Archive | Politics RSS feed for this section

Gagging order

12 Nov

At the last council meeting, in late September, two backbench councillors – John Gray and Rokshana Fiaz – took the opportunity to ask the mayor questions about the Focus E15 mothers’ campaign and the future of the Carpenters Estate. These followed on from his statement and half-hearted apology. They were doing no more than their constituents would expect of them.

In any other local authority, councillors asking questions at a council meeting, in public, would have been unremarkable. It is what should happen. But in Newham it was exceptional.

And Sir Robin has, predictably, taken exception to it.

This email was sent yesterday to all Newham councillors by the Labour chief whip, Cllr Stephen Brayshaw (via the group secretary Cllr Susan Masters): 

From: Susan Masters [mailto:xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com] 

Sent: 11 November 2014 15:02

Subject: Message from our whip  

A MESSAGE FROM OUR LABOUR GROUP WHIP TO LABOUR GROUP MEMBERS 

Dear Comrades,

Concern has been expressed among group officers relating to the growing appearance of cracks within group and the use of Council meetings rather than Labour Group as a platform for airing disagreements and debate. 

When arguments are played out in public there are only losers: The Labour Party and our constituents. 

The officers agreed that we should draw a line now and move forwards towards a more cohesive group. Disagreements, questions and motions should be put to group and discussed at group. We are one Labour Party and we should show respect for the group and our colleagues. It is polite and proper that this should be the case. 

Moving forwards; where people break the rules or behave in a way that could embarrass the group, executive, party and leadership in a public forum we feel at such a key time that we have no option but to push  for the highest sanctions possible within the rules. 

Let’s move forwards and ensure that we are working for our constituents, our party and our group. 

Best

Steve Brayshaw

It is a clear and unambiguous attempt to muzzle councillors and stop them publicly raising serious questions at Council meetings. Debate can only happen in private, behind closed doors.

The “highest sanctions possible within the rules” means expulsion from Labour Group and – if the councillor were not later reinstated – automatic deselection at the next election.

Ironically, this threat is itself a breach of Labour Party rules: 

Labour recognises that individual members, to fulfill their representative duties, may without consultation speak and ask questions in meetings of the council on behalf of their constituents or other community interests. (chapter 13, clause XI, sub-clause 1)

Any councillor expelled from Newham’s Labour Group on these grounds would be entitled to appeal: they’d have an unanswerable case for immediate reinstatement.

But the more important point for ordinary Newham residents is that Sir Robin and his cronies are using heavy-handed threats to stop councillors doing the one job we elected them to do: publicly scrutinise the executive mayor and hold him to account for the decisions he makes. It is undemocratic and unacceptable.

Tags: , ,

Another matter of interest

20 Oct

From the minutes of the standards advisory committee meeting held on October 6th, which considered a complaint that the Dear Leader had breached the code of conduct:

It was questioned whether, as a Mayoral Advisor Councillor Laguda should declare a pecuniary interest in item 6 (Investigation of complaint of breach of code of conduct by an elected member). Following advice from the Monitoring Officer Cllr Laguda decided that she need not declare an interest.

How jolly convenient. The special responsibility allowance she receives – which is entirely within the gift of the mayor and can be withdrawn by him at any time, for any reason – does not constitute a ‘pecuniary interest’!

Like so many politicians before her, Cllr Laguda has wrestled with her conscience and won.

Perhaps she should have thought a little harder about her decision, because the requirement to make a declaration also extends to non-pecuniary interests.

To quote from guidance issued to councillors (my emphasis added):

The Council’s Code of Conduct requires you to make a verbal declaration of the existence and nature of any … “Non-Pecuniary Interest”. Any Member who does not declare these interests in any matter when they apply may be in breach of the Code of Conduct.

You may have a … “Non-Pecuniary Interest” in an item of business where:

2.2.1 A decision in relation to that business might reasonably be regarded as affecting your well-being or financial standing, or a member of your family, or a person with whom you have a close association…

2.3 A person with whom you have a close association is someone who is more than an acquaintance, and is someone you are in contact with over a period of time, whether regularly or not. It is someone that a reasonable member of the public might think you would be prepared to favour or disadvantage when discussing a matter which affects them.

All of the councillors on the hearing sub-committee should also consider section 5 of the guidance, on bias and pre-determination (again, emphasis added):

If in relation to any decision, your outside connections may make it appear to a reasonable person that there is a real danger of bias, or predetermination you should seek advice as to whether it is appropriate for you to participate in any discussion about the matter and in the decision, regardless of whether or not you consider that you should declare an interest as defined above.

Given that councillors Laguda, Scoresby, Collier and Amarjit Singh all campaigned alongside Sir Robin in May and were photographed with him on their leaflets, a reasonable person might very well think there is a danger of bias or pre-determination.

Tags: ,

Oh, Alan

14 Oct

Last week Alan Craig, the former leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance, declared he had applied to join UKIP. 

In my blog post I said it was a marriage made in heaven, but I now think I was wrong. Having read his party’s 2010 general election manifesto, Not by Bread Alone, it is clear that it is an extraordinary and almost inexplicable decision.

Amongst the bonkers stuff about the place of religion in civil society, the evils of gay marriage and abortion, and some unpleasant generalisations about muslims and jihad, there are some surprisingly liberal and genuinely progressive policies. Here are a few extracts:

A more equal society

Free market capitalism, if left to itself, does not produce a downward trickle from rich to poor. Over the past thirty years, under both Labour and the Conservatives, share of income and wealth has been transferred from the poor of Britain and the world, to the rich.

The experience of low status and low esteem that encourages violence, obesity, transient relationships or teenage pregnancy must also be approached by policies that go beyond forcing people into the workforce.

We will back measures to introduce a new 50p tax rates on earnings over £150,000.

A transaction tax, such as the proposed Robin Hood tax, will be introduced to generate funds for green and sustainable investment in both Britain and in the developing world.

Greening the global economy

The CPA seeks a global economy which operates within the ecological limits of the planet; eradicates poverty and tackles inequality; and ensures the human rights of all are met.

Carbon rationing is needed. We back an EU trading system which sets a control total for the industries within the regime and lets the market in carbon allocations chase down the most efficient ways of making cuts.

Unrestrained market forces are not compatible with care for the poor and stewardship of the earth.

Tackling the jobs crisis

The CPA will continue to act as the Champion of a Living Wage for all workers. We also want a better work and life balance for all, not just the well-off who can afford it.

The CPA will enforce the provisions of the Working Time Directive, which prevents working in excess of 48 hours per week. We will end the UK’s opt out option.

The CPA will also support a Living Wage for all workers of £7.40 an hour to ensure those on low incomes are not forced to work excessive hours to make ends meet.

Strangers into citizens

We would tackle discrimination and embrace the talents of asylum seekers, as many successful asylum applicants are highly trained and dedicated individuals. It makes no sense to leave them on the scrapheap, unable to use their professional skills to provide for themselves, their families, or contribute to the British economy.

[Asylum] applicants will be treated as if they were British citizens with full access to state support and the right to work.

We will tackle the problem of illegal immigration by an amnesty that brings irregular workers into mainstream society, paying taxes.

A time of jubilee for the world

Aid will be given in grants and not loans and not tied to poor countries opening up their markets to powerful multinationals from rich countries.

We want the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries to be cancelled in full without strings attached.

Alan Craig signature

I find it hard to comprehend how someone who led his party and signed that manifesto, made those promises, just four years ago can now find a home in UKIP. Because not one of the things I’ve quoted above would find favour with the Faragists.

If Alan Craig has really changed his mind so completely that he now rejects everything the CPA ever stood for and embraces the climate change-denying, isolationist, hard right turbo-Toryism of UKIP, he might as well announce his conversion to Satanism: it would be less of a surprise.

Tags: , , ,

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.

Tags: , , ,

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.

Tags: , ,

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.

Tags: ,

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).

Tags: , ,

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.

Tags: , , , ,

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.

Tags: , , ,

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.

Tags: , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →