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.
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’.
on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/PY7Kn-EB40/ – September 10, 2012 at 10:16AM
Contrary to what what you might think at first glance, this is not a picture of four police officers. It accompanies a double page spread in the latest Newham Mag (issue 257) disturbingly headlined “Power to the Enforcers.” These ‘Enforcers’ are, in fact, Newham council staff.
The article explains the role of these 52 new ‘law enforcement officers’ (formerly known as the anti-social behaviour team) who will “work side-by-side” with the 66 extra Metropolitan Police officers the council already pays for to target anti-social behaviour and other ‘low level’ nuisances in the borough.
While the article takes great pains to explain what the powers of these ‘enforcement officers’ are and how these differ from the powers of real police officers it says nothing about why the mayor and council find it necessary to dress them up in police-like uniforms.
As we know from previous experience with Newham’s “Community Constabulary” if you dress people as police officers and have them patrol like police officers they will start to believe they are actually police officers, and they will behave accordingly (and not in a good way).
Dressing relatively untrained civilians as police officers does nothing for public safety and may even put the enforcement officers in physical danger. It certainly puts them at risk of committing offences under section 90 of the Police Act 1996. I wonder what, if any, legal advice the mayor asked for before ordering the uniforms? It would have been foolish in the extreme to go ahead without any.
Given what happened with the Community Constabulary I don’t understand why we are going back down the same path. Why is the Mayor so intent on running his own private, uniformed police force?
I see that the latest issue of Private Eye (no. 1321) again features a story about Newham in its Rotten Boroughs section. This one focuses on the re-uniforming of the council’s anti-social behaviour officers in a manner that harks back to the dark days of the ‘Parks Constabulary’.
As you can see from the picture on Mike Law’s blog, which is reproduced in the Eye, the ASBOs look exactly like real police officers, except that they’re not:
It is an offence to impersonate a police officer. What, I wonder, are the real police going to do about it?
After a bit of prompting Newham has published details of the allowances and expenses paid to councillors during the financial year 2011/12.
The basic allowance paid to all councillors (except the mayor) is £10,829 per annum, less a £60 fee for using their council laptop for personal use and a £35 data protection registration fee. Around half of the council also receive additional ‘special responsibility’ allowances.
In total our 61 councillors raked in £1,210,323 in allowances last year. That’s an average of £19,841 each.
The table below shows the top dozen earners on the council.
| RA | WALES (Mayor) | 81,029 |
| AR | BAIKIE | 46,389 |
| IK | CORBETT | 42,811 |
| RJ | CRAWFORD | 42,811 |
| LT | HUDSON | 42,111 |
| U | DESAI | 41,776 |
| C | MCAULEY | 41,776 |
| A | KELLAWAY | 37,635 |
| CW | FURNESS | 37,291 |
| JH | LAGUDA | 33,499 |
| EH | SPARROWHAWK | 33,499 |
| Q | PEPPIATT | 29,358 |
It is worth bearing a couple of things in mind while looking at this list:
Firstly, ordinary Newham people earn the second lowest wages in London at just £29,518 a year. A dozen councillors earn that or more just from their allowances, never mind any additional income they enjoy from their regular jobs.
Secondly, as recently as 2002 the basic allowance for councillors in Newham was just £533 a year. As council leader Robin Wales received an additional special responsibility allowance of £16,631. That scheme was replaced as soon as Sir Robin became mayor, when allowances rocketed to over £9,000 for councillors and £65,000 for the elected mayor.
Things have only got worse (or better, if you are lucky enough to be among the favoured few) since then.
A copy of the full report, listing all councillors, can be downloaded from the Newham website.
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