Just a couple of months after I highlighted some quite worrying discrepancies on the invoices submitted by Gulam Robbani during his time as an adviser to Lutfur Rahman, it looks like there are questions surrounding another of his colleagues.
The invoices emanate from the weird and wonderful world of Lutfur’s rapidly expanding mayoral office. This is where that merry band of male-dominated mayoral advisers lives under the watchful gaze of Murziline Parchment, the chief of staff with an impeccable eye for detail.
One of those little foresters is Mohammed Jubair. He’s been mentioned before on this blog because when he’s not imparting his great wisdom onto the lesser qualified press officers (and Takki Sulaiman) at the Town Hall, he acts as chief reporter for Channel S television station which is run by a convicted fraudster.
But what actually is his job? On January 31 this year, John Williams, the council’s head of democratic services, emailed Tory leader Peter Golds with a list of mayoral advisers. I reported that list on this blog here a fortnight later. Here’s what John wrote in January about Jubair’s role:
Mohammed Jubair – Advisor on community media matters for one day per week at a cost of £175 per day
Remember that: one day a week. That’s £9,100 a year for 52 weeks.
Let’s have a look at the invoices Jubair has been submitting. They’ve been released under a Freedom of Information request to the Tories and relate to the period from June 2011 until February 3, 2012.
The total of these invoices is £18,550. That’s 106 days at £175 per day over an eight month period. That’s a little more than “one day per week”.
There are a couple of points to make about this.
1. What contract was Jubair on during this period? In January 2012, the following advert appeared on the Londontenders website seeking two mayoral advisers:
Description: Advisory Service to the Mayor in the following areas broken into two lots:
Lot 1 – Communities’ Communication and Media
Lot 2 – Communities and Public Policy
The anticipated contract start date is 6th February 2012. The contracts will be for a maximum period of up to 30th April 2014 but may be renewed on a periodical basis.
The Council is looking for one provider per lot and anticipates a maximum annual budget of £30,000 per lot.
The anticipated contract start date is: 6th February 2012
The estimated value of the contract is:
£60,000 per annum for both lots.
Deadline for expression of interest and return of quotation is:
Friday 20th January 2012
The supporting documents for the tender gave the following job description for the communications role:
Lot 1: Communities’ Communication and Media
- Advising the Mayor and Cabinet members on community media matters.
- Advising the Mayor on effective integration of community media matters with all media workstreams.
- Advising the Mayor on effective use of, exposure to and management of community media.
- Keeping the Mayor and Cabinet members updated on all aspects of community media matters.
And thanks to Jubair’s invoices, we now have a much clearer idea of what Lutfur and Parchment meant by the word “communities” in their job advert.
Silly old me thought that because “communities” was in the plural, he’d be working for more than one community. But every single item on his invoices relates to the Bengali media only. No favours have been done for the Somali or Chinese communities, nor for the various east European communities in Tower Hamlets.
And he has arranged nothing for the mainstream media, such as the national press or the East London Advertiser, or The Wharf.
Unless I’ve missed it, I can’t see any other “mayoral adviser” hired to deal with other media at such a detailed level.
Which shows us exactly where Lutfur’s priorities lie in his supposed desire to create this One Tower Hamlets.
He’s using public money to direct it at one section of our community only. I’d have thought that divisive — and discriminatory. Perhaps that needs investigating as well.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission may have something to say about this. After all, its predecessor, the Commission for Racial Equality, criticised the council a few years ago for holding special press briefings exclusively for the Bengali press.
Oh, and one last thing. When you’re a £30,000 a year “communications adviser”, you should really be able to spell the word ‘English’ correctly….
Trial by Jeory 
These leeches do not represent the Bangladeshi community, we did not vote for them. The election was full of fraud. Which is part of tower hamlets politics, for far too long.
They are looking after their own cronies, not just Bengali ones, there are many from other communities involved. Like parchment etc. they are small time crooks, compared to all the labour and Tory MPs. I’m sure mr Golds has his ambitions too. don’t get caught with your hands in the cookie jar, hey golds
It really looks like “our” mayor can get away with anything. I was against having an elected borough mayor for exactly this sort of reason. What a waste of public money – is this any different to buying votes? He might as well cut out the middle man and just hand out cash in the street and say “vote for me”.
Disgusted of Bow,
Seems to me there’s a pretty good chance this contract – and those who are party to authorising payments under it – breaches the Council’s statutory obligations.
If the Mayor actually employed somebody to be a communications adviser, not only would the recruitment process have to be transparently fair to all parties – but the electorate would also get much better value for money.
So which politician is going to require an investigation and explanation of how this contract complies with the Council’s requirement to comply with its procurement code and deliver
* good value for money?
* a benefit which does not discriminate between the different cultural communities who live in Tower Hamlets?
Cant believe you have missed the obvious link Ted, The annoying Mr Jubair is the Chief reporter of Channel S, as you have mentioned.
Now Channel need to be kept sweet in someways, their just a media channel, other than advertising and selling of land to the convicted owner. Surely to also pick up the salary of Channel S, ,probably one of the top earners. which is the responsibility of the local tax payers.
if this was to be investigated,and hopefully one day it will be, than it will be good to see Mr Jubair’s payslip from Channel S during this period.
Thanks for the report Ted, at least now we can throw something at that annoying little Jubair, who has a face and an attitude, which you will never get bored of throwing stones at
This is the point. If you look at his advice has been, it’s exactly what the press office is there for, eg organising media events and interviews. That there is total duplication during a time when people have been actually made redundant from the press office shows there is something rotten in the state of Lutfur/Parchmen’s Denmark.
The opposition councillors should require a full investigation into the mYor’s office and haul Parchment, Lutfur and Takki in before a special committee.
If they want to co-opt me onto that committee, I’m very much available.
Ted,
This is all good stuff, and thanks for putting it up on your blog.
However this story, and your comment “The opposition councillors should require a full investigation into the Mayors’s office and haul Parchment, Lutfur and Takki in before a special committee” only serve to highlight what has been known for a long time – that we have a corrupt borough and a deeply corrupt mayor. The question is who is both able and willing to do something to stop the rot? Yes, the opposition councillors SHOULD require a special investigation, but then the electoral standards watchdog SHOULD have investigated the blatent voter fraud at each of the last TH elections, Parchment’s appointment SHOULD have come under closer scrutiny, Robbani’s invoices SHOULD have been investigated, Pickles SHOULD be stepping in to prevent the waste of cash on East End Life – and so the list goes on.
I am interested in the Bow Conservatives leaflet which was passed to be yesterday, in which four of the six headline stories concern either wasteful cash or corruption (or both). These issues are well known, the question is what is going to be done about them? Anything?
Tim.
I hope they do that
They seem to be getting away with large scale misdeeds whilst we all just look on.
Who will help us get rid of these crooks?
Sylhetimanosh – your attack on Cllr. Golds includes no facts and no evidence. Pathetic.
His Tory, that’s criminal enough for me
Ted, when you say,
“Silly old me thought that because “communities” was in the plural, he’d be working for more than one community. But every single item on his invoices relates to the Bengali media only. No favours have been done for the Somali or Chinese communities, nor for the various east European communities in Tower Hamlets.”
It makes me wonder what I am? I am not Chinese or Bangladeshi or Somali, I am English… am I part of a community?? What about me??
It seems everything the council does is for the betterment of just one community, the Bangladeshi community, and lip-service is paid to everyone else. The largest minority in Tower Hamlets are English people and I would like to know who is going to stand up for that community?
Here is a funny video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NEm63fZGs0
Oh, James….
You really do suffer from a chronic case of white man’s blues.
We’re all English. You are, Lutfur is, Jubair is, Murziline Parchment is. You don’t have to be white to be English.
The borough has a very active Bengali-language local media, and lots of local people read it and watch it. They probably won’t in twenty or thirty years time, it will probably die out. But they do at the moment.
Putting aside any issues anyone may have that are particular to Mohammed Jubair, the council has a whole load of people advising them on and liaising with the media that most white people in the borough read. Is it really so terrible to have a guy dealing with the papers that a majority of the older generations of ethnic-Bengali citizens read?
Isn’t it a good thing that they are aware and enfranchised?
As for Banglatown I’ve been very impressed with the measured tone that Ted has taken on this blog. Brick Lane is famous the world over for Bengali food. Just as Chinatown has signage in English and Chinese, so Banglatown has signage in English and Bengali. And local ethnic-Bengalis like it. They feel a bit proud that they’ve brought a bit of their culture to the diverse melting pot that is London.
As others have pointed it, part of the reason behind it in the first place was how downtrodden the local Bengali community felt after, among other things, the racist murder of Altab Ali Park. Additionally, the ward name intended to encourage the use of the name for the area, and thereby engender a bit of recognition of the contribution (undoubtedly significant) that the Bengalis have made to the locality and give them a stake in it, politically and geographically. It’s not harming anyone – why get rid of it?
A bit disingenuous.
The council’s press office has for many years had full-time specialists dealing with the Bengali media. The point I and others are making is why there should be a need for one more, one who has a clear conflict of interest?
And as a point of accuracy – and nothing else – Jubair is not English. He’s a Bangladeshi national. I’ve checked.
Fair enough if I got that wrong. And obviously I didn’t mean Altab Ali Park