Trial by Jeory

On his blog today, Mayor Lutfur Rahman says this about his adversary, Tory group leader Peter Golds: “I don’t agree with much of Cllr Golds’ politics, but I do respect the tenacity and conviction with which he pursues them.”

Lutfur then refers to Thursday’s Evening Standard spread by journalist Stephen Robinson in which Peter highlights the homophobic abuse he has been subjected to, both in the council chamber and in the borough at large.

Here’s an extract from that Standard article:

On the streets of Tower Hamlets, councillor Peter Golds tends to stick out. For a start, he is a contentedly “out” gay man. In what is now a heavily Asian borough, he is of Jewish origin, and even more unusually, in a neighbourhood where few are proud to be Tory, he is a strident Conservative.

These factors combine so that when Cllr Golds stands up to speak in the council chamber, things can turn very ugly in the public gallery.

“I get the hissing, the calls of ‘poofter’, they shout ‘Zionist scum’ at me,” he says, sitting in his office at the Town Hall. This sort of treatment can be equally disturbing for a lesbian Labour councillor, who is subjected to other strange heckling.

More shocking still than these eruptions from the public benches is that this behaviour is seemingly tolerated, even though Tower Hamlets’s first directly elected mayor, Lutfur Rahman, says he is relentlessly intolerant of sexist and racist bigotry.

As Golds said in a formal complaint to the borough police commander, were white skinheads observed yelling abuse at Muslim east Londoners, it would not be tolerated. The worst of the abuse occurred shortly after Rahman’s election in October 2010 but Golds says it continues to this day.

And here is what Lutfur has written on his blog today:

I call on the police to investigate allegations of homophobia in Tower Hamlets

Those with even a passing acquaintance of Tower Hamlets politics will know that myself and Cllr Golds, the leader of the Conservative group, are regularly at loggerheads with each other.

So now we know why Mayor Lutfur Rahman of Tower Hamlets repeatedly refused to answer questions from councillors at the last full council meeting. It wasn’t just because forcing him to speak would infringe his human rights (as John Williams, the council’s head of democratic services, asserted), but it was because he has assembled such a crack-team of latter day Einsteins that they can do the talking for him.

Well, anyway, these are the views of one of those modest intellectual leviathans, the finger-wagging Cllr Rabina Khan and ex-SWP stalwart Cllr Rania Khan.

Here is Rabina’s formal reply to one of the unanswered questions posed to Lutfur. As with all jokes, the punch-line is at the end…

8.3         Question from Councillor Motin Uz-Zaman:

Housing Benefit changes will have a profound impact on our residents and it will lead to some having to leave the borough because the housing allowance will not cover their full rent. Can the Mayor inform the Council the number of meetings he has had with the Minister responsible for these changes to highlight the impact on residents of Tower Hamlets?

Summary of supplementary question from Councillor Motin Uz-Zaman

As no answer has been given, I shall assume there was no meeting.  I do not feel it is appropriate for the Mayor to sit there smiling and not answer the questions.  If he does not want to answer he can take a break and leave the Council Chamber.  The Prime Minister and Mayor of London answer questions personally, why is the Mayor refusing to do so?

Response by Councillor Rabina Khan, Cabinet Member for Housing

Thank you for your question.

The Mayor and I are extremely concerned by the changes to housing benefit.  Almost a year ago as Cabinet Member for Housing I presented a motion to this Council which laid a marker down on this administration’s views on the Coalition’s appalling measures.

We are already seeing the impact of these changes on families in the borough. Some families are already reluctant to move to larger homes due to the housing allowance cap and are choosing to stay in overcrowded circumstances.

These changes will impact across all the services in the council as well as our partner organisations. This is why I have asked our central research team to coordinate a high level and innovative group to collate the impact this is having across all Council and partner services.

I have also had several meetings with organisations such as Shelter, TELCO and Z2K to discuss a coordinated response.  I have also ensured that the Tenant’s Federation are fully aware of the changes and have held workshops with them.

Next month we are holding a congress with key Partners, including RSLs, the Police, Schools, the Third Sector and to look at the impact of this in a holistic way and plan ways we can combat the changes and mitigate the impact to our residents.  This process is to build a coalition of concerned individuals and institutions, who care deeply about the residents of this borough.  We will collect a solid evidence base of the impact across the borough.

We know that millionaire ministers are responsible for pushing through these reforms. They have no idea how most people in this country live. In fact Lord Freud, the minister responsible for benefit change, isn’t even elected.

We will have far more of an impact working together. We will demonstrate that individuals and organisations from across this borough oppose these vicious cuts.  And we do so, not simply on a whim, but because they are damaging our community and our residents.

It is not the case that the Mayor is unwilling to provide answers to the questions asked at Full Council.

At Full Council meetings, the Mayor’s approach has always been to deliver a verbal statement updating members on the progress his administration is making, and then allow his cabinet members to answer questions specific to their portfolios.

We are a strong cabinet, who invest long hours, remarkable intellect and hard work dealing with issues in minute detail on a day to day basis. We are well placed and will continue to answer questions specific to our portfolios.

Just for good measure, Rania repeats the boast later on:

8.8         Question from Councillor Maium Miah:

Can the Mayor inform the Council on whether the Rich Mix Centre has repaid its £850,000 short-term loan, as agreed by Michael Keith when he was Council Leader?

Summary of supplementary question from Councillor Maium Miah

Will the Mayor answer my question?

Response by Councillor Rania Khan, Cabinet Member for Culture

Thank you for your question.

The Legal Department is currently working on this matter, however no repayment has been made as of yet.

At Full Council meetings, the Mayor’s approach has always been to deliver a verbal statement updating members on the progress of his administration, and then allow cabinet members to answer questions specific to our portfolios.

We are a strong cabinet, who invest long hours, remarkable intellect and hard work dealing with issues in minute detail on a day to day basis. We are well placed and will continue to answer questions specific to our portfolios. 

I must have been missing something all these years.

Here is the list of cabinet members:

• Councillor Rofique U Ahmed
• Councillor Shafiqul Haque
• Councillor Shahed Ali
• Councillor Abdul Asad
• Mayor Lutfur Rahman  (Mayor)
• Councillor Ohid Ahmed  (Deputy Mayor)
• Councillor Alibor Choudhury
• Councillor Rabina Khan
• Councillor Rania Khan
• Councillor Oliur Rahman

Mayor Lutfur Rahman has received a late Valentine’s gift: front page billing on the Evening Standard today. I’ve been waiting for the figures on his team of mayoral advisers, but the Standard has beaten me to it.

Here’s the detail of their story and I’ll add my bits underneath.

Tony Winterbottom is an “executive adviser” on regeneration and development to Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of Tower Hamlets who was ousted from the Labour Party over alleged links to Islamic extremists.

Local government secretary Eric Pickles accused Mr Rahman of wasting taxpayer money. He said: “It is astonishing that one of the poorest boroughs in the country sees fit to squander such colossal amounts of public cash in this way.

“Tower Hamlets seems to be living the ultimate champagne socialist lifestyle, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab. I fail to see the business case for shelling out this money, which should be diverted towards protecting frontline services.”

Tower Hamlets has the worst child poverty in the UK, with 52 per cent of children below the breadline. Campaigners warned planned £70 million cuts to the local budget could cause an “economic and social disaster”.

Mr Winterbottom, 67, insisted he was not overpaid and was “embarrassed to be charging so little”.

Jim Fitzpatrick, Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, said: “At a time when Tower Hamlets is being buffeted by cuts from central government, every penny is precious and a £1,000-a-day contract seems to be way over the top.” London Mayor Boris Johnson said: “I’d better investigate the circumstances but it sounds like a lot of money to me.”

A former adviser to Labour mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone, Mr Winterbottom won the contract to advise Mr Rahman last October. An investigation by the Evening Standard found the £1,000-a-day deal is with LDP Projects, run by him and his wife, Kathleen, based at his home in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire.

The consultant works three days a month for Tower Hamlets.

Emma Boon, campaign director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Deals like this for consultants should not be allowed at a time when the rest of the public sector is taking a pay freeze.”

Mr Winterbottom was previously a senior official at the defunct London Development Agency. He was criticised in 2008 after he left on a year’s sabbatical, followed by a £75,000 pay-off and £160,000 top-up to his pension fund. An investigation into the LDA, ordered by Boris Johnson and headed by former financial journalist Baroness Wheatcroft, found a string of failings including “ineptitude” and “massive misspending”.

Mr Rahman became the first directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets in 2010. He originally stood as a Labour candidate, but was deselected amid claims about his links with fundamentalist group the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE). He has denied the allegations. He won the poll as an independent backed by Mr Livingstone, and controls a £1.3 billion budget.

Mr Winterbottom, who has also advised Tottenham Hotspur on stadium development, said: “I’m embarrassed the Standard knows I am charging so little. My company has done work in the private sector for a lot more than £1,000 a day.”

He claimed he would not ask for the full amount: “I tendered a bid for £1,000 a day. In reality, I get paid £125 an hour but I have not yet put in an invoice. I wanted them to respect me as an individual so I asked them to pay me a proper price but I’m not going to charge them.

“I’m absolutely squeaky clean. This is not a money-making operation. This is about fighting for Lutfur Rahman who’s trying to do good work.”

A Tower Hamlets spokesman said: “We do not comment on payment of individual employees unless the information is on the council website as part of our responsibility towards transparency.”

I don’t know who’s more arrogant here – the Mayor for allowing this to happen, or Winterbottom for his “Because I’m worth it” comments (no, he’s not).

Both are out of touch, and, I have to say, so is Eric Pickles. He’s been warned repeatedly that the directly elected mayor system of government can have unintended consequences, yet he is still pushing ahead with Super Thursday this November when 11 other authorities will follow the likes of Tower Hamlets and Newham.

Since becoming Mayor, Lutfur has spent a fair degree of time converting himself to semi-royal status. Among other things, he has spent more than £100k on an office revamp, moved the Speaker’s office to a shoe-box and hired a luxury Mercedes for £70 a day.

Then, at the full council meeting last month, he refused to answer any questions put to him by other councillors because he seemed to think he was above such accountability. (Actually, advice was also given by John Williams, the council’s usually excellent head of democratic services, that Lutfur didn’t have to answer questions because there were “human rights issues”. The council has confirmed to me that John said that but it has refused to elaborate what those issues are.)

And in his 16 months in charge, he has also built an army of advisers, with Winterbottom now being the star attraction. Tory leader Peter Golds has been looking into this for quite a while.

I was sent a full list of names a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been waiting to put some numbers against them.

Here’s the list with local government grades, salaries and job descriptions:

 

– Murziline Parchment (Head of Mayor’s Office)  – LPO8 30 hours p.w. (£57,111 to £59,982 p.a. pro rata)

– Shazid Miah (Mayor’s Community Liaison Officer)  – PO6 (£42,258 to £44,910 p.a.)  

(1 vacant post – Mayor’s Political Advisor)  (PO1, statutory bar at £34,986)

 

2.    Secondees:

 

– Ger Francis (CLC)  – (Comensura temp, PO2 equivalent, £32,532 to £35,055 p.a.)

– Kerry Geeves (D&R) – (PO2) 

– Saiful Ahmed (CLC)  –  (Comensura temp, SO2 equivalent t.b.c.)

– Mazerul Alam (CLC)  – (Comensura temp, SO2 equivalent t.b.c.)

– (Ellie Kuper Thomas based in SPP team)

 

3.    Work experience student (2 week placement)

 

Name removed by TJ to protect identity of under-18 year old .

4.    Mayoral Advisors (NB these are not Council staff but contractors engaged on a part-time basis)

 

– Tony Winterbottom – Advisor on major projects, enterprise and development for approximately three days per month at a cost of £1,000 per day.

– Steven Beckett –  Advisor on surgeries and community consultation for two days per week at a cost of £150 per day  

– Gulam Robbani – Advisor on adult social care and health for one day per week at a cost of £40 per hour 

– Mark Seddon – Advisor on media and communications strategy for one day per week at a cost of £200 per day 

– Mohammed Jubair – Advisor on community media matters for one day per week at a cost of £175 per day.

– Amirul Choudhury – Advisor on small businesses, Olympics and enterprise for a maximum of 40 hours at a cost of £25 per hour

– Suroth Miah  – Advisor on sports and sports participation and improving the quality of life for a maximum of 40 hours at a cost of £25 per hour

– Michael Ambrose – Advisor on youth engagement and sponsorship of youth engagement for a maximum of 100 hours at a cost of £25 per hour

– Shahid Malik – Advisor on equalities matters for one day per week at a cost of £200 per day.

He’s from Camden (for his sins) and he and his similarly politically active brother Conrad believe themselves to be the new Miliband brothers, I am told…

Axel Landin  – Advisor on boundary review matters at a cost of £8.39 per hour.

As we all wait for Shelina Akhtar to decide whether she has the dignity to resign as a councillor before being automatically barred from office in 28 days’ time, let’s play that ever interesting Tower Hamlets game of Speculation Politics.

One prominent councillor tells me that the “likely runners” in the almost certain Spitalfields and Banglatown by-election are:

Gulam Robbani (Lutfur/Independent)

Tarik Ahmed Khan (Labour)

Abjol Miah (Respect)

Richard Macmillan (Lib Dems)

Matt Smith (Conservative)

If so–and I’d be surprised–it will be very interesting to see how Robbani and Abjol Miah, the former Respect group leader, play this one out.

Robbani and Abol are relative big guns and effectively Lutfur allies: they could end up splitting the anti-Labour vote and letting Labour in. In the last Spitalfields by-election in snowy December 2010, after Lutfur was required to give up his seat when he became Mayor, Respect’s Fozol Miah beat Labour on a 17 per cent turnout. In that contest, there was no Lutfur/Independent candidate.

Traditionally, the ward was controlled by Helal Abbas and Lutfur Rahman. The former still holds one of the three seats, along  with Fozol and Akhtar.

The timing of the election will also be interesting. The more Ahktar strings out her decision on whether to appeal, the closer we get to the London Mayor elections in May. Common sense and the desire to save taxpayers money (the two rarely go together in Tower Hamlets) should dictate that the two elections are held on the same day, which would mean a higher turnout that favours Labour.

In that case, how would Spitalfields voter Lutfur Rahman cast his votes that day? One for Labour’s Ken Livingstone, of course–the latter rules the former–and another for an anti-Labour candidate? As ever, the Mayor will be in two minds…

As for Tarik Ahmed Khan, he is the secretary of Labour’s branch in the ward and the elder brother of Cllr Anwar Khan, who represents Bow West for Labour. He is thought to be a Josh Peck loyalist.

As the East London Advertiser reports, Shelina Akhtar, who was el;ected in May 2010 for Labour before being kicked out a few months later when she backed Independent Mayor Lutfur Rahman, has been jailed for 16 weeks for benefit fraud.

That’s more than the three month threshhold that in law now disqualifies her from holding elected office.

I don’t know what was her mitigation, who provided any character witnesses, or whether the judge decided to make an example of her because of her position. (I’m on holiday and I’ll have to rely on your reports!)

Here’s the initial ELA account.

Disgraced Tower Hamlets councillor Shelina Akhtar has been jailed after admitting three counts of benefit fraud.

The Spitalfields & Banglatown councillor, 33, of Blackwall way, Poplar was jailed for 16 weeks at Snaresbrook Crown Court this morning after admitting three counts of dishonestly claiming housing benefit and council tax at a hearing last month.

Now for the by-election, which will be a real test of whether Labour can mobilise and command support.

UPDATE 6pm

The East London Advertiser has more details of the court hearing here and copied below:

A Tower Hamlets councillor is still in her job after receiving a three and a half month jail sentence today for benefit fraud.

Shelina Akhtar, a councillor for Spitalfields and Banglatown ward, was given a 16 week custodial sentence, half of which she must serve in prison, at Snaresbrook Crown Court, this morning.

The sentence came after she had pleaded guilty to three counts of failing to notify a change in circumstances, when claiming housing and council tax benefits for a property in Blackwall Way, Poplar.

The court heard that Cllr Akhtar sub-letted her housing association flat for £1,000 a month without permission, while living with her parents and continuing to claim housing and council tax benefits. She also referred a tenant to another housing association flat registered to her sister, Hazera Akhtar, the court was told, and another £1,000 in monthly rent for that flat also went into to the councillor’s bank account. Court charges against her sister were dropped.

Cllr Akhtar falsely claimed a total of £1,085 in housing benefit and £29 in Council Tax during two periods between November 2009 and September 2010.

Prosecuting barrister Michelle Fawcett told the court: “Cllr Akhtar deliberately defrauded the council only months after being elected to the very same local authority despite having been convicted of a similar offence already. She sublet her flat for sheer profit.”

Defence barrister Edward McKiernan urged the judge not make an example of Cllr Akhtar because of her position.

“We have a lot of testimony to say she has been very active in the community and did a lot of hard work as a councillor,” he told the court. He also pointed out that Cllr Akhtar accepted what she did was “unacceptable” and that she had repaid all the money wrongly claimed in benefits to the council.

But sentencing her judge John Lafferty told Cllr Akhtar she had put the reputation of the benefit system in danger by making “hard working” people pay for her benefits.

“We have a benefit system for those who through no fault of their own fall on hard times.”

“You deliberately defrauded the system. As a prominent person you should have lived up to the highest standards.”

Cllr Aktar stood as a Labour councillor for Spitalfields and Banglatown ward but later defected to become an independent and is counted as belonging to Tower Hamlet’s Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s inner circle.

Under the Local Government Act a councillors is automatically disqualified from office if a custodial sentence of more than three months is received.

In a statement the council said: “But that disqualification does not take effect until the opportunity for appeal has expired, which is  28 days after sentence.”

James Frankcom, who used to be a Tower Hamlets Labour party official, writes for that strange phenomenon, East London News. He has a curious writing style, but his account of last Wednesday’s Tower Hamlets Council meeting is enjoyable and informative. He has asked me to publish it as a guest post, so here it is:

By James Frankcom

Those of you who have never been to a council meeting need to know one thing above all others; Tower Hamlets is not a ‘normal’ council and the behaviour you will find in the council chamber is not typically what you find in other chambers of local government in this country.

The full council meeting on January 25^th had all the elegance and profundity of a squabble in a school dinner queue.  The issues discussed were rarely, if ever, things the council could actually do something about or ones with real relevance to the lives of the people outside the debating chamber. Worse still, with embarrassing regularity the meeting descended into a cacophony of vicious bickering as allegation and counter-allegation were bandied about.

The meeting began with several motions moved forward in the agenda. A highly partisan Support Ken Livingstone’s Fair Deal For Transport motion was proposed by Cllr Rabina Khan (Independent, Shadwell) and seconded by Cllr Shafiqul Haque (Labour, St. Katharine’s & Wapping) and despite an amendment tabled by the Conservatives – described as “a load of guff and wind” by Cllr Marc Francis (Labour, Bow East) – it was passed by a large majority.

However, what did this motion actually do to help the people of Tower Hamlets? Entirely nothing; neither doing anything to assist Ken Livingstone in his re-election nor reducing the cost of transport for the people of this borough.

Another motion titled Sexual Exploitation, which righteously condemned the trafficking of people “for the purposes of sexual exploitation, forced labour, domestic slavery and organised crime” was proposed by Cllr Rania Khan (Independent, Bromley-by-Bow) and seconded by Cllr Ohid Ahmed (Independent, East India & Lansbury).

It resolved to “express support” for a charity “promoting the rights of children” and “acknowledged” that more people will enter the UK during the Olympics and some of these may be the victims or the exponents of this vile trade.

All very noble, but what does this actually do in real terms for the people of Tower Hamlets struggling with the worst economic circumstances in eighty years? Arguably, not a lot.

There was a motion condemning the Dow Chemical’s sponsorship of the Olympics (as if anyone from the IOC even opens letters from LBTH) and then yet another motion about the London mayoral election.

Good politics as these issues are I could not help wonder in what tangible ways did their discussion in this forum make the lives of Tower Hamlets residents any better.

During a debate where everyone took turns to say how much they hated racism (usually more so than the last speaker) and what little the council can do to combat it, Cllr Ohid Ahmed, the Deputy Mayor, shouted “by true Labour – not like them in front of me!” implying the Labour Group were not serious about fighting racism, or worse, were complicit in it.

Given that the context of this discussion was the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence this was an extremely serious allegation to make.

Cllr Josh Peck, the leader of the Labour group, immediately took issue with him and raised a Point of Order condemning the “unacceptable allegation” he had just made.

Peck, waving a piece of paper in the air containing what he called “a weak three line apology for the last time he [Ahmed] made similar remarks”, the Labour leader duly demanded that the Deputy Mayor’s comments be recorded verbatim in the official minutes.

This proposal was seconded by Cllr Peter Golds, the Conservative Group leader, who also called for action to be taken against the recalcitrant Deputy Mayor should an apology his “outrageous slur” not be forthcoming. As he spoke howls of derision erupted from the public gallery from people Cllr Golds eruditely described as “the bussed-in Lutfur fan club”.

I then watched with a mixture of depression and disbelief as councillor after councillor berated their neighbour in bile-laden vanity speeches and, to be honest, the only party which came out of the meeting with any semblance of dignity was the Liberal Democrats; but that was a relatively easy task because they have just one councillor – Stephanie Eaton – who wisely kept her head down.

By way of contrast, the small and truculent group of independent councillors allied to the mayor repeatedly disgraced themselves by bitterly attacking their former colleagues in the Labour Group with all the hatred and spite of a recently divorced couple arguing over the division of their CD collection. This was a fight made all the more sad, if I may continue the analogy, because the CDs were the well meaning and sincere gifts of friends whom both partners once shared but now each sought to claim as their own.

The Tories, for their part, appeared to take a certain pleasure from goading the Independents in much the same way naughty boys enjoy poking angry cats with sticks. Frequently that evening they rather incongruously supported Labour motions against the Independents in circumstances which reveal far more about Labour’s poisonous relationship with their former colleagues than they do about the Tories tactics in minority politics.  

Labour, in all this, appear to have found themselves in a situation made all the more bitter by having lost the power which once seemed so assured to them and now reduced to contriving ways to frustrate the Independents, and failing that – just heckling. 

Indeed, at one point during the meeting Cllr Bill Turner appeared to ‘take one for the team’ by apologising to the Speaker for his heckling during a rambling speech by Cllr Shahed Ali.

Things became especially fractious during a recess when an ignoble exchange of words took place between Cllrs Rabina Khan and Peter Golds. This was later regurgitated by Golds in the form of a Point of Order wherein he claimed she had called him “a sexist”.

Throwing any dignity to the wind Rabina Khan erupted in the way you would expect a teenager to respond to someone throwing chips at them on a school bus. In a worryingly aggressive ‘yeah-but/no-but’ style tirade, Little Miss wagged her finger, rolled her eyes and quite ridiculously proclaimed she felt “threatened” by the ageing Conservative councillor.

Indeed, throughout the entire meeting the pugnacious Rabina Khan behaved quite appallingly; spitting self-righteous venom and dragging the council chamber down with her as she repeatedly bickered, hectored and swaggered with all the dignity and restraint of a guest on the Jeremy Kyle Show.

I look up during one of her repeat performances and my eyes momentarily catch those of an ashen faced, sad older man at the side of the room. I look down and read his name plate – he is Commander Ludgate, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant and Her Majesty’s high representative to the borough.

Now all but a relic from a bygone era of civic duty and national service he has, without any compulsion, come to observe these dismal proceedings and I cannot help but wonder what thoughts are going through his head. I return to my note-taking suspecting his private thoughts are not enthusiastic ones.

Sharing that same dais was Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, whose countenance during the meeting was quite different. For he observed all this with the self-satisfied smile of man watching a fight between two people he doesn’t like over a rumour he started.

Indeed, at the only point where his participation was really needed, nay expected, he made the astonishing decision to refuse to answer almost all the questions put to him by councillors – questions actually printed in the order of business and which he would have had ample time to prepare for.

This risible decision which strikes at the heart of formative democratic accountability was weakly defended by the legal assistant on the basis that to force the mayor to speak would “breach his human rights”.

This bizarre excuse, when announced, struck all as an absolutely extraordinary thing for an elected public official to proclaim and thankfully not an excuse either David Cameron at PMQs or Boris Johnson in City Hall has ever used.

Responding to the Mayor’s obvious act of distain, Cllr Motin uz-Zaman asked him directly why he would not reply and was told, “because you’re just a councillor and I’m the mayor!”

Not very long after this, the Mayor completed his snub by wandering out of the council chamber and disappeared for nearly 15 minutes without an explanation or by your leave.

However the abiding memory for me was the pantomime of the Independent Group proposing an Emergency Motion – written in pen like motions are at a joke student union conference – that “condemned the Labour and Conservative Parties for their time wasting tactics and blatant disregard for the public who have come to listen to council business that affects their lives”.

The motion was quite predictably defeated so then the Independents decided to do some really special time-wasting of their own by raising of point of order after point of order and amendment after amendment all of which were defeated and thus further delaying any council business from being made.

Eventually the Labour Group with the tacit support of the Tories moved a procedural motion to speed things up but this was of course opposed by those erstwhile opponents of time-wasting and the moribund meeting finding its life unnaturally extended staggered on until almost midnight.

It would be very unfair to condemn all the councillors alike. The names which stand out among the few who can walk away with any notion of pride were Rachael Saunders (Labour, Mile End East) and the harassed Speaker of the Council, Mizan Chaudhury (Labour, Bethnal Green South); both of whom remained calm, eloquent and dignified throughout.

Many other councillors maintained their dignity by hardly speaking at all and despite their best efforts very little useful business was given much discussion that night and examples of excellence in local government were instantly inundated in the squelching ordure of hate-filled political fractiousness.

As for the “public” who had come to “listen” to “business which affects their lives”, it is fair to say a substantial portion of this public were a political rent-a-mob who happily encouraged the bluster and vitriol in the chamber by heckling from the gallery but a minority of them, myself included, left that place saddened and troubled, wondering why anyone really bothers to vote in local elections at all.

But then it occurs to me – it is precisely because most people don’t bother to vote in local elections that we get what we’ve got – a substandard charade at local democracy containing aspects of a non-specific Carry on Film where at any moment a fight might break out or someone’s trousers might fall down.

Quite frankly, the people of this borough – a borough which has produced true working class heroes such as Millie and George Lansbury, Nellie Cressal and John Scurr – deserve much better. All of the aforementioned were councillors on Poplar Borough Council and were jailed in 1921 for defending East Enders against unfair local rate hikes – and for the record while imprisoned one of their number died.

So I recommend you come and watch your councillor at work and then make an informed choice at the next elections about who to vote for because there are fifty-one of them at Tower Hamlets and, excluding expenses, each of them is paid at least £10,000 per year from our hard earned council tax contributions – that’s more than half a million pounds. Are you angry yet? I know I am.

The commenter “Konnu” on my last post about the Clowns of Tower Hamlets has pointed us all in the direction of Ross Lydall’s blog on the Evening Standard website. It was Ross who broke the story about Speaker Mizan Chaudhury’s taxi bills. On his blog, he provides the detail of the claims Mizan has made since last September when he felt forced by Mercedes Mayor Lutfur Rahman to take taxis to official events.

The amounts are quite mind-boggling and as another commenter, “You couldn’t make it up!”, also noted on the last post, they raise serious questions about who signed them off and why.

Clearly, these could not have been ordinary black cabs the Speaker was taking to events such as the “Sultanate of Oman’s National Day reception in west London” on November 18 (cost £128.10), or to a “Citizenship ceremony in Hampton Court” on October 25 (cost £258.80); or to a “Reception for the Ethiopian Ambassador in Redbridge” on October 31 (cost £146.69); or even to the “Speaker of Hackney’s Charity Event in Mare Street” five miles away from the Tower Hamlets Town Hall on September 28 (cost £145.80).

And not even to the “Mayor of Brent’s Charity Tour of Wembley Stadium” on September 22 at a cost of £205…

Surely not? So what kind of cars cost that? Why was the meter left running?

Some of these events suggest there is some kind of cross-borough ceremonial mayoral racket going on with taxpayers picking up the tab.

Perhaps we should all fork out for a new vehicle for Mizan that would safely allow him to carry his chains. Here’s an idea:

They’re outside Thames Magistrates’ Court every day…

In the meantime, download the full details of the claims here:

I was too busy with the latest developments in the Dow Chemical affair yesterday to blog about the new developments in the war between the two Tower Hamlets mayors. I first reported on their schoolboy spat here and the Evening Standard updated us all here yesterday.

As Ross Lydall reports:

The ceremonial head of Tower Hamlets has gone to war with the borough’s top politician after running up a £9,000 taxi bill.

Mizan Chaudhury, who is the council’s independent “speaker”, says he has been forced to take minicabs after directly-elected mayor Lutfur Rahman scrapped his official car.

He claims this puts him at risk of being robbed while wearing his diamond-encrusted ceremonial chain and has made him a laughing stock among other mayors who ask whether he has come by bus.

Figures seen by the Standard show that Mr Chaudhury, 35, spent £3,913 on taxis in four months attending engagements across London.

He also took Addison Lee minicabs to two events in Birmingham, costing £845 and £875 respectively.

The total bill since the Labour councillor became ceremonial mayor in May – the job was renamed speaker in November – was £8,972, including the cost of a chauffeur-driven Chrysler between May and September.

But Mr Chaudhury told the Standard he was the victim of a plot by Mr Rahman, elected an independent after being ousted by the Labour party, to discredit him.

Mr Chaudhury said: “Lutfur had his own taxi bill and he wanted me to exceed that. The way he did it was to remove the car I had, which we were paying £600 a month for.

“It was all a set-up. It was never to save money. It was to undermine the civic office.”Every other borough has a civic car. I go to events and don’t get the same respect because I’m not using the borough crest because I don’t have an official car. It’s become the talk of every event I go to. People joke: ‘Did you not take the bus today?'”

Mr Chaudhury claimed that Mr Rahman had also evicted him from the mayor’s parlour so he could claim it as his own office.

Mr Rahman attracted controversy last year when it emerged he had leased a £1,500-a-month chauffeur-driven Mercedes to take him to meetings rather than taking the Tube.

The borough of Tower Hamlets is one of the most deprived in the country.

A council spokesman said: “As part of the efficiency drive at Tower Hamlets we have sought to support councillors in discharging their duties in a cost effective manner.

“As such the speaker of the council was offered the use of a Toyota Prius to conduct his civic and ceremonial duties.

“This offer was declined and instead the Speaker chose to use more expensive taxi transport.”

I don’t know when the next cage-fighting event is on at The Troxy, but these two clowns should just battle it out there. As I’ve said before, Lutfur’s decision to strip the Speaker of his dignity and his car was lamentable, particularly when he is busy self-aggrandising leasing his own Mercedes Lutfurmobile. His was a silly childish act that belongs in the primary school playground.

At the same time, Labour leader Josh Peck needs to have a word with Mizan about how to play politics, how to keep the moral high ground; it seems his temper and his ego has got the better of him.

There can be no event that is worth a £900 taxi bill to Birmingham. What was that event? He needs to understand that it is not his money that he is playing hard and fast with, but ours. I’m sure it must be an ambition of his to run a cabinet portfolio one day, but this kind of spendthrift mentality reflects poorly on him and his party.

If I were him, I’d repay those large taxi fares from the Speaker’s special responsibility allowance, ie the extra £8,400 he gets for wearing the chain.

Together, Mizan and Lutfur have reinforced the reputation of Tower Hamlets as a laughing stock, not a clever thing to do when the borough is trying to persuade the Queen to confer it city status.

Another odd piece from the weird and wonderful world of East London News

Shelina Akhtar: Will The Truth Emerge?

Well, it took our Dear Leader eight days, but Mayor Lutfur Rahman has at last called for his friend and benefit fraudster Cllr Shelina Akhtar to resign as a member of Tower Hamlets council. Why he didn’t do it sooner is a mystery and it again underlines both his reactive nature to events and also the ineptitude of his army of highly paid political advisers.

Here’s the full story from the East London Advertiser, which ran an excellent front page editorial last Thursday calling for her to go (let’s see if they dress this up as their victory tomorrow…).

The mayor of Tower Hamlets has demanded a councillor convicted of benefit fraud earlier this month resign from her position immediately.

Despite counting independent Cllr Shelina Akhtar among his circle of supporters since she defected from the Labour party to work with him, Lutfur Rahman finally heeded calls from the opposition to take a tough stance in his condemnation of her.

He announced yesterday he had “asked her to resign as well as to return the benefit overpayment.”

He added: “The council takes a tough stance against the misuse of public funds.”

Cllr Akhtar admitted three counts of dishonestly failing to notify a change of circumstances when claiming housing and Council Tax benefit for a property in Blackwall Way, Poplar at Snaresbrook Crown Court on January 9.

She was convicted of similar offences in July 2010.

Immediately after her recent admission, Cllr Josh Peck and Cllr Peter Golds, leaders of Tower Hamlets Labour and Conservative parties respectively, called on the mayor to demand she quits.

Meanwhile as the mayor’s announcement came in, politicians accused the town hall’s standards committee of ineffectiveness after it insisted it is powerless to suspend Akhtar.

A council spokesman confirmed the councillor has been reported to its internal standards team but said because she is not due to be sentenced until February 6 the case is officially still waiting conclusion and it cannot take action.

This means Akhtar, who represents Spitalfields and Banglatown ward, is still free to claim her councillor’s expenses and vote on decisions.

Cllr Golds said: “Why has she not been put before standards? It puts the whole system into disrepute. People are incensed.”

Just a few weeks ago Labour Cllr Helal Abbas was suspended for complaining about the conduct of a council officer.

Mr Peck said there appeared to be an “unevenness” in the way his case was dealt with in comparison to Cllr Akhtar’s.

The council spokesman said that because Akhtar is an independent she “is not subject to the rules of any political party or group.”

He added: “Constitutionally the mayor has no power to force Cllr Akhtar’s resignation.”

Despite continued attempts to contact Akhtar, the Advertiser has not been able to get a response from her.