Mayor Lutfur Rahman is trying a new strategy to suck up the Labour leadership. Here “he” (for is it really him?) is on his blog writing about Ed Miliband’s speech to the TUC today:
Today, Ed Miliband addressed the Trades Union Congress. He covered a wide range of interesting topics, centred around the immediate future for the left, how we oppose the Conservative government and what part trade unionists can play. As I’ve made clear before, I personally didn’t see eye to eye with Ed on the industrial action of 30 March – I truly felt that public sector workers had been left with no alternative – but on the whole it’s a brilliant speech, and well worth a read, so I’m reproducing it here.
(To read the entire speech, go to Lutfur’s blog).
In all the years I’ve listened to Lutfur talking, he has never sounded like this. So, who is Lutfur’s brain these days? Anyone know?
Trial by Jeory 
Perhaps the Mayor has realised that the Trade Unions are not going to be his friends once the cuts he has proposed are implimented. Or perhaps his plan to force a fait accompli against the Labour Party is going seriously offbeam and he need to ingratiate himself with the big boss.
Clearly a bigger problem, Kevan Collins, Isabella Freeman, and Helen Taylor all quit, with a large attendance at the cabinet meeting on aug 3rd, followed by two audit committee meetings on sept 20 and 27. Now romance the labour party to help Mr Collins and himself. Too late
Gotta be Red Ken, what he doesn’t know about underhand politics is not worth knowing.
Axel Landin
Its Obviously or New Advisor to the Cabinet, Kobir Ahmed. He is a big ed supporter, and this blog keeps him occupied as he doesnt have much to do
Yet another new Advisor for Mayor Rahman and that bunch of numpties he calls a cabinet. What grade is Kobir Ahmed on and what is his tax-payer funded salary?
Who is Lutfur’s brain these days? That’s a bit harsh Ted ! The Mayor is lots of things but a twit isn’t one of them… Anyway you’d be hard pressed to find any senior politician who writes their own net communications. John Biggs on twitter and Facebook?
The writing is far too professionally presented for it to be Lutfur. Either that or else he is wasting time that he should be spending making executive decisions on polishing the blog entries instead.
Tweets/facebook are different – it’s easy to do a quick one line comment. Blog posts take time to put together. Incidentally a quick comparison of the style or phrasing of the Mayor’s tweets (he still does have a Twitter account doesn’t he?) and the Mayor’s blog might highlight whether or not the Mayor is actually doing either or both himself.
I also don’t think it’s one of the council media team. Too many of the posts have political points to make about issues that go wider than Tower Hamlets (ie GLA). And the style of writing is too good to be a local government officer.
He must be getting help from somebody in Livingstone’s camp. I just hope he is keeping tabs on what is being put out in his name – with his past history I wouldn’t be confident of that.
Given the 12-year-old phraseology (“He covered a wide range of interesting topics…”) I’d guess one of the sycophants who write the restaurant column in the East End Life. The comments made about the restaurant being reviewed are about as accurate as what Rahman says about Milliband as well …
Tim.
Clearly Axel Landin, the blonde young man and Ken fan who follows Lutfur around everywhere, doing this. I think he’s going back to uni soon, watch to see if the style changes
Well, here’s an extract from Axel’s own blog. The styles are indeed similar…
Don’t know about brains. However one thing that ‘s beginning to get v clear down in the East end is that no matter what you say he’s up to, Lutfur is not getting much help from key officers. So look out for a surprise, Ted.
Someone somewhere may have set a scene for Lutfur to go all slippery. Something may look a tad insignificant but Lutfur may a price for the errors.
The test is:
Can Lutfur see far into the future and stop the nonsense when he should do.
If Lutfur can legitimately use the lawful powers that he does have, may be he’ll avoid the slip.
If he is surrounded by those who say he should play second fiddle to mangers who waste Council’s time and resource then Lutfur can’t blame anyone but himself when he finds that unknown to him or unplanned by him, he is having to take a fall for someone else’s mischief or negligence.
And a few of the brains that may be behind his mistake in shielding the wrongdoing officers.
May be he has brains around but are they the right brains, though?
Do the people of Tower Hamlets deserve to be treated in the way some of the officers do treat us? May be there ought to be a bit of accountability called by elected councillors.
May be there is far too much lasses faire going on in that Council.
May be Lutfur ought to apply the admitted skills of your favourite PR man Mr Sulaiman in seeing into the future. What is cooking in the community ferment should be question Mr Sulaiman should be applying his considerable brains to. If he can proportionately read those emails that keep arriving in his inbox, he should be able to spare Lutfur quite a bit of bother. Especially now that you have admitted pa while ago] that by his staged performance around the 3 September 2011 “threat” Lutfur had made a good investment for his later bid. If you are right then Lutfur should have no trouble reading the writings on the walls that Boris Johnson risked his Tory image over as far back as October last year.
Remember the “Kosovo-style social cleansing”?
Should Lutfur Rahman sit by while Tower Hamlets becomes slowly turned into a rough tool to attack the most vulnerable and make way for the big social steam rollers set on smashing the community in the East End?
As you will recall, I am opposed to the executive mayor system as such. But I hasten to add that the “elected councillors” who are still detached from Lutfur Rahman are not necessarily doing their job off holding the Council’s real power-wielders to account.
So what should the people do to get those councillors working on behalf of the people of Tower Hamlets? I would start by looking at the Democracy Services.
What is that one delivering to the people of Tower Hamlets by way of democracy that really matters?
2044 Hrs Saturday 17 September 2011
???
Well the Ken Livingstone love-in continues with today’s post by ‘Lutfur’.
I don’t blame him for not being a big fan of Boris but making clear that the fare rise is 50p above what it was when Ken left office and leaving a link to Ken’s petition is rather obvious.