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

0705 Hrs [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.