BHANGEELAAR! The campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets telling the Guardian online 'OBSERVER’ writer Barbara Ellen some key facts....

1315 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

You say:

“I once squatted briefly in a Mile End tower block, in Tower Hamlets, and, unless these housing estates have changed beyond belief, this is as fanciful as telling people to solve their financial woes by panning for gold in puddles.”

“It's not Mrs Cameron's fault, but her hubby should realise that there are times to send the wife out Marie Antoinette-ing on one's behalf; other weeks, beset by cuts and student riots, when it's wiser not to bother.”

So what IS the wiser thing to do about the “puddles” that are the housing estates in Bethnal Green and in the other parts of Tower Hamlets? What about the CONDEM plan to dislocate entire neighbourhoods away from “London” and onto still unspecified “oceans”?

It is on questions like these that attention needs to be focussed rather than making comments that really produce no link to the actual conduct of those who are supposed to address the issues and the needs in the area. Samantha Cameron can be treated as an easy target in the context of Bethnal Green.

Would a Cherie Blair or a Sarah Brown make a better visitor to Tower Hamlets?

Had you actually stayed in a real squat in Tower Hamlets a bit longer and had you done that because your local ‘elected Council’ was disconnected from the majority of the people in whose name it claims legitimacy and ‘elected authority’ you would have known the answer to this question.

When the Blair regime “visited” Tower Hamlets, it did so in as artificial a way as could be imagined. Of course the difference is that Tower Hamlets has been housing a permanently Blaired bureaucracy in terms of the number of councillors there have been on the Council as well as in the local Party.

Which reminds us of the latest spinning trips made by Neil Kinnock in promoting the vah-loos of the Bliared bureaucracy at the expense of the ordinary voters’ and community’s rights to be told the truth by the seekers of power on the local Council. .

Did Kinnock meet any more real people than Samantha Cameron in your view did?

He most emphatically did not. Kinnock uttered the same incredibly offensive drivel that his predecessors and counterparts from the London Labour bureaucracy had been doing for months at the expense of this "East End" borough.

So what the “East End” borough needs is not the appearance of ‘big name’ peddlers whether a Sam Cameron or a Neil Kinnock doing their respective impressions of being connected with our borough but the actual delivery of true and truthful service by those who are in place in the area in the name of the people.

If the elected ones fail to deliver any more then soon it would not be just Sam Cam [as hyped by the lurid Murdoch Sun and the almost as lurid sections of the Daily Mail Group] who will be doing an impression of Marie Antoinette [to use your imagery] but battalions of court-sanctioned bailiffs and assorted violators who will descend on the East End thus putting the clock back farther than the period of Marie Antoinette’s own biological and social conceptions….

1300 Hrs GMT

Sunday

14 November 2010

BHANGEELAAR! THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AN ELECTED MAYOR IN TOWER HAMLETS

From the website of the Guardian Media Group London Sunday 14 November 2010:

There's a wrinkle in attitudes to women on TV

Ageist-sexist is still to be decided by the courts. Until then, stinking rude will have to cover it

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Comments (41)

* Barbara Ellen

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o Barbara Ellen

o The Observer, Sunday 14 November 2010

o Article history

Absolutely Fabulous might be coming back. Remember that – the comedy, featuring debauched "crones", by which I mean characters definitely over 40, exhibiting the kind of wrinkly, female repulsiveness that shouldn't be allowed on to the nation's screens?

Or so one might presume, with former BBC boss, Jay Hunt, accused of ageism-sexism regarding the sacking of Countryfile presenters. Should Hunt be asking herself, under her tenure, whether Ab Fab, as a brand-new concept, would have even made it into development? Or would the central premise of women growing old disgracefully not have been considered to have enough primetime appeal?

Obviously, fictional comedy characters are a wholly different proposition to real-life presenters on British TV. Still, elements of Miriam O'Reilly's treatment sound sickening. She was sacked from Countryfile at 53, alongside other female presenters in their 40s and 50s, while, for instance, John Craven, then 68, was retained. In the preceding months, O'Reilly was "advised" by fellow professionals about high-definition television and wrinkles and it being "crunch time" for her career. Ageist-sexist is still to be decided by the courts. Until then, stinking rude will have to cover it.

Then again, is it right for Hunt, 43 herself, to be made to bear all the sins of TV alone? The Countryfile replacements, Julia Bradbury and Katie Knapman were 38 and 36 respectively – hardly the choices of a youth-obsessed fellow female-loathing harridan. Moreover, shouldn't bosses sometimes be allowed to hire and fire people?

Ever since the Strictly sacking of Arlene Phillips there's been a culture of "ageist-sexist" hysteria, and Crucible-esque denouncements ("Goody Hunt hates women!"), which I've long considered to be not only patronising, but also ageist towards younger talent. What are they supposed to do – work in Lidl until older female presenters die with their microphones on?

If this keeps up, we may end up with TV bosses steering clear of females even in their mid to late-30s, lest they find themselves trapped, unable to replace them later on, even for perfectly legitimate reasons. A bizarre inversion of businesses not hiring women because they might get pregnant – TV not hiring women because they look like they might have trouble getting pregnant. The ageist-sexist lobby needs to box clever – choose every battle carefully and credibly, on its own merit. For their part, TV bosses need to wise up.

Surely TV is a textbook "horses for courses" situation. With a gentle newsy programme about the countryside, what viewer seriously cares about the ages of the presenters, whatever their gender? Save "young and pretty" for primetime Saturday night – with, um, Bruce Forsyth, and, double um, Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell. (Could there be a more deliciously creepy sight on TV at the moment than Cowell snaking his arm behind Cheryl Cole?)

Back in the real world, I'm not sure that viewers are as obsessed as is often thought with "Yoof for yoof's sake!" It was Carol Vorderman, 49, squeezed into a slinky dress for the Pride of Britain awards, who grabbed all the headlines last week.

Indeed, this desperate terror of the older woman, and what she might do, and who she might turn off with her terrible, non-telegenic "oldness", is pure lunacy. What are they so afraid of, that these women are going to start publicly whipping out sets of dentures and sticking them into a glass of Steradent at the end of each presenting segment?

With a programme such as Countryfile, it seems obvious that knowing your subject beats mere youth-cum-prettiness hands down, or have I entirely missed the point of Top Gear? Nor are television viewers as horrified by the sight of older women, older men, or older anything, as TV bosses seem to think. Irreplaceable Ab Fab cast members Joanna Lumley and June Whitfield proved this in a comedy classic nigh on 20 years ago. High time the world of TV presenting caught up.

On your broomstick, Harry Potter

Wonderful to see the premiere of the first of the two instalments of the final Harry Potter book, Deathly Hallows. Then again, roll on next year when we finally see the back of it. Has anyone else become weary of Harry Potter and the Three Ring Circus of Overkill? Is anyone else, hearing of adults sleeping outside the cinema in freezing weather, thinking: get a life, you sad idiots, the books weren't even (really) written for you?

This is not to be snitty about the immense literary success of Joanne Rowling. However, perhaps it's time to stop this national silliness that she is the only worthwhile British author of recent times to write for (mainly) young people.

After joining the judging panel for the Booktrust teenage fiction prize, and being buried alive under an avalanche of books, I, and my newly failing eyesight, can assure you that youth fiction is thriving.

While there were some stinkers in my pile (mainly featuring covers of hairy man-wolves in loincloths), there was also a lot of high-quality, broad ranging writing. We judges ended up with a shortlist spanning racial tension in Zimbabwe, zombies, first love-cum-rebellion and Greek myth. The winner, Unhooking the Moon, by debut novelist Gregory Hughes, is a New York odyssey that screams instant classic.

Nothing like this was around when I was 13, nose in Mallory Towers, the Hogwarts of its day ("I say, Gwendoline!"), bewildered as to why my life wasn't all about boarding school, friends being "bricks" and "scrummy midnight feasts". It seems to me that, far from being bereft at the passing of Potter, modern youth should consider themselves thoroughly spoiled, if only in the literary sense.

Does the East End need Sam Cam's Lady Bountiful?

Was that really Samantha Cameron gadding around a Tower Hamlets housing estate in Converse trainers and a plaid shirt, telling everyone to grow their own lettuces?

Indeed it was, as part of the Capital Growth project which Sam Cam says "aims to help Londoners transform the capital by creating 2,102 new food-growing spaces by the end of 2012".

Laudable, except that I once squatted briefly in a Mile End tower block, in Tower Hamlets, and, unless these housing estates have changed beyond belief, this is as fanciful as telling people to solve their financial woes by panning for gold in puddles.

In another tower block squat in Camberwell, I struggle to recall the opportunities for growing fresh basil and radishes.

Back in the day, any impulse to garden in such areas would have meant joining an allotment waiting list for 20 years or growing carrots in the local junkies' beards.

It's not Mrs Cameron's fault, but her hubby should realise that there are times to send the wife out Marie Antoinette-ing on one's behalf; other weeks, beset by cuts and student riots, when it's wiser not to bother.