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More Rotten Boroughs

The mayor makes yet another appearance in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column this week.

The article essentially repeats the story told on Mike Law’s blog about Sir Robin’s pay rises and contributions to charity.

I’ve lost count of the number of times over the past few years that Newham has featured in the Eye. Surely it’s time for someone – the leader of the Labour Party, perhaps – to take Sir Robin to one side and tell him to sort it out.

Or maybe our 60 Labour councillors might start doing their jobs and hold the mayor to account. Isn’t bringing the council into disrepute against the code of conduct?

Tags: newham, privateeye, rottenboroughs, sirrobinwales

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Categories Newham

Revised proposals for new parliamentary constituencies

16 Oct

Following a public consultation the Boundary Commission for England has submitted revised proposals for new parliamentary constituencies which, if approved, will come into force for the 2015 general election. A key part of the brief was to reduce the total number of constituencies from 650 to 600 and to equalise (as far as possible) the number of electors in each one.

Under these proposals Newham would be split into 3 constituencies, 2 of which would also include wards from neighbouring boroughs.

The new constituences would be:

I’d spend a bit of time explaining what this means in practice if it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Following the Tories’ decision to torpedo reform of the House of Lords these proposals stand almost no chance of being passed. Labour opposes them fundamentally and the Lib Dems are sufficently pissed off about the death of Lords reform (coming after their monumental shafting in the AV referendum) that they will vote them down too.

The Tories may hope that a deal on state funding of political parties (‘cash for seats’) will bring their colaition partners into line, but Clegg must know that would be political suicide. What’s the point of cash for seats if you have no, er, seats?

Tags: newham

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Categories Newham, Politics

A quick re-brand for Newham’s phony coppers?

27 Sep

A Newham Council “community safety officer” on patrol

An article in this week’s Newham Recorder (from which the above picture was *ahem* borrowed) about yet another ‘crackdown’ (yawn) on crime and anti-social behaviour in Newham refers to the mayor’s brigade of fake plods as the Community Safety Team.

When we were introduced to these fine people (pun intended) in the Newham Mag they were referred to as Enforcement Officers, or even ‘Law Enforcement Officers’.

Has the mayor done a swift about-turn and decided to make them sound a bit less threatening? I wonder what might have caused that.

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Categories Newham

Canary Wharf seen from Poplar DLR

25 Sep

on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/P_-kICEB5S/ – September 25, 2012 at 02:16PM

Tags: instagram

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Categories Photos

£40 million doesn’t buy much these days

24 Sep

So, according to the Standard, the mayor thinks our investment in the Olympic stadium is worthwhile because

local people would get priority tickets to the stadium and access to its facilities for athletics meetings and sports days

That’s not much of a return on £40 million.

Any local politician worth his salt should have been able to get that from a publicly owned stadium located right in his home patch without spending a penny.

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Categories Newham

Met police commissioner asked about Newham uniforms

11 Sep

HoC_HAC_110912.mp3

The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee met today to discuss security at the Olympic Games. Among the witnesses was Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe.

He was asked by Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, about the importance of the public not being confused about who was and who was not a police officer and in particular about the new uniforms being worn by Newham’s ‘law enforcement officers’.

Tags: newham, police