Degeneration of Democracy in Tower Hamlets: What did Abbas Uddin "do"?

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"?

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

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

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

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

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"

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 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

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 ?

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

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 ...

"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"

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!

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!

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]
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

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

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]

Thursday, 28 October 2010

Even the Guardian's 'expert' admitted that 'elected mayor' system was a democratic cul-de-sac.

1200 Hrs GMT

London

Thursday

28 October 2010

Editor © Muhammad Haque



Even the Guardian's 'expert' admitted that 'elected mayor' system was a democratic cul-de-sac.


And nobody even bothered to comment at the time on the piece that the Guardian published by-lined to their ‘expert’ introduced as “professor of Leadership and Public Management, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University”. We are!


Our commentary on John Fenwick’s opinion starts at 1230 Hrs GMT today Thursday 28 October 2010.


Visit us at http://twitter.com/notomayor

http://www.guardianpublic.co.uk/elected-mayors-comment-standards-committee


Comment

Elected mayor or council leader?

While there maybe benefits for an elected mayor system in local government there are also issues of accountability and public confidence. The government still seems keen on them, but larger authorities remain indifferent

  • John Fenwick
  • Public,
John Fenwick
John Fenwick

The committee on standards in public life, before it was diverted into a pressing engagement with the spending habits of our MPs, was busy holding its 12th inquiry. This important, if under publicised, investigation was concerned with 'local leadership and public trust' in local government, a topic especially pertinent to mayoral systems of local governance.

There have been 37 mayoral referenda in England and Wales, 12 opting for an elected mayor. One of these subsequently reverted to the council leader system that operates almost everywhere else. Thus, of 388 local councils in England only 11 (outside London) currently have elected mayors.

Why then does the elected mayor remain so firmly on the government agenda, when it stimulates such great indifference in the big provincial cities where it ostensibly offered so much? The Conservatives, as recently as a 2009 green paper, proposed legislation for mayoral referenda in our great urban centres, while Labour, creator of the mayoral option, continues to advocate its expansion to local areas and wider 'city regions'.

It is not going away, politically. What does this mean for those who manage our local government services?

Having an executive mayor necessarily changes the role of the chief executive , particularly the policy co-ordination function. Where an executive mayor exists to lead on policy, strategy and also implementation, there is bound to be a reduction in the role of senior management. There may be a consequential politicisation amongst officers.

Bureaucracy

The advertised strengths of elected mayors – strong management and streamlined decision-making – may indeed cut through bureaucracy, but there is another side to any changed equation of local leadership. This relates to public confidence and accountability, as the committee on standards in public life was beginning to explore before it was so rudely interrupted.

There are other issues of course: mayors have extensive delegated powers, a fact not overlooked by fringe groups who see the mayoral system as a rapid route to public recognition. It may even be that council leaders, now appointable for four years, will come to resemble indirectly elected mayors. Perhaps the government will address its agenda by simply declaring that council leaders are now mayors.

Ultimately, policy transfer – or transplanting brilliant ideas from the United States or continental Europe to the UK – doesn't always work. One need only say 'Child Support Agency', which is based on an American model, to illustrate the point. So why persist with the mayoral agenda?

One reason is the addiction of central government to reorganisation and structural change. Unique within the UK, England has been subject to a series of ill thought out partial reorganisations, changes in 'political management' and experiments in modernisation that fail to add up to anything coherent.

The problem of local leadership persists because central government no longer knows what local government is for. It reorganises, and thinks of new structures. That's why the message still coming from Whitehall is 'let's try elected mayors!'

No matter that the public seem underwhelmed by this opportunity – government seems determined to give it another try. One suspects this is because it can't think of anything else.

John Fenwick is professor of Leadership and Public Management, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University

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