BHANGEELAAR! Updating the democratic diagnosis on the role played by Christine Gilbert in Tower Hamlets deprivation......................

2120 Hrs GMT
London
Thursday
09 December 2010

Editor © Muhammad Haque

BHANGEELAAR! Updating the democratic diagnosis on the role played by Christine Gilbert in Tower Hamlets deprivation.

This exclusive diagnosis has been published on the web site of the London Guardian in the past hour. BHANGEELAAR! Tells the Guardian some very important facts concerning Christine Gilbert.

How she was appointed to the post of town clerk [glorified as ‘the chief executive’] in Tower Hamlets Council and also about her role in undermining democratic accountability whilst she was in that post.

In context BHANGEELAAR! also highlights the fact of the role being played by the Tory councillors’ group leader Peter Golds on Tower Hamlets Council.

That role is the silence by Peter Golds over the questionable way that Christine Gilbert had been appointed to the town clerk post. In contrast, Peter Golds has been engaged in drawing attention to some ‘recent’ events in Tower Hamlets which warrant investigation. Why then is the Tory councillors’ group leader silent on that? Could that be anything to do with the DETAILED knowledge that he has had of how Christine Gilbert had been preferred to a much better candidate?
Is Peter Golds’ silence anything to do with the possible fact that he was involved in appointing Gilbert to that post and that if he opens his mouth about THAT now he will himself be seriously unable to justify his own role?
We shall continue to raise this question about Peter Golds until we see evidence that he has behaved fairly, accountably and transparently about the appointment of Christine Gilbert to Tower Hamlets Council’s town clerk post and his silence on the adverse implications of that appointment on the democratic and accountability by Tower Hamlets Council to the ordinary people in Tower Hamlets.

[To be continued]

BHANGEELAAR! comment on the web site of the Guardian:


You [Polly Curtis] [The Guardian, London, online piece “Ofsted head Christine Gilbert in talks to leave early and join academy sponsor”] [ Wednesday 8 December 2010 22.26 GMT] say:

“A shy media performer, Gilbert is known for being tough on schools. She triggered controversy with headteachers by raising the bar for inspections, insisting that a "satisfactory" grading would no longer be enough and that all schools should be aiming to be rated at least "good", if not "outstanding".

Your report raises questions about Christine Gilbert's appointment as town clerk [Oops! 'Chief executive'] of Tower Hamlets Council. Her appointment to that post had exposed the shallowness and the futility of the role played by "elected" councillors even then.

Christine Gilbert was preferred to a much better candidate because she had given a de facto undertaking to the then leading decision-maker on Tower Hamlets Council that ‘satisfied’ that cliquester!

The facts of Gilbert’s ‘appointment’ are and have been known even to the newly-arrived Tory councillors group on Tower Hamlets Council. Has Peter Golds, the Tory councillors’ group’s de facto leader, taken as vigorous steps about THAT appointment as he is reported by his ‘chums’ in ‘Fleet Street’ to have been busy doing about certain RECENT activities in and on the same Tower Hamlets Council?

Our ongoing inquiries have found that Peter Golds has NOT done so. The implications for the people of the Borough, currently targeted by the CONDEM cuts assault, are deep and far reaching. Just as the implications of Christine Gilbert’s latest promotion are for the educational and allied rights and needs of those affected across the country by the Michael Gove-fronted Dis-Educational attacks.

Contrary to your assertion that Christine Gilbert has been ‘tough’ on schools, the facts of her recorded conduct whilst in Tower Hamlets are that Gilbert had persisted in publicly backing failing schools throughout her time as ‘Education Officer’ in Tower Hamlets AS WELL AS during her subsequent years as the Council’s ‘chief executive’. She had also flouted some of the central tenets of universally verifiable accountability and scrutiny that would have raised standards in the borough’s schools.

Her ‘legacy’ ‘package’ includes the fact that the vast majority of schools and allied institutions and agencies supposedly in place in the name of Education in the Borough of Tower Hamlets continue to be educationally seriously under-achieving.

The same applies to the equally abysmally low standards of democracy that is being ‘delivered’ by the Council as a whole.

Far too many undemocratic practices were inserted in the Tower Hamlets Council bureaucracy during Gilbert’s years in post as the town clerk that their effects are continuing to undermine the Council’s relevance to the duties it has to the people in the borough.

Last night’s [Wednesday 08 December 2010] formal vote at the so-called full [Tower Hamlets] Council meeting once again showed that the anti-democratic ‘procedures’ for the utilisation of the set of ‘elected councillors’ as dummies for the unaccountable controlling clique that had been brought in during Christine Gilbert’s years are continuing to let the community down. ‘No wonder’, Christine Gilbert is being PROMOTED by a ‘new’ Government, again!

Society CONDEM-ed is definitely in for an even nastier treatment in every [approximately] civilised detail than a pre-Home Office Theresa May had seen threatened [‘presumably’ ‘only’] by the Nasty Tory Party!

2020 Hrs
Thursday
09 December 2010
BHANGEELAAR! THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AN ELECTED EXECUTIVE MAYOR IN TOWER HAMLETS