Focussing on the latest setback to a democratic, accountable Tower Hamlets Council and to the cause of democratic accountability by all the others who seek, crave and grab 'post and power' in the name of the people of Tower Hamlets - the 'moving out of the East London Advertiser'
0840 Hrs GMT
London
Saturday
11 December 2010
This moving out is a on the face of it less significant in the Internet age than it would be even five years ago.
Yet the moving out to Ilford in the outer London borough of Redbridge and not to an address in the neighbouring ‘east’ London borough of Newham means that whatever ‘journalistic’ staff the tile may still carry, won’t be based in Tower Hamlets.
They will be physically detached from the borough, which has been the main home for the “East London Advertiser” for such a long time.
There is no longer a point of physical contact between the people in Tower Hamlets and the most closely identified ‘local paper’ about the area corresponding to the three former boroughs that were joined up in the 1960s to form today’s’ Borough of Tower Hamlets.
I first noticed the plain announcement stuck on the wall to a closed office of the “East London Advertiser” when I looked at the Cambridge Road office location to see if I could spot anyone I knew as I walked past.
The shutters were down. And that in the middle of a ‘working’ week, meant something was not right.
When I looked closely at the white paper staring out with the grim notice, I knew that more than an era in local life in the East End had come to an end.
A familiar barometer of East End life had come to an end!
Did I say East End life?
Indeed I did!
What a terrible irony that phrase!
For East End life is being twisted, distorted and undermined by a not unrelated ‘other’ agency whose assaults must have had a signal effect on the presence of the “East London Advertiser” on a piece of land known as the authentic East End of London!
[To be continued]
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