing problems DESPITE significant funding made available to the same Borough Council by UK Central Government. Why has this been so? Because in Tower Hamlets, there hasn’t been an active and manifest culture of accountability via the “elected councillors” who have been and are evidentially demonstrably complicit as a [numerical as different from identifiably segmented Party Politically defined] group with the status quo of non-democracy that rules their careers and their allowances and their very limited horizons! MP after MP DURING their Party’s tenures in office as “the UK Central Government” at the time has PRAISED the Tower Hamlets Council regardless of the Council’s systemic and systematic failures. Against these facts and in the context of this evidential backlog, NO AMOUNT of CONDEM CASH can truthfully and effectively and meaningfully break the “housing backlog”. Only a truly democratic, honest, ethically active local Borough Council in Tower Hamlets can begin to do that long overdue task. 1640 Hrs Tuesday 11 January 2011 BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets BHANGEELAAR! diagnosing the evidence of complicity by successive MPs with the Govt of their Party, thus CREATING the many backlogs in the Boro' [Previous editions] 0444 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 05 January 2011. Editor © Muhammad Haque. In more ways than one, Kay Jordan has defended the people of the East End of London with all her abilities as a very kind and a very gifted, talented human being. She literally shone with people. And everyone she touched was the better for it. In a life that has been indescribably dedicated to the defence and protection of so many ordinary people, Kay Jordan has excelled at being most natural when other mortals would not even understand let alone risk carrying the burdens she carried. In hours, Kay Jordan achieved more than most did in a week. In this picture of the KHOODEELAAR! demo to mark our community’s NO to the role of the the Crossrail hole Bill ‘Select Committee’ [that was formally sitting for the first time on Tuesday 17 January 2006, the day that the community demonstrated] Kay was in her absolute elements, Kay Jordan carried the banner “DON’T DIG HERE!’ defending the East End against Crossrail hole plot! [To be continued]
Historic picture on 11 April 2010 by © Muhammad Haque
1700 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 22 December 2010. Editor©Muhammad Haque. Another very clearly calculated incident has been orchestrated in Tower Hamlets undeniably intended to create disharmony, intolerance and misunderstanding between groups of people of different faiths, cultures etc. The incident has been reported by the “East London Advertiser” online in the past hour. In the first comment already posted on the “East London Advertiser” web site, the BHANGEELAAR! campaign has the following to say: [Quote] So, how many CCTV cameras does Tower Hamlets Council operate in the Poplar and Limehouse area? Do they work or are they there for a purpose? Why is it that these CCTV and their personnel are never mentioned when they should be shown to be being used to identify and take appropriate, thoughtful, effective and instructive action on incidents like these? Will Tower Hamlets Council ever find those who are behind this very clearly orchestrated attack on the people in the Borough? Who is likely to reap the maximum propaganda profits out of this violation of decency? Who is going to lose out the most too? 1652 Hrs Wednesday 22 December 2010 BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets [Unquote] [To be continued]
The 'NO' Vote campaign demonstrated against Ken Livingstone’s role 6 February 2010
DEMONSTRATORS against the imposition of a change to Tower Hamlets Council's constitution by ushering in an elected executive mayor were vigorous in their show of opposition. This picture, which was dishonestly cut cropped by the elements that actually broadcast it on Channel satellite TV news on 6 February 2010, was part of a bigger demonstration which was led by Muhammad Haque. Muhammad Haque is only partly shown holding the loud hailer on the top left corner of this still image. [To be continued]
People in Tower Hamlets are left voiceless as all Councillors collude with CONDEM agenda cuts
2105 [2100] Hrs GMT London Monday 31 January 2011. By © Muhammad Haque. CONDEM in the UK are taking Society backwards to Dark Age...[To be continued]
Into the 8th year of KHOODEELAAR! defence of the whole East End against Big Biz plot....
0640 [0635] [0555] Hrs GMT London Sunday 30 January 2011. By © Muhammad Haque. The Movement for democratic accountability in the East End of London has been defending the community in the area for decades. Those decades have witnessed the democratic defence being conducted under a number of banners. In context, each banner has been created in response to the given attack on the democratic entitlements of the community. The most prominent and consistently active banner for the past seven years has been the KHOODEELAAR! campaign. Khoodeelaar! is into the 8th campaigning year starting today, Sunday 30 January 2011. On Saturday 31 January 2004, the KHOODEELAAR! campaign was publicly launched with the holding of the first public meeting for the community . It was held at the Montefiore Centre under the initiative of Kay Jordan, the community architect. Kay’s academic background as an architect helped her understanding of the aspects of the Crossrail hole assault that was plotted against the East End. That understanding got enriched by Kay Jordan the universally conscientious human being who used her gifts to embrace as many people as were positively inclined to help the cause of creating a just society. That particular battle for justice that we began on Saturday 31 january 2004 has been making the East End a far more accountable place than it would otherwise have been. The campaign against Big Business agenda Crossrail has not been merely a campaign against a single scam. The Khoodeelaar! campaign has been also a, probably THE community action forum for holding to account all who seek public office in the name of the community, at the expense of the community. The extent of that accountability is not measurable by numbers. The extent of accountability is a function of the environment for democratic accountability that the seekers of Post and the holders of post feel they have entered. The first and the foremost material indication of the level and the quality of that atmosphere is in the degrees go which the area is subjected to unsettlement by BiG Business. Without a stable, settled and secure environment in which the community can carry on ordinary life, there cannot be a locally elected locally accountable 'institution' like the local Council. It is the local Tower Hamlets Council that has been under threat of demolition. But this possibility has not been recognised by the “elected” councillors! Neither in their careers as allownces-collecting “routine-performers” [as in “attending” “functions” including appearing at recorded “council” ‘meetings’ and ‘allowances-linked events’, etc] nor in their positions as “leaders”, however the “office” is dressed up! That the community has had to mobilise the defence of the area against the lethal dislocation attacks by the City of London interests that have been operating via the Crossrail scam [as one ofd their current weapons and ploys] is a most important confirmation of the fact that Tower Hamlets Council has been a failing Council. The Movement which has created the Khoodeelaar! campaign, the 40 year old Movement for the defence of the community in the East End of London, had PREDICTED the state of dysfunction as a democratic local authority into which the Tower Hamlets Council.. has descended now. Our Movement had predicted that even before Eric Pickles was a “leading” councillor in Bradford! And that was a very long time ago. So long ago that Eric Pickles himself looked unrecognisably dissimilar to what he looks like [both in physical extent and in the fat in the shape of bonuses, expenses that he has collected around himself] now as he spiels the absurdities and the unreconstructed idiocies about local communities. But then Pickles can do that. Especially so because local Councils like Tower Hamlets are heading for their own destruction. How this has been happening has been one of our diagnostic work in the campaign to defend democracy and a democratic council for years. Do those who brag and flaunt their “achievements” linked to Tower Hamlets Council realise this? [To be continued]
Brick Lane sighting on a wet day! City of London friendship man returns to the vicinity!
1955 Hrs GMT London Sunday 19 [0300 Hrs GMT. London Friday 17] December 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. In the woolly hat, the man on the left of this Muhammad Haque picture is Paddy Streeter outside a Brick Lane polling station during a Tower Hamlets Council Ward by-election Thursday 16 December 2010. Streeter is rarely seen in Brick Lane unless he is part of something to do with making the City of London look good! Brick Lane has been a target for the City Greedies for ages and with the help of the Lib Dems in control of Tower Hamlets Council in the 1980s-1990s, the City Greedies made significant gains. Not that they have stopped when the then SDP [as the Lib Dems were called at the time, due to the tenuously confected Collusion between the Gang of Four and their Liberal Party ‘conduits’ fronted by David Steel playing second fiddle to that treacherous Gang] were replaced by the former Labour Party... Streeter is understood to be toying with the idea of getting himself another ‘elected’ business platform from an East London location. He had played a profitable role for the City when he was on Tower Hamlets Council as an SDP man. In a way Paddy Streeter was already playing a CONDEM role before the fabrication was made official. Paddy Streeter has been a confabulator for quite a while now... [To be continued]
They are smashing up Tower Hamlets Council by backing an executive mayor
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23907433-mayor-broke-election-pledge-to-fight-new-tesco-and-high-rise-flats.do
Conceited Blairite Thatcherite Caroline complicit with Condem Cuts!
1340 Hrs GMT London Monday 13 December 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Aadhikaronline daily poetry on the state of dummocracy in CONDEM-ed Britain. "Caroline Flint, she gave us a hint! Cuts must hit mainly those who are skint'! That was her motto as she brayed to succeed Blair but instead got given two fingers by MPs who thought she richly deserved their veto'! [To be followed by an updater poem in due course later today Monday 13 December 2010 after the Pickles has been seen for the really nasty mess that it is going to be!]
Tower Hamlets Council is getting emptier by the day...
0400 [0315] Hrs GMT London Thursday 09 December 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque BHANGEELAAR! Exposing the empty charade staged as 'the full Council meeting' by Tower Hamlets on 8 December 2010. This is the first diagnostic report from Bhangeelaar! Posted at 0255 Hrs this morning as our first comment on the “news’ item as carried by the web site of the “East London Advertiser”. We focus on the key failings by the Council as a whole and especially give evidential instances of how the “elected” Councillors on Tower Hamlets Council have been failing to defend the community against the agenda of CUTS to services that affect the ordinary Tower Hamlets community being continued by the CONDEM regime in the UK. [View our commentaries on Thursday 09 Dec 2010 on twitter.com/notomayor]
What does the physical move of the office of the local paper entail?
BHANGEELAAR! Reports on the "East London Advertiser" office move out of the East End, here shortly.
"East London Advertiser" office moves out of the East End!
"SCRAP THIS TAINTED BALLOT” was the front page editorial on 23 September 2010 [To be continued]
Even the BBC had to air views condemning 'new Tory peer' Grade a disgrace...
1945 Hrs GMT London Friday 19 November 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Further citation of external reports on the day of disgrace to democracy in Britain. "There aren’t many broadcasting figures whose elevation to the House of Lords would prompt a vituperative attack on live TV but Michael Grade still appears to have his enemies. Invited to air his views on the hot-off-the-presses list of new peers on BBC Two’s The Daily Politics, Peter Oborne, The Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, laid into Grade, who will take the Conservative whip. “I think Michael Grade is a disgrace to himself and he will now become a disgrace to the House of Lords and to the Conservative party,” said Oborne. This wasn’t Lord Archer we’re talking about. What was Grade’s crime? “He behaved quite disgracefully as Chairman of the Board of BBC Governors when he left after two years for a high-paying job in the private sector (running ITV). “I think if you’re going to the Lords you have to have a record of public service and to leave a great public sector job, to be the inheritor of Lord Reith and to piss off after a few months in the job, to coin a phrase that is very low-grade behaviour.” It will be interesting to see what Grade makes of those comments. When Greg Dyke questioned his professional conduct whilst Chair of the Governors in an article in The Times, Grade sued and forced a retraction. There were people in Whitehall who were upset when Grade suddenly quit for the promise of riches at ITV, were he able to turn round the BBC’s great rival. He left before the new post-Hutton inquiry BBC Trust structure, replacing the Governors, had been properly introduced, a process it had been his job to manage. From Grade’s point of view, his arrival at the BBC after the Dyke/Gavyn Davies departures stabilised a mutinous ship and restored confidence to the corporation. The Chairman’s interventionist role would be diminished under the new Trust structure, which was already well in train and the challenge of rescuing ITV was too great for such a showman to resist. He’ll be a doughty fighter for Britain’s creative industries in the Lords, where the ghosts of former BBC chiefs roam like the living dead. Will he reignite his feud with Lord Birt, the former BBC DG, who once dismissed Grade’s “trite and pedestrian” LWT
Ed Miliband confirmed his existence! Hours after the heat!
The DAILY MAIL is still backing David Young: Lord Young is right, we are out of this recession By Dan Atkinson, Mail on Sunday Economics Editor Last updated at 3:37 PM on 19th November 2010 * Comments (5) * Add to My Stories Never had it so good? Lord Young at a Conservative youth rally back in 1987 Never had it so good? Lord Young at a Conservative youth rally back in 1987 Lord Young was right. Now there are four words I don't often proclaim. For young 'uns out there (no pun intended) he was the Eighties Cabinet Minister whose bad calls included salivating (with public money) over the prospects of the European single market (remember the 'Europe is Open for Business' campaign?) without seeming to notice that Brussels would exact a high price in terms of British independence. Then there was his love of 'enterprise', a vague catch-all concept that appeared to suggest that fat-cat executives were somehow lean and hungry risk takers and deserved to be rewarded as such. During his stint as Employment Secretary, he also snubbed the trade unions. Those very men with ties and blazer badges and banners and brass bands, the sort you would have thought a true conservative may wish to conserve. So Lord Young has form in terms of being wrong. But on this occasion, when he said that, in many ways, many of us have never had it so good, he was absolutely right, at least as far as those in work are concerned. Here's why. Regardless of the BBC reports on the Young Spat this morning, we are no longer in recession. We went into recession in the second quarter of 2008 and came out in the third quarter of 2009. So Lord Young was talking about a post-recession climate. More... * Lord Young quits as Cameron's adviser after claiming that Britain 'has never had it so good' in this 'so-called recession' Now, a key feature of a post-recession climate is that, in many ways, it seems as gruesome as the recession itself. But here is a key difference. In the early stages of a recession, as firms close and jobs are lost, the manager and the worker both suffer in a sort of equality of misery. But later on, as the authorities respond with cuts to interest rates, the recession starts to play favourites. It prefers homeowners to people renting, because mortgage payments go down and rents do not. It prefers people with skills to those without, as they may find re-employment more easily. And above all, it prefers those with jobs to those without, because not only do mortgage and credit card bills go down - the cost of most things goes down as well. This is accentuated by the immediate post-recession phase. TODAY'S POLL Do you believe you've never had it so good? Yes No VOTE Lord Young POLL RESULTS Close All polls Click to view yesterday's poll results Now, most people are not unemployed. Home ownership is still the preferred option of most people. And while we are in a long, grinding, post-recession period, where there is no clear sign of recovery that would trigger a rise in borrowing costs, that will continue to be the case. Lord Young also mentioned public-sector workers, suggesting there was no real loss because the half-million or so being shown the door were those who thought the State owed them a living. Alas, there are excellent reasons to think that the freeloaders in the public sector will hang on to their posts while the public employees that we value will end up on the dole - the best reason being that too many 'cuts' choices are being left with Whitehall and town halls. So, in this, at least, Lord Young is still wrong. Apart from that, he's right. Lord Young is right, we are out of this recession By Dan Atkinson, Mail on Sunday Economics Editor Last updated at 3:37 PM on 19th November 2010 * Comments (5) * Add to My Stories Never had it so good? Lord Young at a Conservative youth rally back in 1987 Never had it so good? Lord Young at a Conservative youth rally back in 1987 Lord Young was right. Now there are four words I don't often proclaim. For young 'uns out there (no pun intended) he was the Eighties Cabinet Minister whose bad calls included salivating (with public money) over the prospects of the European single market (remember the 'Europe is Open for Business' campaign?) without seeming to notice that Brussels would exact a high price in terms of British independence. Then there was his love of 'enterprise', a vague catch-all concept that appeared to suggest that fat-cat executives were somehow lean and hungry risk takers and deserved to be rewarded as such. During his stint as Employment Secretary, he also snubbed the trade unions. Those very men with ties and blazer badges and banners and brass bands, the sort you would have thought a true conservative may wish to conserve. So Lord Young has form in terms of being wrong. But on this occasion, when he said that, in many ways, many of us have never had it so good, he was absolutely right, at least as far as those in work are concerned. Here's why. Regardless of the BBC reports on the Young Spat this morning, we are no longer in recession. We went into recession in the second quarter of 2008 and came out in the third quarter of 2009. So Lord Young was talking about a post-recession climate. More... * Lord Young quits as Cameron's adviser after claiming that Britain 'has never had it so good' in this 'so-called recession' Now, a key feature of a post-recession climate is that, in many ways, it seems as gruesome as the recession itself. But here is a key difference. In the early stages of a recession, as firms close and jobs are lost, the manager and the worker both suffer in a sort of equality of misery. But later on, as the authorities respond with cuts to interest rates, the recession starts to play favourites. It prefers homeowners to people renting, because mortgage payments go down and rents do not. It prefers people with skills to those without, as they may find re-employment more easily. And above all, it prefers those with jobs to those without, because not only do mortgage and credit card bills go down - the cost of most things goes down as well. This is accentuated by the immediate post-recession phase. TODAY'S POLL Do you believe you've never had it so good? Yes No VOTE Lord Young POLL RESULTS Close All polls Click to view yesterday's poll results Now, most people are not unemployed. Home ownership is still the preferred option of most people. And while we are in a long, grinding, post-recession period, where there is no clear sign of recovery that would trigger a rise in borrowing costs, that will continue to be the case. Lord Young also mentioned public-sector workers, suggesting there was no real loss because the half-million or so being shown the door were those who thought the State owed them a living. Alas, there are excellent reasons to think that the freeloaders in the public sector will hang on to their posts while the public employees that we value will end up on the dole - the best reason being that too many 'cuts' choices are being left with Whitehall and town halls. So, in this, at least, Lord Young is still wrong. Apart from that, he's right. ...Lord Young was right. Now there are four words I don't often proclaim. For young 'uns out there (no pun intended) he was the Eighties Cabinet Minister whose bad calls included salivating (with public money) over the prospects of the European single market (remember the 'Europe is Open for Business' campaign?) without seeming to notice that Brussels would exact a high price in terms of British independence. Then there was his love of 'enterprise', a vague catch-all concept that appeared to suggest that fat-cat executives were somehow lean and hungry risk takers and deserved to be rewarded as such. During his stint as Employment Secretary, he also snubbed the trade unions. Those very men with ties and blazer badges and banners and brass bands, the sort you would have thought a true conservative may wish to conserve. So Lord Young has form in terms of being wrong. But on this occasion, when he said that, in many ways, many of us have never had it so good, he was absolutely right, at least as far as those in work are concerned. Here's why. Regardless of the BBC reports on the Young Spat this morning, we are no longer in recession. We went into recession in the second quarter of 2008 and came out in the third quarter of 2009. So Lord Young was talking about a post-recession climate. More... * Lord Young quits as Cameron's adviser after claiming that Britain 'has never had it so good' in this 'so-called recession' Now, a key feature of a post-recession climate is that, in many ways, it seems as gruesome as the recession itself. But here is a key difference. In the early stages of a recession, as firms close and jobs are lost, the manager and the worker both suffer in a sort of equality of misery. But later on, as the authorities respond with cuts to interest rates, the recession starts to play favourites. It prefers homeowners to people renting, because mortgage payments go down and rents do not. It prefers people with skills to those without, as they may find re-employment more easily. And above all, it prefers those with jobs to those without, because not only do mortgage and credit card bills go down - the cost of most things goes down as well. This is accentuated by the immediate post-recession phase. TODAY'S POLL Do you believe you've never had it so good? Yes No VOTE Lord Young POLL RESULTS Close All polls Click to view yesterday's poll results Now, most people are not unemployed. Home ownership is still the preferred option of most people. And while we are in a long, grinding, post-recession period, where there is no clear sign of recovery that would trigger a rise in borrowing costs, that will continue to be the case. Lord Young also mentioned public-sector workers, suggesting there was no real loss because the half-million or so being shown the door were those who thought the State owed them a living. Alas, there are excellent reasons to think that the freeloaders in the public sector will hang on to their posts while the public employees that we value will end up on the dole - the best reason being that too many 'cuts' choices are being left with Whitehall and town halls. So, in this, at least, Lord Young is still wrong. Apart from that, he's right. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1331305/Lord-Young-right-recession.html#ixzz15kQB5ycC
Harriet Harman Neil Kinnock retaliate against Tower Hamlets people!
1540 Hrs GMT London Friday 19 November 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. BHANGEELAAR! Putting in context the Ghostly antics of the UK House of Peers! David Young is condemned to quit and then Harriet-Kinnock prop up ‘the Oona’! [To be continued]
BHANGEELAAR! telling 'OBSERVER' writer Barbara Ellen few facts about "East End"
1340 Hrs GMT London Sunday 14 November 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. BHANGEELAAR! The campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets telling the Guardian online 'OBSERVER’ writer Barbara Ellen [To be continued]
OTT-hyping 'signs of democracy' in Burma while suppressing protests in UK!
0020 [0005] Hrs GMT London Sunday 14 November 2010 Editor © Muhammad Haque AADHIKAROnline commentary: CONTEXTUALLY citing a PA report on Nick Clegg reneging on vote 'reform' 'pledge' too! When the likes of over-hyped deeply reactionary CONDEM-backing blogger of Ian Dale’s description decide to echo what we have been saying about Nick Clegg for months – that he is a faker and now a proven liar – things do need to be taken seriously if a widespread social dislocation is to be averted. Perhaps at this stage some selfish individual would like to see a bit of social dislocation occurring in Britain. The pretext could be anything that the moronic Bullying Boys of the Bullingdon Club are placing in the hands of anyone with the slightest bit of interest in stirring it. The problem is that most of these types will not have the balls to face up to the consequences of their fantasies when the CONDEM regime tightens the reins and unleashes a really repressive period. Which may still happen in Britain. Thanks to the CONDEM-aiding agents provocateurs that gave so much ammunition to Murdoch et al over the student demo against the tuition fees hike. “Thanks” even more seriously to the stupidities uttered so often by that very ignorant man Gordon Brown when he was in ‘office’. We pointed out throughout his idiotic perorations that he was wrong. Instead of indulging in his idiocies about “British vah-loos’ and the even more sickly offensive lie “British jobs for British workers”, Gordon Brown should have listened to reason. He should have listened to us. But no, he wouldn’t listen to reason. Just as the CONDEM lot are now doing. They won’t listen to reason. [To be continued]
CONDEMN the lying CONDEMs out of office!
1508 [1500] [1455] Hrs GMT London Saturday 13 November 2010 Editor © Muhammad Haque AADHIKARonline reporting on SKY News guest ex Tory MP Michael Brown echoing our diagnosis published here 14 hours ago on "Sick Clegg lied on univ fees". Michael Brown says that the Cleggers will sweat on this come the next election. He points out that the Lib Dumbs had made a point of targeting parliamentary constituencies with significant numbers of university students in them, thus the wrath that they are due is very much what they deserve. They should not have lied like that. Clegg himself had known this plan to lie well before they perpetrated the lie well before the key date of polling day on 06 May 2010. Says Brown: look at the large number of MPs that Lib Dems managed to get elected from such seats! Including Clegg’s very own seat in Sheffield, south Yorkshire. Michael Brown, who has worked for years as a Westminster ‘insider’ ‘political journalist’ with the London daily the INDEPENDENT, had lost his own credibility after being caught in a scandal of his own whilst he had been a Tory MP under John Major. Major’s ‘leadership’ of the Tory Party suffered fatally from being caught in the Mps’ sleaze scandal, highlighted in the media in a spectacular fashion after one episode showing up the then Tory party’s lies derived from the ‘court’-linked battle between Jonathan Aitken and the Guardian. [To be continued]
How could the Guardian have ENDORSED the Clegg, Alexander gang ?
0015 Hrs GMT London Saturday 13 November 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. AADHIKARonline reporting on the Guardian's penitent reporting showing they had been wrong to back CLEGG pre poll 2010 [To be continued]
Guardian's Dave Hill is always looking right, image is of looking left!
BHANGEELAAR! Contextual examination of the Guardian's London Blog. Starts with an introduction scheduled to appear here at 2200 Hrs GMT tonight Thursday 11 Nov 2010
CONDEM CUTS CAMERON CROWING CONCEIT from China!
0940 Hrs GMT London Thursday 11 November 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. AADHIKAROnline evidentially republishing the texts from an online report by the DAILY TELEGRAPH that shows the fundamental hypocrisy and stupidity of David Cameron’s CONDEM CUTS confidence tricks. The idiocies of the CONDEM ‘economics’ are obvious in the evidence emerging daily of how they are destroying society. The attacks on communities like the East London borough of Tower Hamlets are calculated to cause serious immediate and long-term dislocation, distribution and destitution. We shall be examining that evidence here and on associated AADHIKARonline blogs and web sites every day. Here is the piece from the London DAILY TELEGRAPH that shows how ignorant and dishonest the CONDEM regime is: [To be continued] “David Cameron: 'Raising university tuition fees could cut cost for foreigners' David Cameron has suggested that sharp rises in university tuition fees would make studying in Britain more affordable for overseas students. By Murray Wardrop and Rosa Prince 6:30AM GMT 11 Nov 2010 During a visit to China, the Prime Minister said Government plans to lift the cap on fees for British students would mean foreigners could be charged less. Prime Minister David Cameron visits the Great Wall during the trade mission in Beijing British students currently pay significantly lower fees than overseas youngsters who want to take degrees here. However, the cap for British students could be lifted from around £3,000 to a maximum of £9,000 a year under planned reforms. Following a speech to students at Peking University, Mr Cameron was asked how his Government would be able to attract "excellent international students" following the changes. RELATED ARTICLES David Cameron quizzed over tuition fees in China 10 Nov 2010 Nick Clegg suffers his worst half-hour in the Commons since becoming Deputy Prime Minister 10 Nov 2010 Clegg admits breaking fees pledge 10 Nov 2010 Growing student debt stopping first-time buyers stepping on property ladder11 Nov 2010 Lord Dahrendorf11 Nov 2010 Higher tuition fees could have the unintended effect of boosting social mobility11 Nov 2010 Mr Cameron replied: “In the past, we have pushed up the fees on overseas students as a way of keeping them down for domestic students. "Yes, foreign students will still pay a significant amount of money, but we should be able to bring that growth under control. "We won't go on increasing so fast the fees of the overseas students.” Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister, admitted that he and his party broke a promise to voters over student tuition fees. Standing in for David Cameron at Prime Minister's Question Time, he conceded that he had "not been able to deliver the policy that we held in opposition" after abandoning a pledge to scrap university fees altogether. Instead, the Liberal Democrats last week signed up to Coalition plans to allow institutions to charge up to £9,000 a year. Mr Clegg made his admission as student protesters outside Parliament waved placards accusing him of "conning" voters. Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, claimed that Mr Clegg had "hawked" his way around university campuses seeking student votes ahead of the general election, but had since been "led astray" by the Conservatives in the Coalition Government. Accusing Mr Clegg of "going along with Tory plans to shove the cost of higher education on to students and their families," she joked: "We all know what it's like: you are at freshers' week, you meet up with a dodgy bloke and you do things that you regret. "Isn't it true he has been led astray by the Tories, isn't that the truth of it?" The Liberal Democrat leader responded: "This is an extraordinarily difficult issue and I have been entirely open about the fact that we have not been able to deliver the policy that we held in opposition. "Because of the financial situation, because of the compromises of the Coalition Government, we have had to put forward a different policy. "We have stuck to our ambition to make sure that going to university is done in a progressive way so that those people who are presently discouraged from going to university – bright people from poor backgrounds, discouraged by the system we inherited from her government – are able to do so." Mr Clegg added that the Government's proposals would see higher earners paying "over the odds" for their education. Under the plans, outlined last week, successful graduates would be forced to repay student loans at higher rates of interest than those on low incomes. Mr Clegg said: "The proposals we have put forward will mean that those who earn the least will pay much less than they do at the moment, those who earn the most will pay over the odds to provide a subsidy to allow people from poor backgrounds to go to university." Asked whether he would accept an invitation from the NUS to meet the protesters, the Deputy Prime Minister declined, saying that he met students regularly. The Liberal Democrats have incurred the wrath of the demonstrators because all of the party's MPs signed a National Union of Students pledge to abolish tuition fees before the election in May. Under the terms of the Coalition Agreement, the Lib Dems are permitted to abstain over the issue, and a number are expected to rebel when the proposal comes before the House of Commons. As the demonstrations turned into riots, Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, was called a "liar" by angry protesters after coming out to address the crowd. He confirmed that he would not support the new £9,000 tuition fee cap, telling the students: "You don't know that I've lied about anything."
CONDEMN CONDEM CUTS today! East Enders join demo as well
Students from all over England and Wales are demonstrating against cuts in London today Wednesday 10 November 2010
SAY NO to CONDEM cuts to Education
Channel 4 News online report 10 Nov 2010: Students protest against tuition fees Wednesday 10 November 2010 As thousands of students demonstrate against tuition fees we hear from one graduate who says this is the beginning of the backlash. Natasha Wynarczyk studied history at King's College London. University tuition fees are set to rise Thousands of people are expected to march through London today to rally against the proposed recent cuts to education and rise in tuition fees as outlined in the Browne Review. The demonstration is likely to be the biggest education-related demo in years, attracting students and university staff from all types of institutions, as well as school-level and further education students looking to study in the future. After months of speculation, it was announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review that there would be cuts to higher education of £2.4 billion by 2014. As well as these sweeping and devastating cuts to HE as a whole, the Government also declared that funding would be given only to subjects deemed 'vital' to the economy - the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics related subjects - leaving arts and humanities subjects such as History, English and Classics in the cold. Without going to university I would have been immensely disadvantaged. Natasha Wynarczyk, King's College London graduate This is the firing shot to 'education for education's sake' - studying a subject simply because you have a marked interest in it. I studied History for my undergraduate degree, and I honestly believe that as well as its inherent value, it taught me skills that are necessary to jobs that I'm interested in. Without going to university I would have been immensely disadvantaged. But if my degree had cost £27,000 I would have had to make serious concessions - living at home, not moving to London, perhaps not even studying a humanities subject despite that being where my strengths and interests lie. University fees are also set to increase dramatically - currently home undergraduates pay £3,290 a year - but the Coalition Government seeks to introduce a ‘double cap' on fees for 2012 entry - a basic level of £6,000 a year and an upper limit of £9,000. Russell Group universities such as my home institution, King's College London, are expected to charge the upper limit - grants would be introduced but only for those whose households have a combined income of less than £60,000. This will put pressure on the ‘squeezed middle', and there is no doubt that this marketisation of the education system will price out the brightest students - students who deserve to study at the top level institutions, but simply won't be able to afford such large fees. The national demo is simply the beginning of a backlash. Natasha Wynarczyk Institutions that are primarily arts-focussed or don't have the world-class prestige that can be used by seats of learning to ‘justify' the higher fees could be faced with closure - leading to job losses and less student choice, as well as the removal of widening participation. Some may argue that students are an elite, privileged group, and that higher education actually isn't important to society. But answer these questions: why should young people be denied the basic right to higher education, a route to social mobility? Why should they be forced to stay at home or choose an institution or subject they have no interest in because it'll be cheaper? Why should they have to start their lives post graduation with a crippling level of debt when they are looking at climbing the rungs of the career ladder, getting married, taking out mortgages, having children? And why should they be denied chances to improve their future and grow as people by a group who went to university for free, and who aren't terrified of having to make choices like choosing between which of their children to actually send to university, who aren't afraid of having to remortgage their house to pay for their son or daughters' fees, who aren't worried about the enormous debt they'll incur by studying for three years or more - real-life debt, not only student debt, because it's just so expensive? The National Demo is not the means to an end; it's simply the beginning of a backlash against the harsh destruction of higher education. UK higher education is amongst the best in the world, and it's something that we should be proud of. But its current treatment is in no way deserving of its importance to wider society. The pillars of our society - teachers, nurses, doctors, the majority of them went to university - pricing young people out will have repercussions everywhere. Instead of marginalising young people the general public should stand side by side with us as we lobby the Government for a fairer higher education system. The people who always went to university - the elite, upper classes - will still go to university. The greatest social tragedy will be those students that had their chance to go wrongfully seized from them, creating a further gap between rich and poor. Natasha Wynarczyk studied history at King's College London and is Vice President Student Media and Engagement.
Disastrous descent into anti-democracy in Tower Hamlets
2335 [2240] Hrs GMT London Sunday 31 October 2010 Editor © Muhammad Haque A BHANGEELAAR! “Campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets” analysis. These two pictures, taken from two ethnicity-licensed [by UK OFCOM] satellite TV stations, show Doros Ullah apparently arguing “the case” on the issue of an elected mayor. In the various appearances he made on the ethnicity-licensed satellite TV channels in the weeks to the 21 October 2010 ‘poll’, Doros Ullah was noticeably particular about including a statement to the effect that he was loyal to the Labour Party. That he was only there to speak in support of the Labour Party. That he would do anything to further the agenda of the Labour Party. And utterances to the same effect with various intonations and emphases. Has he had an impact? Has he served the agenda of the Labour Party well then? And what about ‘the community’ to whom he was ‘appearing’ as a “courier of the Labour Party’s agenda”? Has he served the best interests of the “community” in these appearances? [Read our fuller reports in the main blog on the left]
Meet Again the Lone Lib Dem Tower Hamlets Cllr Stephanie Eaton who said 'NO' to 'elected mayor'
1000 [0945] [0935] [0920] Hrs GMT. London Wednesday 27 October 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Another breaking exclusive from BHANGEELAAR! What does Stephanie Eaton really really want? Who she? Indeed! Yet she may hit the headlines in a surprise – or in a clinically planned? - Move! Again. First things first. On 6 February 2010, Stephanie Eaton looked like she does in this photo. The photo was taken at a historic moment. That was a Tower Hamlets London borough moment in the Vallance Road [London 1] that joins the Whitechapel Road with the Bethnal Green Road. Ms Eaton was filmed there as well. The footage from that moment was not included in the real ‘documentary’ that got shown three weeks after the date of the filming. She spoke on the day, 6 February 2010 to the film crew about why she was opposing the directly elected executive mayor system in Tower Hamlets. She was among the crowd that had gathered in the small park opposite the junction of the Old Montague Street [Number 160 is listed as the local residential address of one Councillor Lutfur Rahman!] and the Vallance Road. Also present were a number of Tower Hamlets Councillors including [Labour Party] Councillor Abbas Uddin ‘Helal’. As readers will be aware by now, Abbas Uddin ‘Helal’ was visibly a campaigner AGAINST a mayoral system. Until he too surfaced as a candidate to become the candidate in the name of the UK Labour Party to be the first elected mayor in the name of the people of Tower Hamlets! Plus the ordinary members of the community who had been involved in the defence of the community over decades. So what did Stephanie Eaton do after that date? Nobody KNOWS. Not via any published account. Except that she then surfaced as part of a YES to the mayor system canvasser. Not before 6 May 2010 when the alleged referendum allegedly took place. But months later when the allegedly uncontaminated Tower Hamlets Lib Dem party allegedly decided that they would not only say YES to a mayoral system but that they would also field a candidate of their own. That candidate turned out to be a failed candidate for council election [at the poll held on 06 May 2010] known as John Griffiths. His main claim to the ‘job’ of ‘elected mayor’ in Tower Hamlets was the fact that he had been a councillor for one term [for the Bethnal Green North ward, now associated with Stephanie Eaton]. We recall for reference [our exclusive report of that same date 18 October 2010 saying that] John Griffiths had been warned that he would be sued if he repeated a defamatory claim against Lutfur Rahman. Luftur Rahman had been sitting next to John Griffiths when Griffiths took the cue from the London EVENING STANDARD’s David Cohen after the latter had gatecrashed a special meeting for quizzing councillors about the needs of local small businesses, hosted by the SSBA in the Greatorex Street [which runs in fact partly parallel to the Vallance Road]. So what was Stephanie Eaton doing canvassing for John Griffiths? She has not answered this question yet. But she HAS volunteered the ‘good’ news that the voters in Tower Hamlets would benefit significantly if they did vote for john Griffiths as executive mayor. Ms Eaton was reportedly participating in the same Lib Dem ‘campaign putsch’ that had as a high-profile commander the Southwark area MP Simon Hughes. Hughes repeated his brazenly PATRONISING DISPLAY of ignorance and low manners when he delivered this unforgettable gem. He said that the 'South Asian and the Bengali community' would greatly benefit from an elected Lib Dem mayor of Tower Hamlets! Notice the crassness of Simon Hughes’ stupidity. South Asian AND Bengali community Those three components are all false. The ONLY COMMUNITY that exists in Tower Hamlets in context is the community of electors. Assuming that there is [or was] a bona fide well informed election-taking place. Then there is Hughes’ huge appendage of idiocy. The parts of the population of Tower Hamlets that he ought to have known to accurately describe in that context by now is called Bangladeshi. It is a significantly different constituency altogether than is ever connoted or denoted by that sort of utterance of the word Bengali. It was not the first time that S Hughes had exhibited the contempt with his outrageous and unacceptable ignorance of the Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets. [To be continued]
Like the population in the borough, Labour Party members in Tower Hamlets have been mixed...
0255 [0245] Hrs GMT London Monday 25 October 2010 Editor © Muhammad Haque. It was a very strange name to come up against in the depictions of Tower Hamlets that the tarns Atlantic chroniclers were constructing as based on the briefings and releases of what could only have been a Bliaring Task force bent on stopping the itsy bitys democracy that was still tolerated by the Party bureaucracy based at wherever their bunker currently has been sited. Jenny Boswell Jones! Appearing in videos along with so many others that have been impugned by Andrew Gilligan as suspected sympathisers of Lutfur Rahman, a local councillor in Tower Hamlets. Although the ethnicity-linked ‘journalists’ on the Murdoch-Sky-carried channels that featured the face had dropped the third of her name no doubt to unending annoyance to Ms Boswell-Jones! That third was even more important than the other two parts of her name! Why? Because that third part was the bit that put her well apart from someone else in Tower Hamlets that she would prefer not to be confused with at all. As events would have it, at least on 14 September 2010 when this picture was taken, she knew that she was not anywhere near someone that she could be confused with. That awareness must have prompted the smile [To be continued]
Tower Hamlets executive mayor imposition and allegations! Libel claims yet no court action! Odd!!
1120 [1040] [1035] [1030] [1015] [0940] Hrs GMT. London. Wednesday 20 October 2010 Editor © Muhammad Haque. BREAKING NEWS: “Channel S” fails to publish the key Questions as put to “Lutfur for mayor” supporter Shiraj by AADHIKAROnline on Tuesday 19 October. Muhammad Haque asked the questions concerning the fact that no court action or process had been started or initiated by or on behalf of Lutfur Rahman against the perpetrators of what they [the organisers of the “news conference” and the supporters of Lutfur Rahman] had claimed to be lies by the “other side” alleged in the “dossier’ against Lutfur Rahman. They had named Abbas Uddin “Helal’ and repeatedly described him in context as a “liar” who they said was unfit to “be the mayor” on the basis of his “lying”. In replying to Muhammad Haque’s questions, Shiraj said that he was not speaking on behalf of Lutfur Rahman but he could confirm that he [and others working with him] had consulted on the “lies” and had been advised that they had “a strong case”. He then added that they had also established that there was sufficient time still left to deal with those “lies” through the legal process. He said that there was a year left in which to pursue any claims through the system. They would attend to the issues after Thursday 21 October 2010. OUR diagnostic comments and observations: This is remarkable! Why? Because the same side – Lutfur Raman as represented by his “supporters” we have named and identified here – had gone to court more than once in the run up to the Labour Party [Tower Hamlets] “members’ vote” as published on 4 September 2010. And they also went to court AFTER the IMPOSITION of Abbas Uddin “Helal” by mysteriously treating as void the verdict of the Labour Party’s Tower Hamlets members about who they thought was their choice as “candidate” of the Party in the alleged election as scheduled to be held tomorrow 21 October 2010. Questions still remain unanswered: So why hadn’t Shiraj and or the other [relevant and decision-making] supporters of “the Lutfur Rahman for mayor campaign” done the same thing after the publication by the persons and the parties concerned of what they were recently describing as lies, lies and nothing but lies – and conspiracies AGAINST Lutfur Rahman? There was no objectively plausible or process-verifiable CONTEXTUAL answer to that question at the “news conference”. No other “journalist” present at the event either followed up Muhammad Haque’s question nor did they ask any question of their own related to the central role that the particular series of PUBLISHED allegations against Lutfur Rahman in the past year had played in the creation of the multi-faceted crisis in Tower Hamlets concerning so many aspects of the community in the immediate area and with multiple subsidiary and linked implications in the rest of the UK and even elsewhere! The allegations had begun to appear in the CURRENT CYCLE [In LATER parts of these AADHIKARonline exclusive factual and diagnostic updates, we shall deal with the history of where and when they had appeared the very first time] at the end of February 2010 when the London Daily Telegraph Group allowed Andrew Gilligan to embark on his brand of the Crusade. In his Dispatches edition broadcast on Channel 4 TV in the first week of March 2010, Gilligan ASSERTED explicitly a number of allegations against Lutfur Rahman. That was just under a month after the 6 February 2010 demonstration held outside the Brady Centre in Hanbury Street [off Brick Lane] in which THIS CAMPAIGN [Bhangeelaar!] against an elected mayor system in Tower Hamlets took active part. The focus of that demonstration was the event that was taking place inside the Brady Centre where the “YES” for a mayor campaign was being launched with the participation of Ken Livingstone, Keith Vaz and George Galloway as well as at least one member of the UK House of Lords introduced as Lord Patel. At that stage, no one could say how that campaign would fare or indeed what the outcome of the referendum would be as it was still to be held later in the year. On 6 February 2010, the date of a referendum was still unknown. But the FACT that a referendum on the question about the change to the Constitution of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council was in the offing in the Borough was ALREADY being used by Andrew Gilligan who mounted what was CERTAIN to be a cover for a racist attack on the Bangladeshis in the UK. How was Gilligan attacking the Bangladeshis in the UK? The proof of that is to be found in the thousands of racist comments that Gilligan has “inspired” and represented in his “blog” on the Daily Telegraph web site and through his other, less publicised but actual activities such as his periodic appearances in the SPECTATOR magazine and via its own slightly disguised web site called the coffeehouse! And it is in this context that last night’s questions by Muhammad Haque addressed some of the key aspects of the particular crisis of confidence with very serious long term ramifications that has been brought about over the past eight months. So what did “Channel S” do? It did film and otherwise record and note the questions as they were put. “Channel S” also recorded the responses to Muhammad Haque’s questions as stated by Shiraj in the main and by one of his colleagues, Dr Hasnat Hussein, facing the “news conference”. On an objective reading of all the relevant facts, the activities and the claims, the general allegations and IN PARTCULAR the devastating blow in the name of the “Labour Party” by the Harriet Harman-fronted NEC [as recounted online by Christine Shawcroft, a Labour Party NEC member] to the universal values of democracy, adult franchise [the right to vote] and to the principles of internal democracy and transparency which all Political parties are obliged to observe and are expressly obliged to practise and to be seen to be practising, have been USED in the partisan propaganda ‘news’ on Channel S over the past months. Except that Channel S has NEVER published one single “news item” dealing with the core of the ACTION [IF ANY AT ALL] by the Lutfur Rahman side on those allegations let alone about the PART that those allegations were playing in the build up to today’s crisis affecting fart more than the plans of a very small number of individuals on the relevant sides concerning the already widely questioned, criticised, condemned and tainted ballot as scheduled for tomorrow. “Channel S” maintained its “journalism” on Tuesday 19 October 2010 by suppression of the key questions and the relevant responses on them and by giving priority and the only coverage INSTEAD to the prattling propaganda by the peddling participants posing as paragons of solemnity, integrity, reliability and so on…We examine Neil Kinnock’s arrival, as presented by “Channel S” news, here shortly [To be continued]
"No to elected mayor" campaign NO to Kevan Collins
BHANGEELAAR! Challenges "Dr" Kevan Collins, Tower Hamlets Borough’s Returning Officer on his propaganda claims about vote fraud - Part 1 0815 Hrs GMT London Thursday 14 October 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque BHANGEELAAR! Challenges "Dr" Kevan Collins, Tower Hamlets Borough’s Returning Officer on his propaganda claims about vote fraud - Part 1 The ‘local’ “East London Advertiser” web site is not publishing the BHANGEELAAR! Response to their online story this morning [Thursday 14 October 2010] promoting the Tower Hamlets “Returning Officer” “Dr” Kevan Collins over vote fraud. The item carried on the “East London Advertiser” is an uncritical plug for the Council’s ‘electoral’ bureaucracy. So BHANGHEELAAR! Put in a factually comprehensive but mildly phrased update on the local as well as the UK implications of persistent vote fraud going on. The “East London Advertiser” is once again not carrying the comment we have posted twice already in their prescribed online comment form. Here is what we have said in that piece:Quote BHANGEELAAR! To the "East London Advertiser" Thursday 14 October 2010. Your report concerns a very serious aspect of the democratic rights of the community. We notice that the Returning Officer has chosen to make the alleged measures known only now. You state: “The council, who will spend around £280,000 on the election, passed on 10 allegations of postal vote irregularities to the Metropolitan Police following the general and local elections in May, though no further action was taken.” You then quote the Tower Hamlets “Returning Officer” as follows: “Under the national guidance you don’t need to screen every postal vote, you only need to check 20%, but we screen every single application that comes in.” Those two paragraphs sum up the conclusion that the “authorities” in effect encourage or at least tolerate electoral fraud. This can be the real reason why despite the periodic outcry from particular groups apparently against electoral fraud, there never has been a real action under the existing law in England and the rest of the UK covering fraud and the Representation of the People statutes. Despite their periodic utterances of ‘concern’ about electoral corruption and offence, all the numerically major Political parties remain blatantly complacent. Our system of franchise in this context is not functioning as the universally fair let alone lawful far less honest franchise that it is suggested to be. The lack of action in the face of regular allegations of electoral fraud amounts to disenfranchisement of the franchised on paper! Surely it is time to do something honest, transparent and lawful to bring back the sprit and the effect of democratic participation! Unquote BHANGEELAAR! to the "East London Advertiser" Thursday 14 October 2010 [To be continued]
Jim Fitzpatrick and the omen of his 'endorsement'
1135 Hrs GMT London Monday 04 October 2010. AADHIKARonline updater on Jim Fitzpatrick 'MP'. Editor © Muhammad Haque. One of two Tower Hamlets constituency MPs, Jim Fitzpatrick, has been reportedly making ‘amends’ in Bethnal Green and Bow Constituency area. One of those is the publication in the area of the ‘East London Advertiser’, which has distributed placards [click on our picture] announcing that ‘MP FITZ’ [has] said ‘Sorry’. This is aboiut Jim Fitzpatrick’s expenses. In previous editions, the same newspaper ran several stories positively claiming that ‘our’ [meaning Tower Hamlets] ‘MPs’ had been ‘innocent of expenses fiddles’. Had the newspaper actually checked its facts at the time, it COULD have found out the truth earlier. Still, it is better late than never. The other is of course the appearance that Fitzpatrick has made in the Mile End Road, He did appear in person to ‘confirm’ that he was behind the ‘Labour Party’s official candidate for mayor’. Leaving aside, just for this updater, the BHANGEELAAR! position that we do not accept that a lawfully supervised and lawfully called referendum was lawfully held on the matter of a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets, Jim Fitzpatrick and ‘Labour Party candidates for mayor’ do not work very well. Not historically in London at any rate. [To be continued]
BHANGEELAAR! is telling Abbas Uddin so! You should have paid attention to NO!
1212 Hrs GMT London Monday 06 September 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. BHANGEELAAR! Campaign against a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets is telling the 'East London Advertiser' to tell the full facts. This BHANGEELAAR! Picture of Abbas Uddin ['Helal'] was taken at a meeting [11 April 2010] that was interrupted by 'councillor candidates' over-eager to get elected. They paid LESS attention to NO campaign than they claimed at the time. Abbas Uddin [‘Helal’] has not explained WHAT evidence ‘convinced’ him to say YES! The same applies to Sirajul Islam, and the other Tower hamlets councillors who mysteriously changed from being NO Campaign supporters to candidates for the YES candidature or to supporters for the candidates for the YES candidature. the ordinary people in Tower Hamlets deserve the answer to this question. [To be continued]
Andrew Gilligan over-focussed on the diversionary topic....He must be ruing his propensity now
0730 Hrs GMT London Thursday 09 September 2010 [2330 Hrs GMT London Saturday 04] September 2010 Editor © Muhammad Haque. AADHIKARonline diagnosing Andrew Gilligan and the failure of Channel 4 to focus on the real problems in Tower Hamlets. Andrew Gilligan probably doesn’t know this – or if he does he may be in denial and far deeply into that state for him to get a grip on the truth. What he has been doing for the past seven months is to rehash some of the fabrications about Tower Hamlets while failing to report on the serious problems in the same Borough. When it is remembered that Gilligan became ‘known’ by the – in our view - ‘strange’ [NOT] ‘accident’ of featuring as a reporter about Blair’s war on Iraq broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in an early bulletin during the first half of this decade, it is difficult to understand how he could make such a big error over Tower Hamlets. Why are we saying this? The answer is not to be found in an opinion but in the fact that became published VERY SOON after Gilligan ‘hit the headlines’. PRIVATE EYE the so-called satirical magazine [it is NOT satire so much as an outlet for insider information from original Establishment elements and assorted UK state and related agencies] published an accurate report with an accurate observation at a time when Gilligan was being in effect ‘hailed’ [we shall come to that dubious and in context pro-Hitler linked word in a later piece] by ALL in 'Fleet Street' as a true investigative 'pioneer'! In their piece. "PRIVATE EYE" referred to an incident [or more] in Andrew Gilligan's past involving him in almost the same sort of fabrication that eventually got him damned [during the doubly so-called HUTTON Inquiry] over his BBC Radio 4 'Today' 'exclusive on Tony Bliar’s ‘sexing up’ the case for illegally invading Iraq. The fact that Gilligan had indeed faked part of his ‘account’ about his source [who was then publicised to be the tragically dead David Kelly] was confirmed by Gilligan himself during the so-called Hutton inquiry hearings. Gilligan’s loss of a contract with the BBC was one consequence of his fabrication. Had it not been for that fabrication, Gilligan’s role would have been noted in a very different way indeed. So we are saying that he should have learnt from that experience. However, he appears to be unwilling or unable to leave that habit and has now confounded his particular propensity by over-publicising Lutfur Rahman and by over focussing on the diversionary [we repeat the DIVERSIONARY] and refusing to tell the truth about the REAL problems that ordinary people OF ALL ethnic, nationality, religious and political party affiliations, origins, backgrounds in Tower Hamlets have been caused and are suffering due to the failures of the Tower Hamlets Council …[To be continued]
Isabella Freeman is continuing to be accused of suppressing info
1715 Hrs GMT London ‘Bank Holiday’ Monday 30 August 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. The BHANGEELAAR! campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets is continuing to campaign for a democratic, accountable local Council in Tower Hamlets. Our campaign is active to make sure that the corrupting clique that controls Tower Council is replaced by a non-corrupt and pro-democratic accountable administration. We also believe that Ken Livingstone and his 'allies' were wrong to say – as they did on 6 February 2010 at the Brady Centre in Hanbury Street London E1- that a directly elected mayor will make things better in Tower Hamlets. We believe that Ken Livingstone was wrong because he was told to say that by his ‘local’ links who have no interests in backing a democratic environment. We believe that the only future that ordinary people in Tower Hamlets deserve in the context of the locally elected Borough Council is one where the local Council does the job it is elected and funded to do: serve the local community in the universally objective and democratic sense. This is not happening at present. And the reason why this is not happening is because the Council is in the control of a corrupt clique. Those who have promoted the idea of a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets have not shown that they understand this. Or, more importantly, that they are interested in supporting an alternative to corruption in the actual control of the Council. The only way that we can have a Council free from corruption is by the democratic organisation and coming together of local people in Tower Hamlets regardless of party political line. The BHANGEELAAR! Campaign is part of this movement. SAY NO to an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets. [To be continued]
A 'deprived London borough' and 'highest paid' town clerk! Glory and shame!
0845 [0840] [0830] Hrs GMT London Friday 16 July 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. The story was originally broken on Thursday [15 July 2010] by the Isle of Wight ‘local paper’. Why that far? Because the ‘subject’ of the story, Newham Council’s ‘town clerk’ [Oops! ‘chief executive’] is an Isle of Wight resident! The story was then followed up or pinched by the ‘Newham Recorder’, the ‘local’ title in Newham now owned by the Archant operation that also owns the ‘East London Advertiser’. The Archant operation is less of a journalistic one than a commercial one. Hence the need to look for other outlets. And on this occasion the outlet turned out to be ITV London Tonight. Their reporter Emma Walden [featured in this report] filed a much more informative and factual report than any of the ‘print’ outlets including the London EVENING STANDARD who had picked up the item after the Isle of Wight title’s publication. One of the facts that she extracted was the fact related by a now former Newham Councillor in her package that the town clerk was a part time visitor to the borough! Amazing in itself. Then he added that the former town clerk had been ‘frog marched out of the Town Hall in the previous day or so! So who is going to tell the full details of what actually happened? And what was the self-serving Robin Wales’ role in it all? Who, by the way, had appointed the town clerk to be the ‘highest paid’ one as well? [To be continued]
Muhammad Haque's picture of a battered image of George Galloway
1920 Hrs GMT London Thursday 15 July 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. AADHIKARonline picture of a leaflet with George Galloway’s' photo plastered on a pillar outside No 9 Club Row London E2 photographed at 1117 Hrs GMT on 13 July 2010. This is a historic picture. The subject of the vandalisation – done no doubt by Mr Galloway’s ‘critics’ – must have been some distance away from that scene. I travelled to the address to verify the current state of activity by the former MP’s ‘Respect’ 'party'. I found the door closed and the internal metal shutters clearly down. There was no visible sign of comings and goings. That phrase, comings and goings, would apply only a few weeks earlier as a real concept. I had walked one day in April 2010 along the Bethnal Green Road to take a closer look at the bus. The bus! My reason was to establish if I would come across anyone local that I knew. The only local person that I did come across on that occasion was Carole Swords. It being election time, Ms Swords was quite preoccupied with ongoing activities. Especially with her guiding a group of mainly ‘Muslim’ women who were waiting inside the bus for her. The conversation I managed to have with her did not get far into the topic. She had asked why I had been opposing the ‘referendum’ on the directly elected mayor. My answer was that I did not believe that a directly elected mayor would be good for the people of Tower Hamlets. We parted on amicable terms, as usual. Ms Swords has been a visible presence at many of the Khoodeelaar! Campaign against Crossrail. So for that reason alone, she is treated with a degree of recognition that we cannot extend to quite a few others! So on 13 July 2010, I walked into the Club Row wondering if Carole Swords would be still around at that ‘party’ address. If she were, I could possibly continue the conversation. And update her on the evidence that showed that my view was substantiated by subsequent events. [To be continued]
Will Andrew Gilligan answer his own question: was the referendum affected by fraud?
0855 Hrs GMT London Monday 10 May 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. On 6 May 2010, polling – and in Tower Hamlets, ‘referendum’ ‘about a mayor’ day- Andrew Gilligan published a comment on the web site of the London DAILY TELEGRAPH group. It included the following observation: “under some scenarios, the real and frightening possibility is that this election was decided by fraud. There are local factors, too. ...” [To be continued]
UK Voting 'watchdog' hit by Daily Mail accusation
Tower Hamlets 'referendum' to be referred to Votes watchdog [more details during Monday 10 May 2010]
East End "NO' to corruption and sleaze by elected office holders goes on...
2205 Hrs GMT London Friday 07 May 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. The Fight goes on for democratic, accountable diverse and dignified democracy at local and UK levels: Say "NO" to sleaze, corruption, lies and fraud [To be continued]
If it isn’t fraud then what was the point of the 'pointing out'? CLICK on picture
1845 Hrs GMT London Thursday 06 may 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. It is appearing this evening that Mr George Galloway, until last month mp for Bethnal green and bow, is undergoing some shallow advice. Who is advising him? Unless his advisers get their facts right, Mr Galloway will be risking loss of credibility. And another thing, the 'spokesman' will be better off coming out with their name and identity... after all, if the 'new names' on the voter register can be spied on and 'pointed out' by the spokesman and or his ‘colleagues’ in the ‘party’ then the spokesman should come out and let the public know who he is and has been! The ease with which the alleged vote fraud has become the number one side issue, complete with the beating up of an Independent newspaper reporter, it is quite legitimate to ask: whatever else has been cooking under that show? [To be continued]
Vote 'NO' today in Tower Hamlets about an elected mayor
© Muhammad Haque/AADHIKARonline picture of Alex Heslop outside the Hague school polling station this afternoon Thursday 06 May 2010
Elections 2010! Bringing out some of the worst stereotypes and prejudices
Vote 'NO' on Thursday to less democracy, less accountability, less decency on Tower Hamlets Council... Vote 'NO' to a directly elected executive mayor in the East End of London borough [To be continued]
Harriet Harman's fan LEO MCKINSTRY deplores vote fraud...
Time perhaps for postal ballot system to be curtailed? CLICK image to see LEO MCKINSTRY's report on the DAILY MAIL
London DAILY the INDEPENDENT reports violent attack on its reporter
VOTE FRAUD allegations in Tower Hamlets and a [white] reporter chronicles being attacked yesterday in Bethnal Green....CLICK on this image from the DAILY MAIL to see the INDEPENDENT online report [To be continued]
Remembering ALTAB ALI in Tower Hamlets. Vote 'NO' to racism on 6 May 2010 And every day.........
0245 Hrs GMT London [Bank Holiday] Monday 03 May 2010. By © Muhammad Haque. The London EVENING STANDARD carried a sort of footnote to an offensive piece about 'protest votes’ by Sam Leith [related to Prue Leith, more on that later!] in which it gave a mention to the Whitechapel Anarchists’ ‘burn a ballot’ programme [to be held at the Altab Ali Park on ‘election day’] but failed to mention the fact of the Altab Ali Memorial day that was observed yesterday. The event organisers said that they were going to observe the day every year from now on. And they claimed that the day had not been observed until now. This is not true. I have been holding a memorial every year. More on that and a report on what we said yesterday in later parts of this series [To be continued]
S Khan, a UK Con Party candidate for election to Tower Hamlets Council
Postal vote fears - Haringey Council recall ballot papers in candidate cock up - Tower Hamlets on 'watchlist'
BHANGEELAAR! Campaign against an elected mayor saying again: Vote 'No' on Thursday 6 May
1550 Hrs GMT London Saturday 01 May 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Leaflets for two of the candidates seeking election to the UK House of Commons from the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency were in evidence this afternoon in Bethnal Green Road, the second busiest weekend shopping street in the constituency. Supporters of Rushanara Ali, led by Sanu Miah, were working for their candidate while others, several groups of youths, were handing out leaflets and canvassing for Abjol Miah [To be continued]
More power for the mayor! that is the cry of the day from Boris Johnson!
1440 Hrs GMT London Friday 30 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. STOP another power-hungry ego-mayor getting hold of the patch in Tower Hamlets. Vote 'NO' on Thursday 6 May 2010 in Tower Hamlets. Defend the community from the voracious, worrying appetite of the power-obsessed holder of ‘elected mayor’ office! Vote ‘NO’ [To be continued]
‘Nick Clegg calling for VOTING Labour?! In Tower Hamlets, you can be sure: VOTE ‘NO’ on 6 May 2010
Vote 'NO' on 6 May 2010 in Tower Hamlets
An 'elected mayor' in Tower Hamlets after the authentic model of Mr Ken Livingstone? NO! Vote 'NO'
0330 [0300] Hrs GMT London Wednesday 29 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Who wants to impose an ‘elected’ mayor on Tower Hamlets? Why the ‘first ever elected mayor of London” Ken Livingstone, of course! Who else! So what was he when still in office? What way did he ‘use’\ his powers as the ‘elected mayor’? Was he an accountable mayor? Was he a mayor that had clear moral, ethical standards, which he was willing to share with members of the Greater London Assembly? Or the London Assembly as they now refer to call themselves? CLICK HERE and see for yourself just how total was Ken Livingstone's contempt for the London Assembly members. He concealed nothing. He repeatedly insulted the Assembly. As he did the chair. Who just japanned to be a woman! The great feminist 'Red' [!!!!!????] Ken Livingstone was at his most ‘progressive’ form when challenged on his disastrous behaviour as the ‘elected mayor’ in the name of the people of London, who showed no accountability to the people of London! So whose ideas was it to recruit Ken Livingstone to appear on stages in Tower Hamlets and preach to us that we should ‘elect’ someone after his image and then get limbered with an egotistic, egomaniac who neither recognises the people nor has real, true, universally understood respect for the elected office that he craves and then grabs? [To be continued]
Muhammad Haque says: No politician deserves so much power that they lose it so flagrantly.....
2355 [2320] Hrs GMT London Wednesday 28 April 2010. By © Muhammad Haque. “Mortified!” he said! “Penitent sinner” he feigned. But Gillian Duffy had already been assigned a minder! WE shall see and hear the consequences of THAT in the days to come! She was already ‘booked’ on a career that nothing could have prepared her for! In the hours, days, weeks and months that follow, we shall be witnessing in some detail the further unravelling of the ‘powerful politician’. But will this ‘cultural shock’ or ‘shock in the culture’ last? I suspect that it will not. Why Gordon Brown’s ‘private’ conversation in the chauffer-driven, aides-carrying limousine was AT ALL in the ‘news’ is of course to be seen in the true context: there is an election on. And every single ‘candidate' of whatever stature and seeking whatever slot of received legitimacy, is transformed into as near a truly [!!!] humble being as we are EVER likely to find them in society. And this is the problem with ‘democracy’. It is so peripheral to the rest of life, the rest of the year. Once the dictates of democracy – as manifest in the ritually organised elections - are terminated [as they will be after the scheduled poll results are consistently officially announced and acted on] the temporary ‘culture’ of almost civilised ‘discourse’ will be a thing of the past! Gordon Brown was of course held to account by default. That instance of holding of the ‘most powerful man in the land’ to accountability [originally done on radio in front of world wide TV network cameras, many of those live] was not done by Brown’s volunteering to face the facts and tell the truth about his insulting and unbecoming behaviour. His ‘private’ psychology and the resulting sound byte as recorded by the BBC radio [and played on BBC Radio 2 as fronted by the very careerist Mr Jeremy Vine] would not be parts of the proceedings in the normal parts of the year. And there lies the problem with accountability. What happens to the rights, the entitlements and to the equality ‘provisions’ that are flaunted ['manifesto'-ed] by all manner of ‘in’ candidates at times such as these [‘powered by election’!] to ‘bigoted’ people who can only tell of their lives, as Gillian Duffy did? How do they survive the attitude of heightened arrogance as displayed by Gordon Brown? What would a powerful mayor in post after ‘elected legitimacy’ think of ordinary people in Tower Hamlets if the people expressed views that were based on their experiences, their feelings? What could an ordinary person in Tower Hamlets do to focus the appropriate attention on the ‘normal private attitude’ of an elected mayor who is so hypocritical, so out of touch, so full of contempt for ordinary humanity that they could put on the smile, utter the amicable words in public but would do the opposite when inside the protection, the fortified boundaries of their ‘power castle’? For a start, by the ordinary voters in Tower Hamlets VOTING ‘NO’ on 6 May 2010 on the ‘referendum’ about the future of the local Tower Hamlets Council [To be continued]
VOTE 'NO' to Ken Livingstone's backroom deals! Stop the degeneration being made 'elected'!
1555 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 27 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad haque. East London electors are being urged by the campaign ‘Tower Hamlets council Bhangeelaar! To vote ‘NO’ on 6 May 2010 to Ken Livingstone’s very own "ghastly, corrupting backroom deals" as part of which he is trying to impose 'an elected mayor' on our community! Contrary to the cheap slogans that he has been participating in in peddling to the ‘deprived people’ in Tower Hamlets, the imposition of an elected mayor with all that power can only cause harm to our community’s collective welfare and may set back by decades the long overdue process for the establishment of the much needed honesty, accountability, legitimacy and democracy on the local Council in Tower Hamlets in the East End of London.[to be continued]
Local people are the best and the most legitimate defenders of local democracy
0100 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 27 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. AADHIKARonline reporting on Tuesday 27 April 2010 on the “BHANGEELAAR! 'NO' to an elected mayor CAMPAIGN” demonstration in the Hanbury Street London E1 on 6 February 2010 [To be continued]
Whatver happaned to the 'record' of Ken Livingstoen's 'speech' on 6 February 2010?
1125 Hrs GMT London Monday 26 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. This is the statement that appears when the previously published Internet page link on the ‘SOCIALIST UNITY’ web site is clicked. As we clicked it at 1108 Hrs GMT today, Monday 26 April 2010, we came across the following statement: 2. "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria." 3. What criteria would those be? 4. We had been referred to the ‘Socialist Unity’ web site by the following page on the poltigg.co.uk web site 5. “http://www.politigg.co.uk/stories/234400/LIVINGSTONE_ON_WHY_TOWER_HAMLETS_NEEDS_A_DIRECTLY_ELECTED_MAYOR.html” We had been referred to THAT one by the appropriate ‘result’ on GOOGLE.com So the BHANGEELAAR! Campaign question at 1122 Hrs GMT on Monday 26 April 2010 is this: Whatever happened to the ‘contents’ [as a stated transcript] of Ken Livingstone’s speech at the Brady Centre as delivered on 6 February 2010? [To be continued]
Imposer and Imposter! Ken Livingstone is condemned over his role in Tower Hamlets
2215 Hrs GMT London Saturday 24 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. BHANGEELAAR! Campaign for a NO Vote on 6 May 2010 brings this relevant item about the UK Conservative Party supporting blogger site is demanding explanations on “Labour Party” constitution. The call arises from a leaflet apparently published by George Galloway’s group for Galloway to get elected in the parliamentary constituency of Poplar and Limehouse on 6 May 2010. The Con Party blogger site claims that the leaflet has a picture of Ken Livingstone standing next to George Galloway with Livingstone’s left arm on Galloway’s shoulder and the pair looking at ease with each other in the shot [CLICK ON THE IMAGE to see the full texts of the UK Con Party supporters' blog]
Murdoch 'SUN' is wrong to brag of Shoesmith sacking
0758 Hrs GMT London Saturday 24 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. That the Murdoch SUN can brag and boast about getting its 'readers' to force Ed Balls to sack Haringey Council’s Sharon Shoesmith is a confirmation, once again, of the URGENT need to have accountable local democracy in local Councils that actually follow ethical standards of the highest kind. Had Haringey have that kind and standard of democratic accountability there would be no room for an organ such as the SUN to barge in and brag. There would be FAR LESS chance of the tragedy of Baby P occurring. [To be continued]
BHANGEELAAR! How Haringey horrors highlight crucial need for true democracy by local Council
2330 Hrs GMT London Friday 23 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. AADHIKARonline backing BHANGEELAAR! campaign to make Tower Hamlets Council serve the local community in a democratic, accountable, ethical and legitimate way. In a way that makes the difference. Vote 'NO' on 6 May 2010 to the bid to snatch away what democratic prospects remain in Tower Hamlets as far as the locally elected council is concerned [To be continued]
Electing a mayor CAN cause serious confusion! And shock! Vote 'NO' on 6 May 2010
0958 Hrs FGMT London Friday 23 April 2010. BHANGEELAAR! Campaign in association with AADHIKAR Media. AADHIKARonline reporting on the 'East London Advertiser' AT LAST publishing a prominent item on the 'NO' campaign Thursday 22 April 2010. The significance of the ‘East London Advertiser’ at last publishing that item is to be traced back to the previous activities by the campaign for a ‘NO’ vote in the ‘referendum’ on the future constitution of the Borough of Tower Hamlets Council. At the campaign meeting held on 11 April 2010 in Bethnal Green South for ‘NO’ vote on 6 May 2010 in Tower hamlets, BHANGHEELAAR! Organiser Muhammad Haque moved that a formal complaint against the East London Advertiser’s bias on the issue be made. It was unanimously agreed. [The full report of that meeting will be published by BHANGEELAAR! in due course]. As part of that decision, the following item was published on the Internet by BHANGEELAAR! On 12 April 2010: “We the undersigned members and supporters of the Campaign against a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets back the letter sent on 9 February 2010 by Mr Muhammad Haque and also call on the East London ADVERTISER today Monday 12 April 2010 to publish the letter and to publish the news of our campaign. We call on the East London Advertiser to stop publishing biased items favouring the ‘YES’ side and we demand that equal prominence and apace be given to our campaign as the ELA has been giving to the YES side so far. We fully agree with the contents of the letter by Mr Muhammad Haque and confirm that we shall back any complaint to the Press Complaints commission and the NUJ and any other bona fide journalistic, ethical, media and regulatory and legal forum, tribunal and court against the ELA in then event that the ELA continues then bias and fails to publish the letter the texts of which is reproduced below.” [To be continued]
Tower Hamlets Council opposition Lib Dems group leader Stephanie Eaton says Vote 'NO'
Even OXFORD city said "NO' to elected mayor. Years ago...
VOTE 'No' on 6 May 2010, not abuse the right by fakery and stunts!
2030 Hrs GMT London Thursday 22 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. After the Chrisp St Market, Poplar scenes today, we say again: use your vote on 6 May 2010 and say NO to an elected mayor ion Tower Hamlets. This is how the London EVENING STANDARD was reporting the incident this afternoon “The men were within a few feet of John. At first we thought they were drunk, then that they were the BNP. It turns out they were Conservatives. This is totally outrageous behaviour.” Mr Fitzpatrick said Labour would be writing to the Tory group leader on Tower Hamlets council and to David Cameron to complain about the incident and ask whether they were standing by their candidate. A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “At approximately 2pm today a disturbance occurred in Chrisp Street, E14. Two men were spoken to by police regarding their behaviour. One of them was arrested on suspicion of assault against two women. The man, who was in his 30s, is now in custody in an East London police station.” A Conservative spokesman said: “We do not accept or tolerate aggressive behaviour while campaigning for this Party. “We have opened an investigation into this incident, as a result of which those involved have had their membership suspended pending the outcome of this investigation.” [AADHIKARonline reporting with BHJANGEELAAR! The campaign for a ‘NO’ Vote on the mayor on 6 May 2010 in Tower Hamlets continues]
BBC NEWSNIGHT reported on DONCASTER COUNCIL failure
1650 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 21 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Grim news about Doncaster. Electing an ‘executive’ mayor failed to do much good. In fact it added new failures! One failure was the calamity that hit the headlines a few months ago. As the BBC’s NEWSNIGHT reported in January this year: “A brutal attack on two young boys in Edlington, South Yorkshire, last April could have been prevented, according to a report seen by BBC Newsnight.…” [To be continued]
Defend a democratic Council in Tower Hamlets. Vote 'NO' on 6 May 2010
0030 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 21 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Tower Hamlets Council BHANGEELAAR! Vote 'NO' on 6 May 2010 in Tower Hamlets. A campaign demonstration against a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets was held on 6 February 2010 in the Hanbury Street, off Brick Lane London E1. Speakers against a directly elected mayor included Stephanie Eaton [2nd from left in this BHANGEELAAR! campaign picture] who has been the group leader on Tower Hamlets Council for the Lib Dem councillors. Stephanie Eaton has been a councillor for the Bethnal Green North ward in Tower Hamlets since May 2006 when she got elected councillor for the first time. Stephanie Eaton has been speaking in the Council on a wide variety of issues and has been noted for her stand for an accountable Tower Hamlets Borough council. In some of her interventions, Ms Eaton has also made effective use of her knowledge as a university teacher. As she did once when speaking about a planning application by a City of London developer affecting a site in the Aldgate area. Stephanie Eaton has also spoken out against the abuse of the Council by sectarian interests. If the Tower Hamlets Council constitution is changed in favour of an executive, elected mayor with exclusive powers then the role of those like Stephanie Eaton would be substantially reduced. And the local council will be so much the poorer for it... Fight the bid to do away with local democracy. Vote 'No' to a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets on 6 May 2010. [To be continued]
CLICK on Lynne's image to read what she said about elected mayor
AADHIKARonline reviewing the views of Lynne Featherstone as she made them in context about ken Livingstone as an executive mayor
YORKSHIRE POST writer condemns Doncaster's 'elected mayor'
The AUDIT COMMISSION has published a damning report exposing the risk to local services and to standards that an elected mayor' can cause....
Elected mayor fails again! Minister condemns Doncaster elected mayor! So there!
1515 Hrs GMT London Monday 19 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque.John Denham, the Local Government minister today condemned the lot. The mayor, chief officers,. cabinet. BHANGEELAAR! The campaign for a NO Vote on 6 may 2010 in Tower Hamlets shall comment on Denham's condemnation later. In the meantime, we remind ALL supporters of a democratic council in Tower Hamlets to remember the lessons. And get people to VOTE ‘NO’ to an elected mayor on 6 May 2010
To VOTE 'NO', you must be on the voters register. Check this with t' Council NOW. CLICK on image
0915 Hrs GMT London Monday 19 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. Tower Hamlets is a ‘deprived’ borough. There are many reasons for it. One is the absence of competent democracy. Now there is a bid to make the borough even more deprived. By taking way the theoretical say that elected councillors have on what happens to the Borough. The loss of democratic mandate to represent the people is a serious one. But that will happen if those seeking to give supreme powers to an executive mayor succeed. How do we stop that from happening? We can stop that on 6 May 2010 by using our vote to say ‘NO’. VOTE ‘NO’ on 6 May 2010 in Tower Hamlets. To that you have to make sure today [and if you are unavoidably busy, by tomorrow Tuesday 20 April 2010] that you are registered as a voter. There is only one more FULL day left to all the procedural stuff to get on the electoral register in Tower Hamlets. Wednesday is absolutely the last day to register to vote. [To be continued]
She said 'NO to mayor Ken Livingstone'
CLICK on the image to hear Jan Ravens talk about why she dissed 'mayor' Ken
VOTE NO on 6 May 2010 publishing texts of complaint to PRESS Commission
1310 [1300] Hrs GMT London Saturday 17 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. The ‘East London Advertiser’ carried lengthy statements in favour of the 'YES' side in their report of the events on 6 February 2010. The VOTE NO campaign held a lively, lawful and legitimate demonstration right outside the Brady Centre in Hanbury Street off Brick Lane. Two ‘East London Advertiser’ staff were seen at the event. However paper failed to report fairly on our campaign. This forms the basis of the complaint now being submitted against the E L Advertiser to the Press Complaints Commission. TEXTS of that complaint will appear here later today [Saturday 17 April 2010]
East London Advertiser keeps missing the point, underreports democracy
1220 Hrs GMT London Friday 16 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. The 'local' ‘East London Advertiser’ that has its commercial base in Tower Hamlets has been under reporting the pro-democratic activities in Tower Hamlets. This is not new. However, the role that the paper has been playing in hyping up Ken Livingstone's bid to dismantle the democratic [although still open to improvement] constitution of Tower Hamlets Council is very worrying. For this reason, BHANGEELAAR! The 'VOTE NO on 6 May 2010 on mayor in Tower Hamlets…’ Campaign is now preparing a formal complaint to submit to the Press Complaints Commission against the East London Advertiser. [More soon]
Defend the community in the East End, VOTE NO to a mayor on 6 May 2010
Saying NO to a directly elected mayor in Bethnal Green South
EXPOSING Ken Livingstone's untruthful claim as made on 6 February 2010
0125 Hrs GMT London Friday 16 April 2010. Editor © Muhammad Haque. THIS [click here] online report published by the ‘East London Advertiser’ [09 February 2010] shows Muhammad Haque addressing the demonstration outside the Brady centre in Hanbury Street on 06 February 2010] by supporters of the campaign for a NO Vote on 6 May 2010. Yet Ken Livingstone, speaking on behalf of the YES side inside the Brady Centre, claimed that the NO Vote campaign was being ‘led’ by Michael Keith! This is very serious. Why? Because it shows Ken Livingstone's flawed mentality and his total ignorance of Tower Hamlets. Livingstone may, theoretically or otherwise, have issues with Michael Keith. But those issues are NOTHING to do with the people who are working to stop Tower Hamlets Council constitution being so fundamentally altered as Livingstone and his undemocratic pals may wish it to be. The depth of Ken Livingstone's ignorance is only matched by his lack of respect for the people in and of Tower Hamlets. How can this same Ken Livingstone presume to lecture our community to listen to him about how we should run our local council? SAY NO to Ken Livingstone. Say No to Livingstone's untruthful utterances. Vote NO on 6 May 2010 on the question of a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets.
No to a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets
Bhangeelaar! The Campaign news bulletin for the “No to a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets” was being distributed in Bethnal green South and other parts of Tower Hamlets at the weekend. In this Muhammad Haque photo, campaigners are holding the banner and the Bhangeelaar Bulletin Issue dated 09 February 2010 during a meeting held in Bethnal Green South on Sunday 11 April 2010
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