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Posts Tagged ‘love wapping’

First the politics.

bigpicSince my last post (due to time and summer priorities, I’m writing less regularly) we’ve had one more defection in the Independent Group formerly known as Tower Hamlets First (who were formerly known as Independents).

Mufti Miah (pictured) has had the courage to do what other bigger mouths have been threatening to do for quite some time.

John Williams, the busy head of ‘democratic services’ at Tower Hamlets council, wrote this to councillors on July 31:

Dear Councillors,

I have today received notice from Councillor Mohammed Mufti Miah that with immediate effect he is no longer a member of the Independent Group of councillors.

Councillor Miah has asked me to inform all Councillors of this.  He will continue to serve on the Council as an independent (ungrouped) member. 

Councillor Miah has told me that he wishes to thank everyone who he has had the honour of serving the community with, and he looks forward to serving the community in all constructive endeavours to improve the community and the lives of those who have elected the councillors.

Mohammed Mufti Miah joins Abjol Miah as the two lone defectors from the very unstable and unhappy ship of Lutfurites, who now number 15. More are sure to follow.

Now the comedy.

Here’s how that fine upstanding man of principle, Cllr Gulam Robbani responded to John’s email:

Dear Mr William,

Thank you for your email. I would be grateful if you can inform Cllr Abjol Miah and Mufti Miah if they would like to resign from the council and re-elect  as independent or labour if that what they been dreaming about? Tory will not touch them with burg pole ! They were elected on back of THF and they should follow the UKIP model?  UKIP MP resign from Tory and they were re-elected as UKIP ! Would both Miah follow the UKIP MP if they feel so confident? I would like to challenge both councillor to do that! [sic, ad nauseam]

I love the way Robbani admires the Ukip model so. Had all his honourable colleagues followed it throughout the years, by my count we would have had 11 by elections in total. Instead we have had none.

For the record, Ohid Ahmed defected from Labour to Lutfur/independent in 2010, as did Abdul Asad, Shafiqul Haque, Aminur Khan, Rabina Khan, Shahed Ali and Oliur Rahman. The latter two have defected two and three times respectively during their career (Shahed from Respect to Labour; Oli from Respect to Respect Independent, then to Labour).

And let’s not forget Maium Miah who jumped from the Tories to Lutfur in 2010 as well.

So good for Abjol Miah and Mufti Miah. They’re merely following a fine tradition in Tower Hamlets.

Now for the intrigue.

Eric_Pickles_OfficialLast week, Sir Eric Pickles again singled out Tower Hamlets for mention as he launched his first initiative as David Cameron’s corruption tsar: a nationwide investigation into vote fraud. In various interviews he compared multiculturalism,

In a piece for the Daily Telegraph, he wrote this:

In Tower Hamlets, police and council staff failed to tackle intimidation – often in foreign languages – both inside and outside polling stations. Just as we have seen with child sexual exploitation in places such as Rochdale and Rotherham, institutionalised political correctness can lead to the state turning a blind eye to criminal conduct. But the law must be applied equally and fairly to everyone. Integration and good community relations are undermined by the failure to do so.

And in an interview with Sebastian Payne at the Spectator, he said this:

‘What appears to have happened in Tower Hamlets is similar to what happened in Rotherham, in the sense that as with sexual exploitation, people just turned a blind eye because they were worried about community cohesion and the same seems to have happened in Tower Hamlets’. To clarify, I ask does he believe that politicians and officials were too concerned about multiculturalism and ignored the years of warning signs from Tower Hamlets? ‘Yes, of course’.

This is dangerous territory for it risks feeding a racist narrative that [electoral] corruption exists only in non-white communities. There is enough corruption/fraud in the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall with MP/Lords expenses and government contracts to know that’s certainly not the case.

I suspect that in Tower Hamlets, the Met failed to do its job principally because it was wary of getting involved with murky local politics. That’s not to excuse them by the way: I think they’ve been useless over the years and as Sir Eric also points out in the Spectator, corrupt behaviour in one sphere can be symptomatic of rottenness elsewhere:

‘Tower Hamlets is a warning,’ Pickles says. ‘If you are willing to bend the rules and to break the law with regard to elections, you are willing to bend the rules and break the law with regard to the proper running of an authority’. 

Which brings us to the ongoing court saga involving Lutfur Rahman. Love Wapping has been doing a great job in reporting, e.g. here and here.

6716_Andrew_EdisOn August 3, Mr Justice Edis (pictured) delivered his ruling on the injunction freezing Lutfur’s assets, a decision made by an earlier judge after an application by the election petitioners who are seeking to recover their legal costs.

The full judgment, extending the injunction until Jan 31 2016, is here. I also recommend bookmarking it: it is characterised by a certain degree of scepticism regarding the origin of Lutfur’s legal fund.

Some of you will not be aware just how much money he managed to accumulate by way of what he says were loans before, during and after the Election Court hearing. If not, take a deep breath: £750,000.

As part of the court process, Lutfur was forced to disclose his list of donors/lenders, which included young nieces and nephews lending more than £100,000.

Having highlighted and uncovered so much corruption during the election court hearing, Francis Hoar, the petitioners’ barrister who was described as a “tour de force” by Richard Mawrey QC in April, quite clearly senses a certain back-of-the-envelope/cash-under-the-table modus operandi when it comes to those involved with Tower Hamlets First. He said the list of donors suggested “money laundering”.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Edis delivers a mild rebuke to Francis, but asks whether the loans were “designed to conceal” Lutfur’s “true wealth”:

There controversy during the hearing before me on 3rd August about Mr. Hoar’s description of this evidence as showing “money laundering”. This was, in my judgment, an unnecessarily inflammatory expression. Mr. Hoar made it immediately clear that he did not mean that any of this money was the proceeds of crime. To my mind that makes the use of the term inapt. What he actually meant was that this evidence casts grave doubt on the suggested source of the sum of £749,500. If it was not loans from the 52 named people or companies was it actually the defendant’s money? If so, was the arrangement designed to conceal this fact so that his true wealth remained hidden from the claimant?

Dynamite stuff.

Following Lutfur’s ‘Defend Democracy’ rally at the Waterlily at the end of April, Labour NEC member Christine Shawcroft volunteered to become a trustee for a properly constituted legal fund; she even wrote a cheque for the grand sum of £100. As a result, she was suspended by the party.

It seems as though she was the only Trot to put her money where her mouth was when it came to backing Lutfur. But that fund never even got off the ground. In the background, there was a move by Lutfur’s supporters to boost the coffers of the existing fund. Lutfur’s lawyers were due to lodge the details of his loan arrangements with the court on Friday.

If suspicions remain, it won’t just be lawyers asking serious questions.

For the fund, there 123 transactions listed from 53 separate people or organisations.

Thanks to the excellent technical work of Love Wapping here, we can see a summary below:

From Subtotal (£)
Foujiya Sultana 82,500
CLR Sullik Ahmed 60,000
Mohammed Abdul Munim 60,000
Muzirul Haque 42,000
All Seasons Lettings 40,000
Amirul Choudhury 35,000
Rafla Munni 31,000
Limehouse.com (10,8,7) 25,000
Mehdi Hasan Choudhury (Radi) 24,500
Shamsun Noor 24,000
London Training Centre 22,000
A Chowdhury 20,000
Anuwar Ali 20,000
Shenaly Miah 20,000
Lutfur Rahman 17,700
CLR Aminur Khan 14,500
Rafia Munni 11,730
Mamunur Rahman 11,500
Rina Begum 11,000
Ahfaz Miah 10,000
Ashadur Rahman 10,000
CLR G Rabbani 10,000
Jayed Khan 10,000
M lslam 10,000
Roseina Yasmin 10,000
Saif Uddin Moni 8,000
Masuma Sultana 7,000
Rujina Yasmin 7,000
Nanu Miah 6,000
Salik Zahid 6,000
Zuber Ahmed 6,000
Afia Farid 5,000
Azm Adbullah Zaki 5,000
Baig Ahmed 5,000
Fateha Ahmed 5,000
Mornotaz Begum 5,000
Nafisa Nargis Robbani 5,000
Sanjid Sarni 5,000
CLR Maium Miah 4,500
Jabir Miah 4,000
Shahed 4,000
Dipa Begum 3,000
Mazharul Alom 3,000
Mehrajul Islam Bokul Syed 3,000
Razia Salique 3,000
Saleh Abed 3,000
Syed Ferdous Ali 3,000
Syed Shahriar 3,000
Suma Rahman 2,000
Syed Farazul Islam 2,000
Syed Misbaul Reza 2,000
Kamal Uddin Chowdhury 1,300
Tufeil Sattar 1,000
Ayesha Farid 270
Total £749,500

 

Top of the chart is Lutfur’s niece, Foujiya Sultana, who lives with him in Old Monatgue Street. She’s aged 23. Here is what Mr Justice Edis had to say about this in his judgment:

The “loans” identified…total £749,500 and were made by 53 different donors. Ms. Turner, the claimant’s solicitor has filed evidence to show that some of these individuals are not likely to have been able to afford such sums. I will not set it out in full, but an example is Foujiya Sultana. She is said to have lent the defendant £80,000 between September and December 2014 and a further £2,500 since. The defendant said in his evidence at the trial that Foujiya Sultana was his niece aged 23 or 24 years. She has a job which is not likely to enable her to acquire large capital sums.

Rafia Munni is said to have paid £8,000 directly to K&L Gates [Lutfur’s solicitors] on 17th July 2014. This is the only payment so described and I infer that the rest of the payments (amounting to £741,500) were made to the defendant who paid them onwards to K&L Gates. This inference is supported by the payments out to that firm from the defendant’s Natwest account to which I will come shortly. In addition to that payment Rafia Munni paid further sums amounting to £34,730 in September and November 2014. Again, the evidence suggests that her employment is unlikely to generate such sums.

Limehouse.com is said to have lent £25,000 and the London Training Centre £22,000. The financial circumstances of these companies, so far as the evidence reveals, do not permit the making of such loans. Therefore, the suggested sources of these payments into the defendant’s bank accounts are questionable.

Where did the money come from? A further question is this: why did all these people lend the defendant money? A donation to a political cause is one thing, but a loan implies an expectation of repayment. Why did anyone think that the defendant would be able to repay £749,500 in loans? According to him, he has a 26% share in one property in London and £12,659.62 in the Bank. It is reasonable to infer that some of these lenders must have a different view of the creditworthiness of the defendant than this. How has this come about?

Other notable names on the list include Cllr Sullik (aka Suluk) Ahmed, who is said to have lent £60,000. According to his current register of interests he has no employment or declarable income. He is said to be reasonably wealthy from a house renovations company he used to run.

Other councillors include Maium Miah with £4,500. According to his register of interests as of August 2015, his employment is as a Community Development Worker at the Island Neighbourhood Project, Methodist Church (although according to this statement dated October 2014, that project has since closed down). Cllr Aminur Khan, Rabina’s husband, lent £14,500, while Cllr Ghulam Robbani seems to have had a spare £10,000.

Quite possibly the wealthiest name on the list is Amirul Choudhury, who gave/lent £30k. He owns and runs successful ChyTel Communications a mobile phone shop on Mile End Road and which forever advertises in East End Life.

A former council employee, Mazharul Alom, who used to work for not a great deal of money in Lutfur’s mayoral office before suddenly walking out rather abruptly on John Biggs last month, is also on the list. He appears to have had £3,500 spare. He gave that money to Lutfur by cheque on May 8, a few days after the Waterlily when the calls for help were at their most intense. How very generous.

The full list of transactions disclosed to the court is below.

A number of people are now examining each and every one. Anyone who has solid evidence or credible information and not mere speculation, please get in touch.

Lutfur’s lawyers have stressed throughout there is no wrongdoing in any of this.

No Date From Amount (£)
1 17/07/2014 Rafia Munni 8,000
2 19/08/2014 All Seasons Lettings 5,000
3 19/08/2014 All Seasons Lettings 15,000
4 03/09/2014 Shahed 2,000
5 03/09/2014 Rafia Munni 1,730
6 03/09/2014 Rafla Munni 7,500
7 04/09/2014 Shenaly Miah 15,000
8 05/09/2014 Rujina Yasmin 5,000
9 08/09/2014 Shahed 2,000
10 08/09/2014 Ayesha Farid 270
11 08/09/2014 Rafla Munni 5,500
12 15/09/2014 Foujiya Sultana 5,000
13 15/09/2014 Foujiya Sultana 10,000
14 15/09/2014 Foujiya Sultana 10,000
15 19/09/2014 Nanu Miah 6,000
16 24/10/2014 All Seasons Lettings 10,000
17 31/10/2014 CLR Maium Miah 2,000
18 Nov/2014 Afia Farid 1,000
19 Nov/2014 Rafla Munni 2,000
20 Nov/2014 Rafla Munni 3,000
21 Nov/2014 Mehdi Hasan Choudhury (Radi) 3,500
22 Nov/2014 Syed Misbaul Reza 2,000
23 Nov/2014 Syed Shahriar 3,000
24 Nov/2014 Rafia Munni 2,000
25 Nov/2014 Shenaly Miah 5,000
26 Nov/2014 Rafla Munni 3,000
27 Nov/2014 Foujiya Sultana 15,000
28 Nov/2014 Rafla Munni 10,000
29 Nov/2014 Mehdi Hasan Choudhury (Radi) 5,000
30 Nov/2014 Mamunur Rahman 5,000
31 Nov/2014 Saif Uddin Moni 1,000
32 Nov/2014 Lutfur Rahman 3,000
33 Nov/2014 Rujina Yasmin 2,000
34 Nov/2014 Dipa Begum 3,000
35 Nov/2014 Shamsun Noor 5,000
36 Nov/2014 Shamsun Noor 7,000
37 Nov/2014 CLR Aminur Khan 2,000
38 Nov/2014 All Seasons Lettings 10,000
39 Nov/2014 CLR G Rabbani 5,000
40 Nov/2014 Nafisa Nargis Robbani 5,000
41 03/11/2014 Roseina Yasmin 10,000
42 06/11/2014 Mohammed Abdul Munim 25,000
43 14/11/2014 Lutfur Rahman 1,000
44 14/11/2014 Lutfur Rahman 2,000
45 18/11/2014 Lutfur Rahman 2,000
46 20/11/2014 Mamunur Rahman 3,000
47 21/11/2014 Afia Farid 2,000
48 Dec-2014 Fateha Ahmed 5,000
49 Dec/2014 Amirul Choudhury 10,000
50 03/12/2014 Mohammed Abdul Munim 25,000
51 09/12/2014 Foujiya Sultana 40,000
52 19/12/2014 CLR Aminur Khan 10,000
53 19/12/2014 Anuwar Ali 10,000
54 29/12/2014 Mehdi Hasan Choudhury (Radi) 10,000
55 29/12/2014 Mamunur Rahman 3,000
56 29/12/2014 Jayed Khan 10,000
57 29/12/2014 Mornotaz Begum 5,000
58 30/12/2014 Lutfur Rahman 2,000
59 30/12/2014 Mehrajul Islam Bokul Syed 3,000
60 30/12/2014 CLR Maium Miah 2,500
61 Jan/2015 Limehouse.com (10,8,7) 25,000
62 02/01/2015 CLR Aminur Khan 2,500
63 05/01/2015 Syed Farazul Islam 2,000
64 21/01/2015 Afia Farid 1,000
65 23/01/2015 Muzirul Haque 25,000
66 26/01/2015 Mehdi Hasan Choudhury (Radi) 1,000
67 30/01/2015 Muzirul Haque 8,000
68 Feb/2015 London Training Centre 5,000
69 Feb/2015 Amirul Choudhury 5,000
70 02/02/2015 Saif Uddin Moni 4,000
71 03/02/2015 Lutfur Rahman 1,000
72 04/02/2015 Zuber Ahmed 3,000
73 06/02/2015 Zuber Ahmed 3,000
74 06/02/2015 Muzirul Haque 9,000
75 06/02/2015 London Training Centre 7,000
76 06/02/2015 Anuwar Ali 10,000
77 23/02/2015 A Chowdhury 10,000
78 23/02/2015 A Chowdhury 10,000
79 27/02/2015 Amirul Choudhury 10,000
80 02/03/2015 Baig Ahmed 2,000
81 03/03/2015 Salik Zahid 5,000
82 09/03/2015 Baig Ahmed 2,000
83 09/03/2015 Amirul Choudhury 10,000
84 09/03/2015 Shamsun Noor 5,000
85 09/03/2015 Razia Salique 3,000
86 09/03/2015 Lutfur Rahman 3,000
87 09/03/2015 Saif Uddin Moni 2,000
88 09/03/2015 Suma Rahman 2,000
89 09/03/2015 Kamal Uddin Chowdhury 1,000
90 10/03/2015 Sanjid Sarni 5,000
91 10/03/2015 Saleh Abed 3,000
92 10/03/2015 Syed Ferdous Ali 3,000
93 10/03/2015 London Training Centre 5,000
94 11/03/2015 Baig Ahmed 1,000
95 11/03/2015 Masuma Sultana 2,000
96 16/03/2015 Salik Zahid 1,000
97 16/03/2015 London Training Centre 5,000
98 30/03/2015 Ashadur Rahman 10,000
99 07/04/2015 Saif Uddin Moni 1,000
100 10/04/2015 CLR Sullik Ahmed 15,000
101 13/04/2015 CLR Sullik Ahmed 15,000
102 16/04/2015 Lutfur Rahman 3,700
103 16/04/2015 Kamal Uddin Chowdhury 300
104 24/04/2015 Shamsun Noor 5,000
105 28/04/2015 CLR Sullik Ahmed 10,000
106 30/04/2015 CLR G Rabbani 5,000
107 30/04/2015 Rina Begum 11,000
108 30/04/2015 Jabir Miah 4,000
109 05/05/2015 CLR Sullik Ahmed 20,000
110 08/05/2015 Mazharul Alom 3,000
111 13/05/2015 Afia Farid 1,000
112 13/05/2015 Shamsun Noor 2,000
113 13/05/2015 Mehdi Hasan Choudhury (Radi) 5,000
114 13/05/2015 Ahfaz Miah 9,000
115 13/05/2015 Ahfaz Miah 1,000
116 14/05/2015 Azm Adbullah Zaki 5,000
117 14/05/2015 Masuma Sultana 5,000
118 14/05/2015 Foujiya Sultana 2,500
119 14/05/2015 M lslam 5,000
120 14/05/2015 M lslam 5,000
121 15/05/2015 Mohammed Abdul Munim 10,000
122 15/05/2015 Mamunur Rahman 500
123 18/05/2015 Tufeil Sattar 1,000
Total £749,500

Read Full Post »

Three issues.

1. Undue spiritual influence, mosques and John Biggs

Tower Hamlets First (I’ll use this name for ease of reference for the time being although they’re banned from using it and in any case it may well be more appropriate to call them the party named in point 3 below) are trying to whip up a frenzy over a visit by John Biggs to a mosque in Roman Road, Bow, on Friday.

It was caught on video here:

In it you can see Shibbir Choudhury, the mosque’s secretary, welcoming John and informing people that he had committed to make Sirajul Islam his deputy mayor if he wins on June 11. Choudhury appears pleased about this and remarks that John was also responsible way back when for helping the East London Mosque get planning permission. This, he says, was a good thing. For that reason he says “we need to support him”.

John says immediately that he doesn’t think “it’s right for anybody to be invited to support a particular candidate in a mosque”. He says, “I’m a Labour candidate and I want you to look into your hearts and vote for whoever you think is the right candidate”.

THF have leapt on this to yell “double standards”, a cry that is fast becoming the new “racist/Islamophobia” tag of this particular campaign. In this they have perhaps been egged on by Giles Fraser, a former official of St Paul’s Cathedral who a few years ago wrote a nice piece about the borough while sipping a glass of red wine in a pub across the way from the East London Mosque, and then landed a job from Lutfur as the chair of the Tower Hamlets Fairness Commission.

Since then he has been one of Lutfur’s most high profile supporters. In the few weeks since the Election Court judgment he has uttered not a word about six of the guilty verdicts but written hundreds about the other one: undue spiritual influence. I suppose as a priest that’s his area of specialism, although it’s perhaps sadly doubtful in this day and age that he would ever experience that himself.

His arguments on this subject have included it’s his human right to express political views. I’m not a lawyer, but I think Richard Mawrey QC’s judgment was more subtle and more complex than that. Bluntly, Mawrey concluded Lutfur had enlisted the chair of the Tower Hamlets Council of Mosques, Shamsul Haque (an unreliable witness, according to the judge) to secure a letter of support from 101 imams. This letter, Mawrey said, came amid a “substantial body of credible evidence that the Imams’ message that it was the duty of faithful Muslims to vote for Mr Rahman”.

Mawrey conceded that his judgment would be controversial, and it is. And I’m sure it’s also confusing to those who can’t be bothered or who are unable to comprehend it in full and understand the context.

In short, Biggs’s visit and the words of the mosque secretary do not in any way compare with the Election Court example. That said, the THF people will be free to challenge it in an election petition should Biggs win on June 11.

However, the episode was enlightening. It shows how politicians do feel the need to visit the mosques to secure votes. I wonder if any ever visit churches on Sundays for their campaigning?

As a result of Friday’s incident, Biggs has decided to cancel all further visits to mosques at times of worship. Here’s a statement he sent me yesterday:

“Tower Hamlets First are a party devoid of principles and morals – this was well established in the court case. Although they now have to describe themselves as ‘independents’ it looks like nothing has changed. Once again they [have] tried to smear me after I visited a mosque before Friday prayers. It adds to the importance, if any more reason were needed, for the borough to move on from this sort of abuse and I hope we will on June 11.

“After yesterday’s attempted smear by THF I have also decided that I will not accept invitations to speak in any of the borough’s mosques or other places of worship at times of worship between now and June 11. This is both to avoid any misrepresentation of me and also to avoid any of our places of worship being dragged into the election campaign. They should always have an independence and dignity separate from daily politics. I have always respected this but clearly my opponents do not.

“I would of course be happy to meet with representatives from places of worship who, quite rightly, may want to hear from me as the election approaches on issues of interest to them and their members.”

2. Leafletgate

Mark Baynes, who runs the Love Wapping blog, has done some excellent, good old-fashioned on-the-ground reporting.

This account of his here is a must read.

Mark lives on the Green Bank estate in Wapping and noticed yesterday that a man was distributing Tower Hamlets Homes leaflets. It’s assumed this man was acting for Tower Hamlets Homes, which is the council’s arms-length housing body on which Rabina Khan’s election agent Ghulam Robbani sits as a board director.

But it wasn’t just THH leaflets he was delivering to people’s homes: he was giving lucky residents a Brucie Bonus in the form of Rabina4Mayor leaflets as well. Clearly, this has the potential to be a serious issue and a possible breach of election law.

Mark quickly got out his iPhone and recorded the guy at work. Here’s his video:

And here are Mark’s stills of the leafleter.

Mark quite rightly reported it to the police immediately and they told him they are looking into it. The man has not yet been identified, but Mark has preserved many of the leaflets for forensics.

Both Rabina Khan and Oliur Rahman took to Twitter to say they’ve been “framed”, that it is all a stitch-up and the result of dirty tricks. They also have informed the police. They have not yet said who they think is responsible but one can only assume they think it’s their political opponents.

The police are sure to get to the bottom of it, but I must say, even by Tower Hamlets’ standards it really would be a very thick dirty tricks campaign: Mark Baynes has been known to photograph questionable Tower Hamlets Homes leafleters there before.

Richard Mawrey in his judgment made some important points about who were Lutfur’s agents in the wider legal sense in the 2014 campaign. If this leafleter is a Rabina supporter, her team would have to show he was rogue and acting alone. Both he and they would have to explain how he got hold of hundreds of her leaflets.

This could be a significant issue. If anyone recognises the leafleter, please email me (please do not name him in any comments on this blog).

 

3. The return of Rob Hoveman

Rob Hoveman

 

Rob, the man in the middle (a rare place for him), has been George Galloway’s very left leaning right hand man for a decade. Between 2005 and 2010, he ran Galloway’s constituency office in Club Row and then moved up to Bradford, where he had a holiday home, when George found another seat for a while.

He’s a phenomonally good operator and loathes Labour with the same passion that he has for classical music and Hornby trains.

Following the collapse of the Bradford Spring last month, Rob, who lives in Bethnal Green, might well be in search of a new job. He knows his way around the town hall, having once been Respect’s part-time political adviser at Mulberry Place. I wonder whether he could be the next Murziline Parchment as a possible head of Mayor Rabina’s office.

If so, watch this space for Abjol Miah, the only Respect councillor he had any real time for.

Read Full Post »

The firs part of this article is a cross-post from Mark Baynes’s Love Wapping blog.

[For a bit of context, my opinion of Ohid Ahmed hardened in August 2008 at a big screen showing in Victoria Park of the Beijing Olympics closing ceremony. Only some 100 residents turned up and they all sat around on the grass mingling with each other. In the middle of all this, the council had erected a small marquee with a fenced off garden specially for ‘VIPs’. With free food and drink of course. In that marquee were three councillors, two of whom are now Lutfurites, Rofique Ahmed and Ohid Ahmed. Not once throughout the entire event did any of them set foot outside to talk to residents. For them, it was just about prestige and freebies. It was mentioned in a report for the East London Advertiser at the time.]ELA Aug 2008

Here is Mark Baynes’s piece.

Deputy Mayor Cllr. Ohid Ahmed health scare update

I am sure that residents of Wapping take a great interest in the health and general wellbeing of our elected representatives.

So it is with great relief that I can report that Tower Hamlets Deputy Mayor Cllr Ohid Ahmed has got over his recent bout of flu.

“What flu?” I hear you asking.

The flu that prevented the Deputy Mayor from turning up to the St Katharine’s and Wapping Community Safety Walkabout on Friday 22 November at 4pm.

Cllr. Ohid Ahmed was on the list of attending officers but after a slight delay we were told that he had flu / was feeling unwell so the walk went ahead without him.

And very interesting it was too.

No need for concern

Since then the state of the Deputy Mayor’s health has been of some concern to us here at Love Wapping so it was great to discover via the wonders of Facebook that Cllr. Ohid Ahmed was looking fit and well only a few hours later that very same day!

A fit and well Cllr. Ohid Ahmed at a dinner on the evening of Friday 22 Nov 2013

A fit and well Cllr. Ohid Ahmed at a dinner on the evening of Friday 22 Nov 2013

In fact he had recovered from his flu so quickly that he was pictured enjoying dinner with friends at the Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London. (For those of you not on Facebook we borrowed the pic, but we are sure no one will mind given the circumstances.)

Trees are good

Oddly enough this dinner was for Trees for Change, a campaign to plant 30,000 trees in Africa. Great idea.

Wapping Woods has quite a few trees too so let’s hope that next time there is a Community Safety Walkabout in Wapping the Deputy Mayor is fit enough to attend.

UPDATE:

I’ve now had a look at Ohid’s Facebook page and see that this meal at the Marriott in the West End was a “pre-GPU meal”.

Ohid GPU

The GPU is the Islamic Global Peace and Unity event that’s been taking place at the ExCeL centre this weekend. Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has condemned those, including Boris Johnson, who have sent messages of support for it because its list of speakers contains the names of seven “extremist clerics”.

By way of example he picks out one:

The Sheikh claims the toleration of homosexuality is a sign of social regression:
 
“For those who have been around for a little bit longer than those who are eighteen or nineteen, look at how this own society and culture has evolved in the way it looks at homosexuals. In our own time, I remember as a kid in the eighties, which gives you an idea how old I was, growing up in the eighties I grew up, OK? I remember how homosexuals were looked down upon and the names that were given to these people, and how disgusted the average masses were with that segment of society. Now look, now look at how we have regressed, not progressed.”
 
http://tifrib.com/yasir-qadhi/
 
He says Jews control Islamic studies and want to destroy Muslims:
 
“You go to America, you find that 95% of the Islamic Studies professors are Jews, you know that? 95% of Islamic Studies [sic] are Jews. And 0% of Judaic Studies [sic] are Muslims. I am not advising any Muslim to waste his time studying Judaism but I’m saying, why are Jews studying Islam? There is a reason, not that they want to help us, they want to destroy us […] they want to bring about doubts, look at the doubts that exist, look at the divisions, the discord, look at the disunity, look at all these ideologies that are being spread (4). Know that the Yahood [Jews] and the Kuffar [Infidels] like this type of thing.”

Also on the list of speakers (the first name on the list, in fact) is Lutfur Rahman (who is not an extremist cleric). Actually, Lutfur was given star billing at the end of the conference, speaking this evening just after a Saudi princess.

So you can understand just why it was so important for his deputy, Ohid Ahmed, to drag himself off his deathbed and head to the West End hotel (by cab, I wonder…)

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