Here’s a press release and two photos issued by Rushanara Ali this evening:
For immediate use
Labour Party Leader, Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, joins Bethnal Green and Bow MP, Rushanara Ali, on visit to Bethnal Green Academy
Leader of the Labour Party, Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP and Rushanara Ali MP visited Bethnal Green Academy this morning to talk to teachers, staff and students. They discussed the Shoreditch Citizens’ campaign for a Living Wage, opportunities for young people in Tower Hamlets, and the challenges facing schools and colleges in Tower Hamlets and across the country.
This morning, Rushanara Ali MP, spoke to BBC London about the latest child poverty figures released by the End Child Poverty Campaign, which showed that Bethnal Green and Bow has the highest child poverty figures in the country at 51%.
Rushanara Ali said: “On the day it was announced that Tower Hamlets is suffering the most severe levels of child poverty in the country, both Ed Miliband and I were highly encouraged by the ideas and enthusiasm of local people working and studying at the Bethnal Green Academy.
“Ed has consistently pressed the Conservative-led Coalition on the important issues of opportunities for young people and the squeezed living standards of hard working families. Our visit to the Bethnal Green Academy has covered extremely positive ground, and I was pleased that we were able to talk about solutions such as the Living Wage campaign and investing in the futures of our young people to ensure we don’t create a lost generation of talented young people.”
Speaking to BBC London about the latest child poverty figures, Rushanara Ali said:
“These figures are very disappointing. Under the last Labour Government, we reduced child poverty by almost 1 million. Labour put in measures to tackle child poverty, but now it is creeping back. It is not acceptable that a generation of children are going to be condemned to poverty because of this government’s policies. David Cameron’s constituency has 7% child poverty, Nick Clegg’s has 5%, but Bethnal Green and Bow has 51%. My constituency epitomises this Government’s failure, they are not taking the actions needed to tackle child poverty. The Government needs to take responsibility and business needs to take responsibility. This is a call to arms to the business community to work with me to alleviate child poverty in Bethnal Green and Bow.”
Well, at least Ed doesn’t look “too ugly” there, at least.
Trial by Jeory 
So out of all the excellent perfoming state schools available to visit in Tower Hamlets, Rushanara MP chooses to take Ed Miliband to the one that fooled other sympathetic school head-teachers and Labour run council (at the time) into giving them millions of pounds of public investment that could have gone to any of the other state schools in our borough [DELETED FOR LEGAL REASONS].
Rushanara knows well that the Labour group and local party were against turning Bethnal Green Tech into a Tory Academy. However Graham Taylor who was chair of TH’s Labour party, and school govenor, spear-headed the campaign for an Academy. I am certain that Rushanara must have arranged this visit with her chum Graham, whom was also a close aide in her election campaign team. So much for Labour values and morals – You work it out!
The visit was organised by London Citizens. I’m told it had nothing to do with Graham Taylor, who performs his director duties on purely a voluntary basis.
Are you seriously suggesting Ted that Ed Miliband would not have discussed and confirmed this venue with Rushanara or her diary people?
And are you also suggesting that her chum Graham did’nt realise it would piss-off all the Labour party members aswell?
I believe that Rushanara most probably had a friendly chat with Graham beforehand about this visit. Nevertheless, her attendence at this Academy reinforces the Tory ideal to go this route!
No…but Rushanara does!
If Labour is against academies and last time I checked it was then why did they just give a massive pat on the back to the people who enabled the college to become one of the country’s newest academies – a decision which was vociferously opposed very recently by the Labour Group on the council…. hmmm politics.
I don’t see the problem. Miliband is the past and Rushanara is the future. Of course she’d only be concerned with her own photo. He he he.
When I open the comments on one of Ted’s posts I often find myself wondering whether there is any subject which will not immediately fall prey to parochial internecine bad-mouthing. Certainly this post hasn’t bucked the trend.
Why should local state schools being turned into Academies not be the subject of criticism – call it parochial internecine bad-mouthing, if you like.
Graham Taylor may be acting as a voluntary Director on the Board at the new ‘Bethnal Green Academy’ (after it siphoned millions in public money under the BSF programme) but not all new Academy Directors, sorry school governors, are working for free at their Academies. Is that other local Labour Party stalwart who spearheaded another Academy conversion when Chair of the Governors of Sir William Burrough Primary performing his new Director duties for free? Dennis Twomey was even Leader of the Council at one time (right, Ted?)
If TELCO chose BGTC – now the multi-million and uglier-than-Ed Bethnal Green Academy – why? TELCO could have chosen from many other schools (Morpeth?) in Rushanara’s constituency…yet they didn’t. Perhaps TELCO should explain.
“danmccurry”: the “future” is Academies (and Toby’s Free Schools?) and the ‘business community working with Rushanara to alleviate child poverty’? Yeah, alleviating those in the ‘business community’ who will now be profiting from all those new contracts for services in our local former state schools. If you did have children in local schools you would see the problem.
I suspect there are lots of good, committed, energetic people who end up investing their energy into the prevailing inwards looking endless squabbling. I don’t pretend that changing it is easy, but every ounce of energy invested negatively perpetuates the problem. Most of the time it reads like The Life of Brian sectarian arguments.
I was investing my ounce of energy into criticising the conversion of local state schools to Academies. Just that. I am not one of the personalities involved and belong to no party – or sect(!) – and have no agenda but you dismiss my comment as perpetuating local squabbling. I’m just a resident and parent commenting on local state schools converting to Academies. (Never saw Life of Brian and don’t get the sectarian arguments line. What’s religion got to do with this. Church schools?….as that is the topic here isn’t it? Local schools?)
Everyone’s missed the point of this blog, maybe cos Ted has been too subtle. It’s all about that photo being blurry. It makes Ed Miliband look a total plonker. Rushanara Ali is quite obsessive about her own photos, so it wasn’t released by accident. She was making a statement. But it was in totally the wrong way. If she makes a personal attack on this leader, on his way out, then what would the leader coming in think of her?
Even if Rushanara Ali is deliberately selecting photos that morph Ed Miliband into Mr Potato Head, when he is already being roasted (hah) for his appearance – that still doesn’t mean her choice of a certain local school to talk about ‘investing in our children’ and the ‘business community working with her’ is not part of this post. Her choice of this controversial Academy in Tower Hamlets is a kick in the teeth to all those parents at the former BGTC who were given no say when a handful of school governors (most of whom they probably never even knew) went behind closed doors and voted themselves Directors of a company, two or three of whom will be also be Shareholders. That’s a business community that can work with Rushanara, is it, doling out contracts with all that Academy dosh…
“Late Lord”, if she was trying to make Ed look bad, she’s made herself look worse and what a vote-loser. Hypocrisy, betrayal, whatever…but at least she looks decorous in this glossy Academy brochure.
There is a real perception that Tower Hamlets Labour Party and Tory has no ideological difference, there may be an imaginary ideological difference between the two parties but it is not real. You can’t see much policy difference between TH Tory and Labour and quite openly they work hand in hand to stop mayor’s progressive policies but Ed nor can Ken say anything about it because of an election or leadership, such a naughty politics. One would expect that elected MP from Bethnal green and Bow where child poverty is highest would stand up and talk against the Tory government cut but she did completely opposite, she made the grave mistake once again of saying it is the fault of local Mayor. I ask her how? Does she know that this is the first and probably only borough introduced London Living Wage? Does she know that England’s highest levels of child poverty has launched a new scheme to fill the gap left by the government’s scrapping of the national Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), I would be interested to know from her what Newham has done on this. She is an MP from Tower Hamlets but promotes Newham where she lives. She praised new ham and criticized Tower Hamlets why? Is she not happy that CSE results in Tower Hamlets reached the national average higher than neighbouring boroughs Newham and Hackney. She need to wake up and go for basic political training otherwise she will be loosing next election very badly.
There is a real perception that Tower Hamlets Labour Party and Tory has no ideological difference, there may be an imaginary ideological difference between the two parties but it is not real. You can’t see much policy difference between TH Tory and Labour and quite openly they work hand in hand to stop mayor’s progressive policies but Ed nor can Ken say anything about it because of an election or leadership, such a naughty politics. One would expect that elected MP from Bethnal green and Bow where child poverty is highest would stand up and talk against the Tory government cut but she did completely opposite, she made the grave mistake once again of saying it is the fault of local Mayor. I ask her how? Does she know that this is the first and probably only borough introduced London Living Wage? Does she know that England’s highest levels of child poverty Borough has launched a new scheme to fill the gap left by the government’s scrapping of the national Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), I would be interested to know from her what Newham has done on this. She is an MP from Tower Hamlets but promotes Newham where she lives. She praised Newham and criticized Tower Hamlets why? Is she not happy that GCSE results in Tower Hamlets reached the national average higher than neighbouring boroughs Newham and Hackney. She need to wake up and go for basic political training otherwise she will be loosing next election very badly.