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Alan Craig gets kippered

9 Oct

Alan Craig

The purple rosette should have been a giveaway

Alan Craig, one-time leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance, two-time Newham councillor and serial mayoral candidate, has had an epiphany:

Gay marriage illustrated it; Brendon O’Neill exposed it; and more recently the #YesScotland campaign highlighted and traded upon it: the UK’s political class is a corrupt, elitist, irresponsible, disingenuous, patronising, self-serving cartel. It must be urgently broken up and closed down.

After berating mild-mannered Times columnist Matthew Parris for his condescending attitude to the people of Clacton and raging about gay marriage (he is a teeny-tiny bit obsessed with gay people) he informs us that

Two weeks ago I spent my first day campaigning for UKIP in Clacton.

Last week I applied to join the party.

Alan Craig’s always been a bit mad, but if he thinks a party led by a multi-millionaire, public school-educated ex-city trader who has spent the past ten years living high on the hog in Brussels at the taxpayers’ expense is going to smash the Establishment and bring down the metropolitan political elite he is utterly delusional.

And I wonder how he squares his ‘Christianity’ with being a member of a party that wants to cut taxes for the very rich, while increasing taxes on the poor; destroy human rights protections by leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act; and for us to turn our backs on the poorest, most vulnerable and most needy by rejecting asylum seekers and axing foreign aid?

But maybe Alan’s not really that much of a Christian at all. Just as Nigel Farage is a bigot who dresses his nasty prejudices up as ‘common sense’, Craig dresses his up in scripture and calls them religious convictions.

He and UKIP are a marriage made in heaven – but not a gay marriage. Obviously.

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Beckton result

12 Sep

Wilson and Wales

Trebles all round as Tonii Wilson’s win maintains Sir Robin’s iron grip on Newham

The results of yesterday’s by-election in Beckton, which was held to fill the vacancy left by the death of Alec Kellaway in June, have been announced:

Syed Hussain AHMED Conservative 584 29.6%
Mark DUNNE TUSC 21 1%
Jane Alison LITHGOW Green Party 70 3.5%
David MEARS UKIP 215 10.9%
Kayode SHEDOWO Christian People’s Alliance 33 1.7%
David THORPE Liberal Democrat 43 2.2%
Tonii WILSON Labour 1,006 51%
       
Total Number of votes: 1,983    
Electorate total: 10,510    
Turn out: 18.86%    
Number of valid votes: 1,972    
Number of Rejected Votes: 11    

There’s so much to be disappointed about here that it’s hard to know where to start.

Obviously this result means Newham continues to be a one party state and, with that party ruthlessly controlled by the Mayor, it is essentially a one person state. Tonii Wilson was hand-picked by Sir Robin and imposed on the local party through a dubious ‘urgent’ selection procedure. She may have been the best candidate Labour could have chosen and, had Beckton members been given a proper say, she might have been selected any way, but we’ll never know. Right now, it just looks like she’ll be an empty suit waiting to unquestioningly do the boss’s bidding. Trebles all round at Building 1000!

The poor showings by the two alternative left parties is a shame. TUSC came dead last, polling even fewer votes than the CPA, but they put up a paper candidate and made no real effort. At least the Greens ran an active campaign. But 70 votes is a feeble return. If the party aspires to re-establish itself in Newham after a decade-long hiatus it needs to be doing better than this. In May the Greens were runners-up to Labour in Forest Gate North. Perhaps this part of the borough is more fertile territory.

By contrast UKIP is doing well in the south. They polled strongly in both Canning Town wards and in Custom House in May; they finished third here with almost 11% of the vote. Electorally, this will probably be of more concern to the Tories than Labour, but any rise in support for the far right in Newham has to worry us all.

The most disappointing thing though is the pathetically low turnout – 18.86%. Fewer than 1 in 5 voters even bothered registering a preference. It’s a spectacular failure by all concerned. But it’s not just a Newham issue, or a even a Labour issue: it’s a national problem that all parties must address. 

For the next three and a half years Tonii Wilson will sit in council with the active backing of less than 1 in 10 Beckton voters. Unless we do something to address the democratic deficit there is a going to be real crisis of legitimacy in local government.

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Mysterious disappearing voters

8 Sep

How many voters are there in Newham?

This was sitting on the electoral register page of the council website for about a year (I took the screenshot in May, just after the elections):

Referendum 1

If 10,350 is 5% of registered voters, simple maths tells us that the total number of people on the electoral register in Newham in April 2013 was exactly 207,000.

But according to the published results for the council elections, the electorate in May 2014 was just 195,419. Some 11,581 voters vanished from the rolls in a year. 

The electoral register page has recently been updated. I grabbed this image today:

Referendum 2

So now the electoral roll stands at 192,600. Another 2,819 voters have disappeared in the last three months.

A decline in local voters is not entirely unprecedented. Between 1971 and 1998 Newham’s electorate declined from 183,00 to 139,000. But those were very different economic times. In recent years Newham’s population has been booming. Between 2001 and 2011 it grew from 243,905 to 308,000 – that’s an increase of close to 26%.

So why, I wonder, has the number of registered voters in the borough taken a sudden nosedive in the past 18 months?

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A spectacular success

5 Sep

Sir Robin demonstrates his approach to bringing communities together in Newham

“The Mayor hailed the [Newham Show] as a spectacular success and a demonstration of how important these types of free activities are in bringing Communities together.”

– Minutes of Newham council meeting, 14 July 2014

“The Chair advised those present that the Standards Advisory Committee had decided to recommend that a formal investigation should be undertaken into the complaint of a breach of the Code of Conduct […] The complaint concerned the Mayor of Newham.”

– Minutes of the Standards Advisory Committee meeting, 31 July 2014

A spectacular success indeed!

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Save the date

11 Aug

Sometime on 6th August Newham council quietly published a notice for the Beckon by-election on its website. I noticed this the following day and wondered why this didn’t merit a story in the News section or even a tweet:

https://twitter.com/mwarne/status/497374144435339264

Then on Sunday morning when I was catching up on the news via my RSS reader I noticed a story in the Newham feed headlined “Date for Beckton Ward by-election”.

When I clicked through I was surprised to see it dated 6th August:

IMG 0079

Well it definitely hadn’t been there on the 7th when I looked after seeing the Notice had been published, nor when I checked again on the 8th (I know, I really should get out more).

So I checked the source code for the page:

IMG 0080

That’s just weird.

Why would the council fake the date on a news story to make it appear as if it had been published two days before it had actually been created?

No doubt there’s a perfectly simple, rational explanation for what otherwise appears to be an outright lie. I’m just too dim to see it.

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Newham aggro

28 Jul

Newham aggro

The phantom leafleter of Forest Gate has struck again!

This came through my door late on Friday night and I gather several other residents on my road got a copy too.

I have no idea who’s behind them, but this is the best of the bunch so far (the others are here and here).

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Fast and furious

23 Jul

The Evening Standard reports that 

A furious row has broken out over Boris Johnson’s plans for a “floating village” of 50 luxury homes in the Docklands.

Boris Johnson has selected an Anglo-Dutch consortium to build a “thriving community” of homes, restaurants and offices on the waters of the Royal Victoria Dock. The proposed housing in the scheme will be entirely private.

Sir Robin is up in arms:

”We have always been clear that any new development must provide affordable housing and an acceptable mix of uses along with much needed long-term jobs for local people.

“The current plans for the floating village do not meet our vision… Newham Council cannot, and will not, accept a development consisting purely of luxury apartments which will be out of reach of the majority of our residents.”

Fine words, Mr Mayor.

So then why did you give planning permission for this ‘fully private development’ in Stratford? 

And why did Newham grant consent in February to HUB Residential for its Hoola scheme for “a plush new development in London’s Royal Docks that will deliver 360 luxury homes in two glass-clad towers”? There’s not a single affordable unit – much less any social housing – anywhere to be seen.

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Beckton by-election

23 Jul

Following the death of Councillor Alec Kellaway in June there will have to be a by-election in Beckton to replace him.

No date has yet been set, but the Notice of Vacancy has very quietly been published on the council website. 

The notice is dated 21st July and the election will have to be held within 35 working days of 2 local electors writing to the returning office to request it. Assuming this has been carefully choreographed and they do that this week, Thursday 4th September is the most likely date.

Labour’s candidate selection process is already well advanced. The final meeting will be tomorrow.

Local members are not being trusted to make their choice unaided, so two of Sir Robin’s close lieutenants, councillors Unmesh Desai and Ken Clark, have been placed on the panel. We can therefore be confident that whoever wins will have the mayoral seal of approval.

In May the leading Tory candidate, Syed Ahmed, finished 700 votes adrift of Alec Kellaway, but Labour can’t be too complacent.

At the last council by-election in Royal Docks in 2009, Steve Brayshaw only narrowly beat off the Tory challenger. His 15 vote majority was uncomfortably narrow. And those with longer memories will recall by-elections in Bemersyde in 1991 and Greatfield in 1992 that Labour actually lost. 

Sitting Beckton councillors Chowdhury and Christie would be advised to cancel any holiday plans and buy some comfortable shoes. They’ll be pounding the streets for the rest of the summer.

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A place to live, work and stay

15 Jul

 

The Focus E15 mums decided to confront Sir Robin Wales at the Newham Show this weekend about his housing policies and what they see as the long-term social cleansing of the borough. It’s clear from the video that he’s not at all happy about it.

The mayor obviously doesn’t appreciate ordinary people using his expensively staged propaganda events to challenge his priorities.

A number of Labour councillors can be seen providing a human shield for the mayor. This must have been an uncomfortable experience for some of them. They stood for election in the genuine and sincere hope of improving the lives of Newham residents; now they find themselves confronted by people protesting against homelessness, high cost private rents and the prospect of being rehoused hundreds of miles away from their families and friends – causes that ought to be close to their hearts.

The confrontation was even reported in the Morning Star, which described it as

a testosterone-fuelled east London mayor squaring up to a young homeless mum campaigning for decent housing.

The Star reports that the protesters were subsequently forcibly ejected from the Newham Show:

A spokeswoman for the council argued that “officers took the decision to evict the group of protesters and political activists from the park as they staged an aggressive protest.”

It’s ironic that Sir Robin’s angry response to the protest is that it’s “a family day” when all that the Focus E15 mums want is to keep their families together in Newham. ‘A place to live, work and stay’, as the council’s own slogan has it.

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RPZ consultation drop-in

4 Jul

Angry mob Simpsons

The atmosphere at The Gate during Thursday’s RPZ extension “drop-in session” was heated, to say the least. Some very angry people were making their feelings known in no uncertain terms. 

I got the opportunity to speak to an officer and ask the questions I wanted answered.

The consultation is happening because a small handful of residents on Windsor Road petitioned the council. They also had requests from a bit of Woodford Road and residents on Forest Side. The total number of requests was around fifteen, which seems a very small number to trigger a consultation over such a wide area. Clearly Newham were looking for an excuse.

The officer insisted that the proposals and the consultation had been designed with the input and support of local ward councillors, though when I pointed out that the election was only 6 weeks ago and the plans must have taken longer than that to draw up she did admit it was the previous set who had discussed it. The boundaries of the proposed extension were based on who asked for it and where they were located. Sebert Road was included because Councillor Robinson said she had had a lot of requests ‘on the doorstep’ and she thought it would be good to give residents the chance to vote on it.

If the scheme goes ahead residents with permits will be able to park anywhere in the Forest Gate zone, not just their own street – that includes areas in the currently existing RPZ. And I was assured that anyone who lives in the zone and has a car registered at their address will get a permit if they apply – the council can’t refuse a valid application.

The application process is online and requires residents to submit a scan of their V5C vehicle registration certificate.

On the matter of the database of vehicle ownership details – which obviously includes copies of all of those scanned documents – and who gets access to it I got no answers at all. That’s handled by “another department.” The officer suggested I submit an FOI. 

Predictably there are no guarantees that charges won’t be introduced for permits which are now free. The officer acknowledged that all our neighbouring boroughs charge for permits, even the first permit per household, but insisted “we have no plans” to start charging. Which is far from reassuring.

There is no monitoring of fraud or the misuse of visitor permits and no enforcement.

Surprisingly, no business impact assessment has been carried out on shops, cafés and market stall holders in Forest Gate.

And it’s not just business owners being ignored: if you don’t live on a street that’s part of the proposed extension you won’t be consulted. Even if parking will get worse because cars are displaced from the RPZ, tough luck.

The reason there’s no public meeting about the proposals is ‘safety’. Make of that what you will, but given the atmosphere in the room I can understand the concern. 

If the zone is extended but residents later decide they don’t like it and want it removed there’s no formal mechanism to do that. We’d have to petition the council and lobby our ward councillors. “It’s never happened in Newham,” I was told.

The consultation closes on 18 July and results will be known by mid-August. A summary of responses (how many participated, how many said yes, how many no etc) will be published. And officers will look at the responses from different areas and make decisions on a street-by-street basis. It isn’t all or nothing.

Other people were raising concerns too – very loudly. Residents on Bective Road were insisting they hadn’t ever received the consultation pack and I spoke to someone from Claremont Road who said the same thing. I’ve also heard via Twitter from people on Chestnut Avenue and Capel Road that  they didn’t get them either. 

One man complained about the introduction of pay-and-display bays outside Woodgrange Cemetery. He said asking people who were coming to bury their dead to pay for parking was “a sick joke.”

Two councillors were at The Gate, Mas Patel of Forest Gate South and Ken Clark of Little Ilford. Councillor Clark lives on Hampton Road and was attending as a resident rather than his official capacity. Both councillors agreed something had gone wrong with the distribution of papers and said they would ask questions. My view is that the integrity of the consultation has been fatally undermined by the failure to provide proper documentation to all resident in good time. If people get them now, after the one and only ‘drop-in’ session has happened, what good is that? Who can they go and ask if they have questions or concerns? The closing date is only two weeks away.

As with so much in Newham, it’s just not good enough.

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