Trial by Jeory

One of the most frightening Google Alerts I’ve ever received popped up in my inbox earlier today. It was a link to a piece in PR Week and as soon as it opened I was confronted with this image:

The caption, thanks to an excellent sub-editor with an ironic eye for the smug, read: “Takki Sulaiman: ‘Pleasing’.”

It perfectly illustrated the story, which I’m pasting below:

Tower Hamlets Conservative opposition leader Peter Golds first reported the council’s publication to the district auditor in July. It has now emerged that the district auditor wrote to Golds on 26 September to explain that it is not minded to take any further actions against the council-run newspaper.

The district auditor is understood to have written: ‘The council’s interpretation is very similar to my own,’ with regard to the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity. Among the code’s recommendations is one that suggests councils only print newspapers four times a year.

Tower Hamlets head of comms Takki Sulaiman responded: ‘East End Life has just come through a stringent review process where it not only had to ensure compliance with the Government’s new guidelines but had to ensure it was cost-effective.

‘The revised East End Life meets these conditions and it is pleasing that the district auditor agrees we have had regard to the new publicity code.’

In June, Tower Hamlets Council said it planned to continue publishing at the same frequency, explaining this would be the most ‘cost-effective and popular’ option.

Poor Takki. Having spent most of the past month at various party conferences, I strongly suspect that smile will soon be wiped off his face.

I think the Government is a touch fed up with East End Life and Tower Hamlets Council’s defiant little attitude to how it spends our money – and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see all these town hall publications brought under some form of new statutory footing that properly governs how often they can publish.

There’s also is growing irritation with the role of district auditors. It is felt they become “institutionalised”, that because they become so pally with the council officers they have to work with, they rarely dare to bite. They say they are on the side of the local elector but when did you ever see a district auditor question town hall spending in this borough after a complaint? Maybe their remit is too narrow but that probably suits them.

This issue of East End Life is a corruption of process in Tower Hamlets: the town hall – even in its letter to the district auditor, which was the result of a panel that included someone I know believes otherwise – misleads about its true cost and then refers to extremely dodgy self-selecting surveys to prove its “popularity”.

As I’ve always said, I think it is very well-produced and it beats some of its commercial competitors in appearance and, I’m sorry to say, in content. But that’s no excuse to use public money for what it also runs: political propaganda.

And when the District Auditor tries to refute that charge, he makes himself look foolish: we already know from the diaries of Mayor Lutfur Rahman and his “executive” deputy Ohid Ahmed how much time they spend sanctioning what appears each week. Even before Lutfur became mayor, Ohid as a mere cabinet member, actually used to shout at the council’s press officers if they tried to advise something was legally unacceptable to print. He was regarded as the most odious member of the administration.

The media world in Tower Hamlets is in a very dark place at the moment. With a couple of honourable exceptions, most of the Bengali media slavishly lap up council press releases and toe the Lutfur line. Many councillors feel that is sadly true of my former paper as well but I think it’s more question of resources and a lack of feel for the dynamics for the area, including what politics represents.

On the broadcasting front, Lutfur has Channel S sewn up, so I’m led to believe. Of course, that station has often fallen foul of Ofcom and it is run by a convicted fraudster who was allegedly duffed up and tortured by gangsters earlier this year. That man’s other company, Prestige Auto, which is based as the same site as Channel S in Walthamstow, was last week linked to another insurance scam, as reported in the Daily Mail here.

Meanwhile, Lutfur’s other major backer, Shah Yousuf, is also, I understand, about to find himself having to defend a libel action over wife-beating smears about former Labour leader Helal Abbas.

Anyone with a bit of principle and a bit more cash would find there’s a decent gap in the journalism market in Tower Hamlets at the moment (business angels, you know where I am…).

To prevent this post becoming too long, I’m going to publish all the correspondence between Peter Golds, District Auditor Jon Hayes, and council legal chief Isabella Freeman , in a separate entry. For those who like the detail, they’re well worth a read, particularly “independent” Ms Freeman’s contribution: as an exercise in the art of local government obfuscation, it’s unbeatable.