Trial by Jeory

My last post here was largely about East End Life. As I was writing it, the Local Government Minister Bob Neill was reading a strongly worded letter from his party colleague, Cllr Peter Golds, who leads the Tory opposition on Tower Hamlets council.

He raises some of the points I made (eg about the disingenuous accounting) and more. I’ll let the letter speak for itself:

Dear Minister

Re: East End Life 

I am writing regarding the London Borough of Tower Hamlets response to the recent guidelines to council run newspapers. Tower Hamlets was the first to run a weekly newspaper and this organ, East End Life, has a reputation of being a notorious, publicly funded propaganda sheet. The veneer of TV listings, restaurant reviews and the description of “community newspaper” is an attempt to conceal the blatant propaganda.

When the government guidelines were introduced the Executive Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, who was backed in his campaign against a Labour candidate by Ken Livingstone, initiated a review of East End Life. This was conducted by the ccouncil’s £100,000 a year Head of Communications, Takki Sulaiman, a former Labour councillor in Haringey who was a close ally of Sharon Shoesmith whilst serving as a Cabinet Member in that authority. He was also a failed Labour candidate in the 2001 general election and lost his seat on Haringey Council in 2006. He is responsible for writing East End Life, and meets weekly with the Mayor to discuss what goes in it. He would be unlikely to facilitate a review that recommended scrapping most of the responsibilities associated with his own highly paid job.

In conducting the survey 624 people responded, out of a population of 25,000. These 624 responses were also the right people. 88% of those responding did so through either an online survey or an open response via the council. But these two methods were advertised only on the Council’s own website and social media or through East End Life. Unsurprisingly there was a 64% positive view of the paper from these surveys. Residents who throw it straight in the bin are unlikely to notice the ad for the survey – or take part in it. Even this skewered sample indicated a 36% view to get rid of the “paper”

In an attempt to manage the views of councillors, Conservative councillors attended a members’ forum on the paper, and, formed a majority of those present. They made their views extremely clear. The review notes of this meeting “it was felt that EEL has had a successful history publishing local news to the wider community, and has been especially successful at promoting the work of schools.” An absolutely staggering misrepresentation of an actual meeting where accurate notes should have been taken.

There are other serious misrepresentations of fact.

The report claims that to abolish East End Life would cost the council £2.1million, and that reductions in frequency would also involve (lower) net costs to the council. The £2.1 million figure comes from the difference the council estimates it would cost to put its statutory advertisements in the local press and the internal transfer cost of advertising in East End Life. There are three things wrong with their approach.

They estimate the cost if they had advertised in all the local newspapers. The East End has one newspaper, the East London Advertiser that has been running for 145 years and is sold in every newsagent and supermarket in the borough. Restricting advertising to this newspaper would clearly result in lower costs

The report bases the cost of advertising in the local press entirely from its rate card. Conservative councillors had already confirmed, in public at council meetings and in the review meeting that the East London Advertiser would offer the council a loyalty rate of £150,000 per year and making available two pages a week for 52 weeks. The review did not take this into account – because no-one involved in it bothered to phone the local press and check this out.

Most astonishingly of all, the £2.1 million figure in this report doesn’t include the savings that will be made by no longer writing, printing and distributing a newspaper. The council already costs this at £1.5 million. The failure to include this sum makes the council’s claim that the net cost of closure is £2.1 million a complete sham.

This consultation is fundamentally flawed and will result in the continuation of a crude propaganda sheet, sent out weekly which will damage the local, independent media and render normal campaigning completely ineffective as no political party can have regular access to campaign funds equal to those available to a local authority. 

I attach copies of the Tower Hamlets Cabinet Report and two recent editions of East End Life, one of which is little more than a political advertorial.

Yours sincerely

Councillor Peter Golds

Leader of the Opposition

London Borough of Tower Hamlets

There is now a real fear among some Tories that while there has been much tough-talking from Eric Pickles and his department about cracking down on waste such as East End Life (indeed at this select committee hearing last December, Grant Shapps waved a copy of East End Life in the faces of MPs to ram home just how much it was Enemy Number 1 (or thereabouts)), when punch comes to shove he’ll be found wanting.

A point that Tories in Tower Hamlets are beginning to make is that the people encouraging Lutfur to fight Whitehall on this matter are Ken Livingstone’s former advisers, including Murziline Parchment. The Tories argue that Ken is using Tower Hamlets as his little incubator and that should he beat Boris next year, we will all see the return of that other waste of toilet paper, The Londoner.

Heard of My Tower Hamlets? No, neither had I until a senior council officer friend of mine pointed it out to me. You can sign up for it here. It was launched a couple of months ago by the council’s communications department, that overpaid, over-funded, under-worked spinning machine which produces and fiddles the figures of East End Life and which is under the control of Lutfur Rahman’s friend, Takki Sulaiman (…in the interests of balance, it does employ a couple of decent people).

Takki has been mentioned several times on this blog, largely because those who work with him tell me he’s a bit of a laughing stock and also because he doesn’t seem to place too much emphasis on transparency, which can be a problem when it comes to communications. However, he’s done well (for himself) and is paid the best part of £100,000 – every penny value for money, I’m sure.

Prior to Tower Hamlets, he was in charge of publicity at Cafcass, the advisory service for the children and family court system. While there he set up something called….My Cafcass. It was set up in 2008/09 and was described as an e-communications portal, through which children could ‘talk’ to social workers via emails or text messages.

The company Takki hired to do the work at Cafcass was Spitalfields-based Captive Minds; in fact, you can see Takki eulogising about the My Cafcass service in a video on Captive Minds’ website here. In total, Cafcass spent £406,000 on the project over three years, including £163,000 on building the portal and a further £75,00 a year running it.

Although Takki described his initiative as a crucial tool, it is now defunct. In the wake of Whitehall spending cuts, Cafcass said that while it was nice to have it, it was a luxury it could do without. So almost £500,000 down the drain.

Within two months of joining Tower Hamlets in March last year though, Takki embarked on something similar for this borough…et voila, My Tower Hamlets.

And who did Takki get in to produce the portal…Captive Minds. According to the council’s response to my freedom of information request on the issue here, he did not even declare any interest about previous involvement with the company. I suspect it would have been more transparent for him to have done so. The FoI request also revealed that Captive Minds’ initial estimate for the project was £45,100, but that ballooned by 33 per cent to £56,295 on delivery. Some £12,500 has also been spent on text messages.

So it’s interesting that while Whitehall deems these portals a luxury, our town hall seems them as a crucial marketing tool. Why? My Tower Hamlets aims to deliver news about the council and its services via text messages and emails on a regular basis.It will also send those who sign up to it details of regular council consultations.

In theory, this is laudable. You only have to read the detail of the report produced for last week’s cabinet on the future of East End Life to show how completely misleading the results of such surveys can be.

For those unaware, Lutfur Rahman has decided to ignore the Government’s new Code of Conduct and continue East End Life as a weekly paper, albeit on a reduced pagination. (He says its budget will be cut by £200,000, but that will, I’m sure, come about through sleight-of-hand accountancy techniques, eg by getting press officers to do much of the writing but not count the cost of their work, or increasing some advertising rates.) Part of Lutfur’s rationale for the Carry On Wasting chirade was the result of a consultation exercise showed that East End life was liked by 72 per cent of residents. Hmm, read the small print at paragraph 11.4 on p208 of the cabinet report here and you see how many people took part:

11.4 The review panel sought the views of the public through a consultation exercise. The following responses were received through the following routes: • Open response 108

• Online Survey 444

• Councillor workshop 7

• Advertiser survey 14

• My.TH survey 51

Total 624

That just seven councillors (three Labour and four Tory) took part in two workshops on the future of the newssheet is a story in its own right. However, the broader conclusion is that not that many people take part in these exercises. If My Tower Hamlets can achieve an improvement in this area and the details of all such numbers are published then that will be a good thing.

The cabinet report also states that My Tower Hamlets, via the ability of residents to provide feedback, will become a major factor in fulfilling the long term aim of moving East End Life from costly print to online. This is where localism can really work.

The following email has been sent out to most, but not all councillors, in Tower Hamlets. It was forwarded to me by someone whose family is not of Bangladeshi background.

Dear Councillor, 

I would like to invite you to a ‘Public Meeting’, as our Special Guest, that we are organising in support of and to invigorate our campaign for the delivery of ‘Bengali’, our Mother Tongue, as a Modern/Foreign Language in mainstream primary schools in England, in compliance with the Government’s Modern/Foreign Language Policy for primary schools.

This meeting will commence on Saturday, 11^th of June 2011, at 3.00pm, at the Waterlilly Conference Hall, 89 Mile End Road, London E1 4US (entrance on the Mile End Road, next to Blockbuster).

You will appreciate that this is a common and rightful cause, thus we have to work together with absolute determination and unity of purpose, in order to establish ‘Bengali’ as a Modern/Foreign Language at key stage 2 (from year 3) in the curriculum of primary schools in the demographical areas of England, where there is a concentration of Bengali speaking communities. We have to conduct this campaign unceasingly until we achieve a successful outcome so that we can ensure that our children have the opportunity to learn their first language in primary schools, at key stage 2, and reap the immense benefits, that it will bring to them in terms of acquiring linguistic and multi-skills, improving educational attainment, developing the knowledge of our culture and roots and enhancing career and economical opportunities and to strengthening community cohesion.

As a Councillor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, your participation in this meeting will add immeasurable weight to this campaign and your support is vital for the achievement of our right.

A positive response from your good offices would be highly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Muhammad Ghulam Mortuza

(Convenor, Campaign for Bangla in Mainstream Primary Schools in England)

Dr. M A Hannan

Director
Tower Hamlets Parents Centre

Unit 1 Links Yard

29 Spelman Street

London


E1 5LX
Tel

020 7650 8936

The Department for Education told me the following today: the teaching of a modern foreign language is not compulsory at primary school. At secondary level, between the ages of 11 and 14, it is. It used to be the case that a major European language had to be taught. That is no longer the case: today, the only requirement is that a “world language” must be taught. World languages are not defined, but the DfE spokesman confirmed that Bengali would fall into that category. He said it would be a matter for the school governors to assess their resources and decide what to offer.

The DfE spokesman said the decision of secondary schools in a particular area should be important in determining what is offered at primary level. He reiterated that it would again be a matter of resource: if the governors of a primary school wanted to offer Bengali, that would be up to them, but that might have an impact on their ability to teach other languages, such as Chinese or French.

In fact, here’s their response:

There’s isn’t a specific list of languages that can be taught at primary schools. It’s down to individual schools as to what they chose – however it is obviously dependent on the school having the relevant teachers, and good schools will usually discuss options with parents, and also with neighbouring secondary schools so that they offer the same languages.

Anyone familiar with the history of Bangladesh will know that the issue of the Bengali language is emotive. Personally, I’m a great believer in children learning a foreign language: done well, it can foster a broader outlook and it is a good discipline in itself. Languages are also important in helping the children of immigrant families learn about their history, culture and roots.

However, I do wonder about this campaign. Look at the language of the email: that Bengali is “our Mother Tongue”; that children will have the learn “their first language” in primary schools. I wonder whether it’s the older generation driving it. Are older Bengalis in denial about their kids and their grandchildren? Perhaps they don’t hear them speaking English as they hang out on streets or as they mess around in the playgrounds?

Should public money be used to fund such lessons? Are parents not better equipped to teach their kids Bengali at home (should they wish) and so allow their children the chance to learn another foreign language at school. Perhaps learning Bengali would be the better option. But why would teaching it “strengthen community cohesion”?

It’s a tricky subject: open to all for debate…

In previous posts, I’ve suggested that Lutfur Rahman probably needs to be careful about who he chooses as his friends.

It’s quite possible that the likes of millionaire businessman Shiraj Haque and Mohammed Mahee Jalil Ferdhaus, the convicted insurance fraudster who owns the popular Bangladeshi satellite TV station Channel S, which, separately, is a major fundraiser for the East London Mosque, will want a return for their support.

The latter, especially, seems to court, er, how shall we put it, the occasional spot of trouble.

In the early hours of Wednesday, May 25, Mahee was allegedly abducted leaving his own office in Walthamstow, then blindfolded and taken across London before being strung up by the ankles and apparently beaten to a pulp and scolded with boiling water.

After being tortured, he was allegedly later dumped on the North Circular and given £30 to find a cab to take him home and then on to hospital, where I’m told he still remains. Mahee believes his abductors were thugs hired by a business rival.

Admittedly, this Kray-style account – it is a curious must-read here – does come from the website of the East London News, which is an offshoot of that well-known purveyor of accuracy, the London Bangla, but the police are involved.

Soon after the alleged incident, the police issued the following statement:

“A 38 year old man remains in an east London hospital in a serious but stable condition following an alleged assault on Wednesday 25th May in Walthamstow E17. Enquiries by Waltham Forest Police are continuing.”

Since then, a 41-year-old man from Windermere Gardens, Ilford, has been arrested and charged with alleged abduction. He appeared at Waltham Forest Magistrates’ Court on May 30 and was remanded in custody. (I have his name, but for legal reasons, I’m not publishing it at this stage – anyone wanting it can contact me by email).

I hope Lutfur’s THEOs, the sub-plastic policemen he he employs at great expense, are putting in extra VIP protection training these days…

Admittedly, this post is entering dangerous territory, but as many commenters on this blog have noted before, the politics of Bangladesh have an important influence on various institutions in Tower Hamlets. Any visit by that country’s leading politicians is a great event and also a chance to gauge which way our own elected politicians lean.

When the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, visited in January, I’m told that Lutfur Rahman did not meet her: whether this was because he was snubbed or he declined, I’m not sure. Hasina leads the left-leaning Awami League, a party that is currently aiming to try those accused of war crimes (including allegedly one very senior former member of the East London Mosque) 1971 War of Independence. As a guide, former Labour group leader, Helal Abbas, is a supporter of the Awami League, which also has links to the respected Brick Lane Mosque.

The main opposition party in Bangladesh is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). It is described as a centre-right party and according to its Wikipedia entry:

Ideologically, the party has professed Bangladeshi nationalism, described as the Islamic consciousness of the people of Muslim majority Bangladesh, in order to counter the secular Awami League.

There is more:

Hundreds of its leaders, including Khaleda Zia, her sons as well as dozens of its former ministers and lawmakers were arrested on corruption charges by the military-backed Caretaker government of Bangladesh during the 2006–2008 Bangladeshi political crisis. The party has also been accused of turning a blind eye to the growth of militant Islamic extremism in the country and for allying itself with Islamic fundamentalist parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, which had also opposed the independence of Bangladesh.

Jamaat e Islami wants an Islamic Republic of Bangladesh and it is associated with the spread of Deobandi Islam, a fundamentalist form of Islam followed by the Taliban and linked to Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia.

When I asked Lutfur about his views on Bangladesh politics in 2008, published on this blog last year here, he said:

TJ:  People say that IFE supports Jamaat e Islami in Bangladesh. What are your views on that?

LR:  OK. That is something I don’t know. In terms of Bangladeshi politics, yeah, I don’t belong to a party and I don’t even support a party in Bangladesh, nor do I get involved in anything to do with Bangladeshi parties. I’m so happy that we’ve got a democratically elected government after two years of quasi-military rule. I’m grateful that people have seen sense and elected a democratically elected government, a socially progressive government in Bangladesh. I don’t get involved in Bangladeshi politics because I don’t even know anything about it.

So interesting then that is he today hosting a lunch at Mulberry Place at 2.30pm today for BNP Opposition leader Khaleda Zia, then later a formal reception for councillors at 4pm. I’d imagine there might be a protest.

The Wharf newspaper reports:

The borough has launched a bid to be granted city status as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations next year, when one local authority area will be granted the honour.

Tower Hamlets faces competition from the likes of Blackpool, Middlesbrough and Reading but Mayor Lutfur Rahman is convinced a successful bid would benefit one of the most deprived areas in the country.

He said: “I feel being a city would be a fantastic boost to the borough and really show what we have to offer.

“We are unique in that we have a thriving business and shopping district in Canary Wharf, an innovative arts scene, a first-rate university on our doorstep in Queen Mary, and a vibrant community spirit, which has embraced different groups of people throughout our history.

“The royal wedding celebrations which I attended were testament to the genuine community spirit that exists in the borough and there is a real appetite to build on this pride and let everyone know what an amazing place Tower Hamlets is. I hope residents will support our bid to become a city.”

The bid is supported by Canary Wharf Group, and has the backing of many other businesses in the borough.

Any local authority in any part of the United Kingdom which considers that its area deserves to be granted the rare honour of city status is eligible to apply.

The council will submit a bid document to the Government on May 27, with a decision expected early next year.

What the practical implications of such a status in terms of funding and governance would be, I don’t know. I think we should also be told how much preparing this application will cost and whether there will be penalties for vexatious bids.

Questions, questions…

UPDATE – 1.50pm

Of course, we should really note that Canary Wharf Group is backing this: it sees itself as a rival to the City of London and it would love City of Canary Wharf status. I’m sure they don’t mind making Lutfur look like a fool for that purpose.

By the way, I’ve just been told that Lutfur has a meeting at 1pm in the Town Hall to discuss the progress of his mayoralty….with one Baroness Uddin. As one councillor remarked, “It’s still not April 1″…

Here’s some more from last night’s meeting of the Tower Hamlets Labour group. As well as picking Josh Peck as leader (extra £12,658 allowance a year on top of his basic £10,065), former council chair Motin uz-Zaman has become his deputy and Anwar Khan remains as chief whip.

David Edgar’s defeat is, I said, a short term blow for Mayor Lutfur Rahman. I’m told that there was a Plan A in place in the event of an Edgar win, which would have seen Lutfur readmitted into the Labour fold by the time of Ken Livingstone’s final campaigning for next year’s London mayor elections. That would have allowed Ken and Lutfur to share the same platform without too much embarrassment, according to the plan (which was not known about, concocted or endorsed by David himself, it has to be said).

I’m also told that there was and is a Plan B, which could also lead to the same outcome, but with rather more collateral damage. It is now expected that such is the rancour within the Labour group that there could well be now regular wrecking tactics and rebellions against the party whip, for example voting against some of last night’s appointments at the full council meeting next Wednesday. The idea would be to bully Josh and the anti-Lutfur brigade into accepting an outcome the new leader would probably rather resign over.

The other interesting development from last night’s meeting is the group’s choice of chair and deputy chair of the council. Mizan Chaudhury beat Anna Lynch to become the nomination for chair (picking up an extra £7,557) and Rajib Ahmed is the proposed deputy (plus a bonus of £3,777).

Now, both these chaps have history. A similar history to Lutfur, in fact.

At a press conference in late 2005 to unveil Labour’s candidates for the following May’s council elections, Mizan had to be man-handled out of the room by party officials after he had a stand-up row with Jim Fitzpatrick. Mizan was (probably rightly) cheesed off that less talented people had been selected over him. So, after his eviction from the press conference, he promptly stood against Labour and evicted himself from the party. Remind you of anyone?

His new deputy, Rajib, a part-time singer and magician, is also someone who has previously left Labour because he didn’t get what he wanted. He was a Labour councillor between 1998 and 2002, but was de-selected for the 2002 elections, then suddenly realised he was a big fan of the Lib Dem ideology. He was re-elected as a Lib Dem in 2006 and for the next two years, he became the Mystery Man of Tower Hamlets politics. Although he found time to bank his £9,500 a year allowance during that time, he was far too busy to actually either attend council meetings or even file his time sheets, something that led to a rebuke from the borough’s toothless Standards Committee. As he was about to be expelled from the Lib Dems in 2008 for being useless, he suddenly jumped ship back to Labour. Remind you of anyone?

Clearly, he’s a man whose political principles have not exactly been solid; let’s say that he can be “persuaded”. In the last few months, he’s been a Lutfur sympathiser and I wonder whether he voted for David or Josh last night? And in return for what? I wonder whether he will donate that extra £3,557 to a charity?

As deputy, he will have no major role, but he will represent the council at official functions and is in line to become its chair next year.

It is during the council meetings that chair has influence: he or she can dictate the tone of the occasion, particularly when it comes to Lutfur,

The problem with the Labour group is that it contains so many people with so much history of switching sides that no wonder Lutfur is convinced it’s just a matter of time before he gets back in.

As the council’s finance spokesman for four years, Josh won many admirers, but over the next year I suspect the numbers game within his own group is going to be a much harder job to master.

Breaking news: Josh Peck has defeated David Edgar to become leader of the Labour group in Tower Hamlets.

He won by 19 votes to 12, I’m told. This is also a defeat for Ken Livingstone, who personally made calls to Labour councillors asking them to support Edgar, who some of whose supporters would have worked for Lutfur Rahman’s readmission into the party fold by next year.

More analysis later (I am enjoying a good dinner at the moment).

…

Anjem Choudary has just sent this text to his supporters:

Urgent announcement: I’ll be leading the funeral prayer for Sheikh Usama outside the US embassy this Fri @ 3pm & will demand his body be returned to his family

A couple of weeks ago I ran this post about how Anjem has made as his new base the Centre for Islamic Studies at 32 New Road, Whitechapel. In this article for the Sunday Express on the same day, I wrote:

Vince Cable’s business department is examining whether funds given to Yazdani Choudary for IT training and apprenticeship projects over the past seven years were “allocated properly”.

Mr Choudary, 48, is the wealthy elder brother of Anjem Choudary, 44, whose fanatical groups such as Al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK, are banned in Britain.

Anjem, who wants a worldwide Islamic state and threatened a rabble-rousing march through Wootton Bassett to disrupt coming home ceremonies for dead British soldiers, is UK spokesman for Al Qaeda sympathiser Omar Bakri Mohammed.

The latest group with which he is involved, Muslims Against Crusades, is planning to cause chaos at next week’s wedding with a “forceful demonstration”.

The group has warned Prince William “and his Nazi best man” Prince Harry that unless they immediately withdraw from the military, the “day which the nation has been dreaming of for so long will become a nightmare”.

Prince Harry, depicted on the fanatics’ website with a swastika on his Army beret, is expected to become a greater target after being promoted to Captain yesterday. He will get extra training on Apache helicopters and learn how to use them in Afghanistan.

Scotland Yard fears violent clashes in London on Royal Wedding day with the extremist English Defence League, which staged a stand-off with a large Muslim march outside the US Embassy in London on Friday.

The Government’s inquiry came after a Sunday Express investigation into Anjem Choudary’s new teaching and recruiting wing, the Centre for Islamic Services. It operates from the basement of a three-storey building in New Road, Whitechapel, east London, bought by brother Yazdani on a nine-year lease for £26,000. An application in Yazdani’s name to convert two floors for use as an “Islamic teaching centre” was refused last month by Tower Hamlets Council. We have also established that:

CIS placed 22 adverts for new pupils in Tower Hamlets Council’s weekly paper East End Life.

This story here ran on the front page of today’s Sunday Express.

In the article’s central thrust, you’ll see that Tower Hamlets Council’s East End Life has been carrying adverts for an “Islamic education centre” operated from a building at 32 New Road, Whitechapel, which is owned by Anjem Choudary’s elder brother, Yazdani.

The Centre for Islamic Services there involves Anjem. His brother has been the recipient of Government contracts worth more than £1million, I have been told.

Yazdani, who is more frequently known as Dani Choudary, has hired to work for him someone who was convicted of terror related offences in 2008. His name is Shah Jalal Hussain.

Tower Hamlets Council told me they made checks before deciding to run the adverts.

What sort of checks?