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Posts Tagged ‘lutfur rahman’

Placing interpreters in polling stations is ‘dysfunctional and divisive’, says minister Brandon Lewis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 30, 2014| 78 Comments »

The Government clearly has its eye on Tower Hamlets. Three weeks after Eric Pickles sent PwC inspectors to Mulberry Place, former Local Government Minister Bob Neill asked this in the Commons on Monday:

Robert Neill: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 3 March 2014, Official Report, column 694W, on polling stations, what assessment he has made of the effect of foreign language translation by local authorities on integration of non-English speakers into their communities. [190554]

And this is how Brandon Lewis, Bob’s successor at the Department for Communities and Local Government replied:

Brandon Lewis: In March 2013, my Department published new guidance for local authorities outlining how councils should stop translating into foreign languages. As outlined in the written ministerial statement of 12 March 2013, Official Report, column 5WS, such translation weakens integration; discourages communities from learning English; undermines rather than strengthens equality goals; harms community relations; and is an expensive waste of taxpayers’ money at a time when councils need to be making sensible savings. It is disappointing that councils like Tower Hamlets have disregarded that guidance, and reflects broader issues with the dysfunctional governance and divisive practices of the council.

I would add that in light of previous instances of electoral fraud, including impersonation in polling stations, postal voting irregularities and allegations of improper influence, Ministers in this Department have concerns about the practice of allowing foreign language translators/interpreters inside polling stations. The privacy of the ballot must be protected and voters inside a polling station should not be subject to any pressure or influence to vote in a particular way. In that context, the integrity of the ballot box and of the local democratic process requires independent and transparent scrutiny in polling stations by polling agents, council staff, the police and, indeed, passing members of the public who are also voting. This is undermined by polling room administration being conducted in foreign languages.

Takki Sulaiman, the council’s head of communications, authorised this statement as a response:

The council wants to ensure as many people as possible exercise their democratic right in the elections in Tower Hamlets on May 22 and in such a diverse borough this includes consideration for those who may struggle with the English language.

Data from the 2011 census states that the single largest ethnic group in Tower Hamlets is Bangladeshi at 32% of the population, followed by White British at 31%. The council provides written instructions in polling stations in both English and Bengali and at least one Bengali speaker will be available in each polling station to help anyone who does not understand the voting process. These staff have undergone enhanced training to ensure the integrity of the polls are upheld. They are strictly there to explain the process of voting and if necessary the content of the ballot paper. For example, they cannot point out a particular candidate even if they are asked to; instead they have to read out the entire ballot paper.

The enhanced training for polling station staff is one of several measures voluntarily introduced by Tower Hamlets to ensure free and fair elections. The council has gone further than any other council in London by producing a tough new protocol for all those involved in the elections and only last week the Electoral Commission praised our Returning Officer and the police for the anti-fraud measures they have taken in the run-up to polling day.

Earlier this month, Tory opposition leader Cllr Peter Golds wrote to the Electoral Commission to say this:

I am writing to express my concerns about the possible use of “interpreters” in polling stations within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the May 22nd 2014, local elections. There are a number of reasons regarding this that are likely to result in serious electoral concerns at these elections.

The Electoral Commission’s existing advice in this area is that “returning officers may employ staff for the purpose of translating or interpreting in polling stations”. This is dangerously untransparent and presents a risk of undue influence by those employed as interpreters.

There is a justifiable public concern about what interpreters tell electors. The use of minority languages in polling stations prevents presiding officers and anyone else including election officials and other voters who does not speak a particular language from knowing whether the advice given is appropriate or is an attempt to influence the voter. It will be extremely difficult to know whether the interpreters are informing or advising the electors they are assisting.

In Tower Hamlets, this has been an ongoing problem. In 2008 Ken Livingstone was defeated in the London Mayoral election after eight years in office. However, this was not so in Tower Hamlets, where there were remarkable swings to him, not least in the Weavers ward where the following incident took place at the Virginia Polling station. 

    • A council employed election official was pointing out the position of Ken Livingstone on the ballot paper to Bengali women and then checking the paper after they had voted to ensure that it “was correct”. He was not removed until mid afternoon after repeated complaints had been made to the local Returning Officer and the possibility of Bengali speaking electors threatening a showdown inside the polling station.

I have read evidence from other parts of the country that this situation has been observed ranging from Twickenham to Halifax.

Significantly the Weavers by election held on this day, also resulted in a very unusual result. The gain by the Labour candidate Fazlul Haque, of the seat from the Liberal Democrats. This was quite extraordinary in view of the massive loss of council seats sustained across the nation by the Labour Party that same day.

Ballot papers are already designed to make it as easy as possible for people to identify the candidate of their choice, with the candidate’s name, party, and an identifying party logo all printed in large print. There is information in voting in different languages within polling stations. One has to question if an elector cannot identify a candidate based on all this information, how they are in a position to cast a vote.

One may also ask how many interpreters in a borough such as Tower Hamlets would be required. Bengali, Somali and the full range of European languages are spoken locally. Who would decide what languages and where?

The voting process itself is more or less universal. I have witnessed elections in a number of different countries. The elector gives their name, receives a ballot paper, marks the ballot secretly in a private booth and then places the ballot paper in a sealed ballot box. What assistance is required in a process as simple as this?

Tower Hamlets has a long and unfortunate history of electoral malpractice, which has rarely, if ever, been properly investigated. There is already an atmosphere of mistrust regarding the electoral process in this borough, born of too many years of inaction by the authorities. Local politics is increasingly fractured on ethnic and religious lines and a proposal such as this can only further damage community cohesion.

Unnecessary interpreters compromise the validity and transparency of the poll, and I urge the commission to reconsider this decision which will only add to the electoral concerns of residents of this borough.

The mayoral election in Tower Hamlets uses the second preference voting system and not many people, including fluent English speakers, understand it. I even had to explain it to the Tower Hamlets Ukip bosses when they announced they were standing a couple of months ago. For example, do you have to cast a second preference? Answer: No.

So I can understand that questions will be asked in the polling station and it is surely better to have the answers explained clearly and fully in a language they understand.

However, where do you draw the line? Does the council believe there are so many Bengalis living in Tower Hamlets who would struggle to ask a question about voting in English and who would struggle to understand an English answer?

Well, surely it must to justify its decision.

In which case, that is symptomatic of a much wider failure of policy and returns us to this section of Brandon Lewis’s answer:

such translation weakens integration; discourages communities from learning English; undermines rather than strengthens equality goals; harms community relations; and is an expensive waste of taxpayers’ money at a time when councils need to be making sensible savings.

Yet in Tower Hamlets, Mayor Lutfur Rahman still happily rubber stamps tens of thousands of pounds of council grants to fund free private Bengali Mother Tongue classes to youngsters who already struggle in English.

Far from being a Great Champion for the Bengali community, he’s like a bad parent handing out sugar coated sweets, with no brave and bold long term thinking at all.

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Oyez, Oyez! The so-called Panorama ‘whistleblower’ speaks again…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 28, 2014| 69 Comments »

The so-called Panorama “whistleblower”, who is a suspect in a criminal investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office into breaches of the Data Protection Act, offered us more of her coherent thoughts last night. The best I can say is that I have no idea how she got through journalism college.

Here it is:

In my last blog I had highlighted some key experiences that I had while being involved in the Panorama programme The Mayor and Our Money and after that I remained silent so that it can allow the people of Tower Hamlets (considering it affects them) to decide their opinion upon my action. Therefore I would like to firstly thank all of those people who have allowed their minds to be open and actually understand the situation before pouncing on me and judging me. So Thank you.

Now, I have read many of the reports relating to the Panorama programme, some of which are worthwhile reading and some of which are just pure rubbish. Reading them made me question the world we live in, where lies are so easily believed yet the truth has to be fought out. Amazing isn’t it, reminds me of a quote by John Lennon,’we live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight’.

Most of the negative portrayal obviously is coming from the BBC side, for example Ted Jeory and even John Ware took time out to write about me making so called ‘false claims’. But what is it that they are trying to establish? What is it that they are trying to make me feel? Guilt? Are they trying to question my own mind into making me believe that what I did was wrong? Well I’m afraid I am going to have to disappoint them there because even now I still stand by what I did and still believe that the programme was biased and did have racial undertones. Just because the programme that was broadcast to the public was narrowed down and the content was drastically changed, the original programme which I had the dossier to had negative references to the Bengali community such as taking the ‘mickey’ out of the way Bengali people spoke English.

Moving on, my lawyers still have not received any news from the BBC, Films of Record or the ICO so why does Ted Jeory seem to think that there is a criminal investigation under way against me? That annoyed me, how about Mr Ted Jeory you stop poking your nose in, stop trying to be a ‘little gossip’ and stop manipulating the minds of your readers and let the ICO do their job and let them decide the action they feel fair against me. But I have to question, how will the ICO investigate the minds of the people associated with this programme? How will the ICO stop the programme makers racial thoughts? How will the ICO experience what I experienced while working there? ‘It seems that the safest opinion in this world is to have no opinion. Why? Because truth changes. It plays hide and seek. The nearest you can come to an informed judgement would require a serious investigation, digging in archives, interviewing eye-witnesses. What normal citizen has time for that? So we leave it up to journalists, historians, politicians. And the result is…CHAOS.

The statement in Mr Jeory’s latest blog, ‘she lasted four days before the team waved goodbye to her’, made me chuckle because firstly, it is five days and secondly I had sent an email to a member of the team stating ‘no thanks’. Ted Jeory, if you are going to be closed minded would you mind being closed mind aswell?

Just in case these ‘journalists’ assume I am ‘lying’,here is a screen-shot of the email from ME to the team:

no thanks

 

As for the ICO, I will definitely co operate with them once I hear something from them and as for me handing over the dossier, I perhaps understood the implications that it may have on me but I could not have consciously allowed such biased programme to go ahead and fill the mind of the public with filth and hatred towards brown skin, because remember, we are not born racist. It is the idea of fear that always works to influence the population. This is were racism starts and as I am aware ‘the media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent and that is power, because they control the mind of the masses’.

My thoughts about the Bengali sources is that they were traitors. Any Bengali person who speaks negatively or belittles the Bengali people in my eyes are traitors, just like during our liberation war in 1971 some fellow Bengali people lost their way and sold themselves to the rival army, these so called ‘sources’ (all of them who have some kind of hidden agenda against Lutfur Raman) are similar to them and have made the Bengali community look incompetent.

Finally, to me all this is propaganda. For a start it is not surprising to see who BBC or Films of record chose to first disclose my actions, Mr Ted Jeory, who ‘surprisingly’ seems to be married to a Bengali woman. My guess is that they thought people will be dormant and accept his views because ‘surely’ he cannot be racist when his own wife is of Bengali origin. Funny that, because Mr Jeory being married to a Bengali cultured woman you must have an idea of our Bengali culture. You must understand that many Bengali’s are very patriotic because Bangladesh is a country made by the blood of our freedom fighters. Shouldn’t you have been a little more sensitive in your approach instead of siding with ‘your friends’.Considering you have ‘so much’ to write about and you are almost ‘like neutral’ shouldn’t you have been the first person to come to me and asked what it was about the content of the programme that I found was insulting to the Bengali community for me to take such a step? But did you? No. Double standards is it?

 

IMG_185291015219966

As I have said before I belong to no political party, I do not even live in Tower Hamlets therefore it does not affect me as to who becomes the next Mayor of Tower Hamlets but I must say the way Mr Jeory writes so critically of Lutfur Rahman constantly, I sympathise with Mr Rahman to see what abuse and unfair portrayal he has to put up with. But I guess Lutfur Rahman is better than that to pay any attention to narrow minded people, no wonder he has been able to make such big improvements in Tower Hamlets. Makes me believe in is motto, ‘One Tower Hamlets’. Lastly I could not help but be amused at the statement, ‘ The characters now act like dim kids in a playground; back then it was proper adult hooliganism ‘,well perhaps if journalists like Ted Jeory stopped behaving like spoilt snobby brats, who seem to dictate,making outrageous allegations,spreading gossip and interfering these ‘dim kids’ maybe can have more time to actually get on with their jobs instead of wasting time trying to defend themselves.

Impressive isn’t it? I particularly like the last sentence, that journalists shouldn’t “interfere” with the way politicians conduct themselves. This from a so-called “journalist”. Would love to know her tutor’s thoughts.

As for the snide slurs on my understanding of my wife’s culture and the assertion that any Bengali who dares to criticise another Bengali is somehow a traitor, well….what planet? Ms So-called “Whistleblower”, have a read of this. It’s an account of my mother-in-law’s life. As you’ll see, she had a bit more experience of the 1971 liberation war than you did. And of hard core racism in the Seventies. And of genuine traitors.

And let’s put it this way, I’m fairly certain she’d give you a clip round the backside with her trusty walking stick right now.

Husna Matin

 

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Official list of candidates for Tower Hamlets mayor: they’re all men

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 25, 2014| 15 Comments »

I’ll update this blog post as and when I get more information but here’s the official list of candidates for Tower Hamlets mayor.

It was announced today and it includes 10 names, all of them male.

Sigh.

Here’s the list:

Nominations for LBTH Mayor

The Lib Dem candidate , Reetendra Banerji, is an unknown in Tower Hamlets but a man of his name did he did stand in Hounslow in 2006, when his biog stated this:

Reeten Banerji, 32, is a maths teacher and Territorial Army member, serving in a Hayes based logistics regiment. He was born and has lived most of his life in the London Borough of Hounslow.

Reeten’s professional career, before teaching, had been with a major US telecommunications corporation in Atlanta, Georgia. He then moved into IT consultancy in Silicon Valley, California during the ‘dotcom’ years. He worked with a number of IT startup companies launching wireless Data Network products and services.

Reeten holds a Bachelors degree in Mathematics from London and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He is a keen cyclist and is involved with the London Cycling Campaign helping to bring about the best possible services for people who cycle or who want to cycle in London.

He sounds far too sensible for Tower Hamlets but I hope he does well. Good luck to him.

The other name to strike out is Reza Shoaib Choudhury, who is standing as an independent. He is not so unknown in Tower Hamlets. In fact, he’s very well known, and popular. He is married to the lovely and lively Dr Anwara Ali, who was formerly a Labour councillor in Bow West before she defected to the Tories in 2010.

Shoaib is the boss of the Bengali satellite TV station, Channel i, so that’s one channel Lutfur will struggle to bring round to his ways. In fact, there’s an expectation that Shoaib could split the Bengali vote from Lutfur. Well, let’s see.

Here’s Shoaib’s leaflet:

img017

The nominations for council candidates have also been published but I’ll leave that for another post.

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John Biggs on Team Lutfur’s latest racism allegation: ‘This endless mud-slinging demeans the mayor’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 25, 2014| 43 Comments »

UPDATED AT 5PM, APRIL 25 WITH MICHAEL KEITH’S COMMENTS AT BOTTOM

Mayor Lutfur Rahman issued this press release yesterday:

Labour Mayoral hopeful John Biggs was facing mounting criticism today on his questionable record on race issues as a leaked internal memo from the Labour Party revealed that concerns had been raised regarding Mr Biggs’s apparent prejudice as early as 1995.

Professor Michael Keith, now Director of the Centre for Migration Policy and Society at Oxford University and a former Labour council leader in the borough, wrote to Labour Councillors and MPs saying:

“In short, I would accuse John Biggs of racism” after Biggs was apparently involved in the production of an inflammatory election leaflet.

This is not the first time Biggs has been mired in a race row. In 1998 he campaigned against the creation of Banglatown to be added to Spitalfields Ward, and in 2013 his Labour Group made false claims that housing allocations were being targeted to Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s supporters – claims that were gleefully used as propaganda by the EDL.

Recently, Biggs caused controversy with irresponsible remarks on the Sunday Politics show claiming Mayor Rahman was only serving the Bangladeshi community, at a time when the EDL were planning to march through Tower Hamlets.

Cllr. Alibor Choudhury of Tower Hamlets First, who reported Biggs to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission for the remarks said:

“John Biggs’ 20 year record of dubious racially-charged remarks is there for anyone to see. This latest revelation shows that he doesn’t have the cultural sensitivity to run a diverse borough like Tower Hamlets.”

I’ve asked Lutfur’s camp to produce the leaflet that was at the centre of the row between Michael and John, but they say they don’t have it.

Context is everything, so let me try and give some. If you thought politics in Tower Hamlets was poisonous now, it was a different matter in the Nineties. The characters now act like dim kids in a playground; back then it was proper adult hooliganism.

Race and racism was genuinely the major issue then. Derek Beackon had been elected as BNP councillor in Millwall in 1993 and was kicked out a year later. The Lib Dems were at the centre of an inquiry by their own party leader, Paddy Ashdown, who was deeply concerned that activists had been engaged in racist campaigning.

Pretty much everything was evaluated in terms of race. As now, back then it was also used as a political stick.

We don’t have the leaflet, so we can’t evaluate it, but my understanding is that Michael Keith is appalled that something taken completely out of context 20 years ago is being used now as a smear. I’m sure we could all look back at things we’ve said 20 years ago and wish we’d phrased differently. I’m also sure Alibor will look back at his own behaviour now in 20 years and feel disgust with himself.

I understand Michael Keith might be issuing a statement on this today. My understanding is there was no way he thought John racist, either then or now. In fact, he is one of the people who has signed John’s nomination papers.

As for Alibor’s complaint to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission…well, what he doesn’t disclose is that they’ve told him it’s not one for them. The EHCR has in fact written to him twice to warn him against using misconstruing any of their replies to him on the matter.

If he feels so strongly about John’s words on the BBC Politics programme (when he pointed out that Lutfur’s cabinet was exclusively Bengali and appeared to be focusing too much on one section of the community – a statement of fact and fair comment, actually), then he has the option of going to the police. But he won’t because even he would know that’d be wasting police time.

After all, the police have drug dealers and gang members to catch on Alibor’s Ocean estate, don’t they.

However, back to Lutfur’s press release. I asked John for his thoughts. There are two camps on how to react to these attacks. One wants him to ignore them, the other wants him to punch back.

His statement to me below is measured and dignified in my view and straddles both camps.

This endless mud slinging and negative messaging demeans the mayor and shows both a desperation and that he has given up trying to reach across the borough and is working a ‘core vote ‘ strategy in which he clearly hopes that most people will stay at home and that his supporters, galvanised by repeated spurious  allegations against me will get them back into the town hall.

There is of course a danger it will work but it shows that their cupboard is pretty bare. 

The repeated use of the racism smear both insults real victims and diminishes them. I am proud of my record attacking  intolerance. Ironically they are defining themselves as the next obstacle to the sort of tolerant community we need. It helps me to understand quite how important it is to defeat them. 

I hear they are announcing their manifesto today. It will be interesting to see how many of our policies they will steal!

UPDATE:

Tower Hamlets Labour have issued the following statement from Michael Keith:

To dredge up out of context comments that were made almost twenty years ago to smear someone’s character scrapes the gutter. I’ve known John Biggs for decades and, while we have had our differences at times, there is no doubt in my mind that he works for the benefit of the whole community in Tower Hamlets. To try to paint him as a racist is a cynical act of electoral dirty politics.

He is the best candidate to represent all the communities of the borough in these difficult times and I am happy to support him.

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Panorama ‘whistleblower’: Lutfur suggested BBC under ‘criminal investigation’. They’re not. Guess who is…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 24, 2014| 20 Comments »

In the days before Panorama broadcast on March 31, Lutfur Rahman and his camp looked into their crystal ball and confidently warned the world the programme would be “racist” and “Islamophobic”.

The Mayor himself (a lawyer, remember) went further and took to Twitter to say this:

TwitterA few days later he repeated the charge on his blog:

Criminal investigation underway as BBC Panorama whistle-blower reveals racist and Islamophobic programme on Tower Hamlets

You may be aware that BBC Panorama is due to air a programme about Tower Hamlets next week.

I believe the programme is being used for political campaigning and electioneering purposes just weeks before local and Mayoral elections in May.

A dossier passed to us by a BBC whistle-blower has revealed it to be in total breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines as a public broadcaster.

It has clear racist and Islamophobic overtones targeting the Bangladeshi Muslim community in Tower Hamlets.

The BBC and the undercover production company, Films of Record, have also been referred to the Information Commissioner and there is now a criminal investigation underway.

 He was referring, of course, to the so-called “whistleblower” who was hired by the Panorama team to work as a journalist/researcher.

I wrote about her here. She lasted four days before the team waved her goodbye. She took a very important dossier she’d “obtained” from the Panorama team and handed it to the Mayor’s office. She then claimed “whistleblower” status.

She claimed the programme was biased and that she’d witnessed racism among the producers and reporting team.

This was all gleefully exploited by Lutfur and his aides as yet more evidence of an Establishment stitch-up. He even wrote to the BBC’s Director General to demand the programme be pulled, he told us on his blog.

The so-called “whistleblower” herself started a blog and opened an anonymous Twitter account where she detailed her experiences.

Here’s some examples of her Tweets:

Twitter Voice of Bangla

(sic)

As some of you are aware there is a criminal investigation under way relating to this programme which limits me as to what I can disclose.
Well, allow me to disclose something.
Today, I asked the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) whether there was, as Lutfur said, a criminal investigation into the BBC.
No, they confirmed. And neither is there one into Films of Record, the production company.
I asked whether there was any criminal investigation, but all they would say is there is an “investigation into allegations of a breach of the Data Protection Act and enquiries are continuing”.
However, I can go further.
I gather that a member of the public, who has for many years been a close observer of Tower Hamlets politics, has made his own complaint to the ICO because data connected to him was in the dossier. I understand from him that the there IS a criminal investigation and that he’s a witness.
Not only that, I gather from him that the ICO also has an official “suspect” in the case.
Guess who?
Yes, the so-called “whistleblower” herself.
She’s the one being investigated, not the BBC.
Wonder if Lutfur will tweet that?
The Panorama programme “racist?”

Well, I don’t think any reasonable person thinks that. Even the Guardian’s Dave Hill, who takes a more measured tone than most on these issues (to the point of glossing over Lutfur’s character sometimes) said, “the Panorama show was pretty measured, sketched in relevant context and acknowledged some of the borough’s achievements. The questions it asked were reasonable. It didn’t recycle that pernicious glory-seeking back catalogue of Tower Hamlets’ Islamist conspiracy that so excites the far Right, and well done for that”.
However, stand by for more phoney allegations of “racism” and “Islamophobia” – those last refuges of a bankrupt politician with no credible answers to the “reasonable” questions Panorama raised about his high handed and unaccountable governance.
He’s been the victim himself of pretty nasty smears and innuendo. Quite rightly, he’s railed against the bigots who spread them. What a shame he’s resorting to similar tactics.

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A farewell from the last Lib Dem in Tower Hamlets, Cllr Stephanie Eaton

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 21, 2014| 37 Comments »

As promised, here’s Stephanie Eaton’s valedictory piece–a look back on her past eight years in Tower Hamlets as she prepares to stand down on May 22.

(For what it’s worth, my view is that apart from one or two slightly rose-tinted opinions on the current regime–at its outset, at least–she’s been the most reasoned councillor in that time. Like Peter Golds, she has also been the target of attacks from senior council officers and ruling Labour councillors after she dared to take them on. The below front page story we did for the East London Advertiser was particularly memorable; it came only a few months after she was elected. It was highly embarrassing for Labour at that time, so much so that the council’s communications department posted thousands of letters to nearby residents to say she and the ELA were scaremongering. We weren’t. Eight years on, that site at the Oval in Bethnal Green remains derelict. But that brush with the East End Life department certainly opened her eyes to the misinformation it can spread.)

Here’s her final fond farewell (she declined to offer any views on the calamitous Lutfur Rahman/Labour fallout, but she does share a quite pointed opinion on the system of directly elected mayors; perhaps there’s a hidden meaning, who knows…)

I was elected to Tower Hamlets Council on 4 May 2006. On July 7 that year, I attended a memorial service for the victims of the London bombings the previous year. The then Assistant Chief Executive, Sara Williams was there too and I asked her what she had been doing at the same time last year.

Her answer opened my eyes to the importance of the organisation I had just joined.

Sara told me that the Council had activated its emergency plans on that terrible day, to ensure that children who could not be collected from school were cared for until their parents arrived; that meals for vulnerable residents were still delivered; that Mosques and Muslim businesses in the community were supported and protected from any retaliatory actions; that resources were made available to help the hospitals and Police; and transport was arranged so that workers at Canary Wharf and around the Borough managed to get home, or to other accommodation for the night.

Sara had worked continuously for 18 hours even though she had lost contact with her own family members.

Recognising the importance of the Council to people’s daily lives, it was a steep learning curve for me to appreciate how all the different elements of the Council work in the Borough. It was an even more difficult task to understand the politics of the Council and how to get things done as an opposition councillor.

I may be unusual in not coming from a political family or from student politics, and some political experience would have helped. I was told that people considered me naïve – I’m sure they were right. But I did have a terrific mentor in Peter Truesdale from Lambeth, and Peter’s advice and encouragement proved invaluable.

He told me not to take criticism personally, to divide my time equally between managing my group of fellow Liberal Democrats, attending Council Committees, and spending time in my ward listening to residents and helping them deal with concerns.

I didn’t quite manage to split my time into thirds: in my first year I attended every committee I could so that I could get to grips with the business of the Council. It was useful and important. However, when the then Leader of the Conservative group Simon Rouse told me “You’re spending too much time in the Town Hall”, he was right and I changed the balance of my work to spend more time with businesses and residents.

Being in opposition is horrible.

I presume some people enjoy it, never having to take difficult decisions, but not me.

Nevertheless, being in opposition is important, and a lot can be achieved, but it’s not the same as having a chance to put your plans into action or working closely with officers to implement policy. But all councillors can do important work to represent their constituents.

One of the first and most important pieces of casework I did was for a man who lived in a two-up two-down maisonette. He was dying of emphysema and could barely walk. He had a choice of living upstairs with the bathroom or downstairs with the kitchen.

He came to me and asked for help because he had been sleeping on the sitting room couch, using a bucket for a toilet so that he could be close to the kitchen. I arranged for him to get a stairlift as an emergency, to enable him to sleep in a bed and use a bathroom for the last few months of his life.

It shook me that firstly, it was so easy for me to do this for him – Council staff were brilliant and immediately recognised the need and urgency of the case – and secondly, that I had the power or influence, whatever it should be called, to make this happen.

All Councillors will have stories about strange requests and unreasonable demands: mine is the man who called me and said he had an emergency and I needed to come to his house. I had to see the problem, he couldn’t describe it, and it had to be that day.

I reshuffled my life, rushed over there to be shown to the back patio area. “Look!” he said. I looked and then asked “What am I looking at?”. “The leaves” he replied. “They’re falling onto the ground”. “It’s autumn” I said, “That’s what leaves do…”. “The council must sweep them up” he said. I’m afraid I left a slightly disgruntled homeowner that evening – even though I had offered to sweep up the leaves myself!

I have loved (nearly) every minute of being a Councillor, but especially the first four years up to 2010. I opposed the directly elected mayoral system made possible by the Local Government Act 2000.

The referendum in 2010 that brought an executive mayor to Tower Hamlets was shrewd politics for the Respect party – because it means that only one elected position really matters any more – that of the Mayor, as that person can administer the borough without the input of any councillors.

Having power vested in one individual is potentially risky, and for me, the model of collective decision-making by a leader and cabinet elected from among the Councillors provides a more representative way to take decisions on behalf of our community.

On a personal note, having been a councillor for eight years, I now understand much better how the world works, from getting the rubbish collected, to the development of multi-million pound contracts for new homes.

I have been warmly welcomed by many people into their homes and lives. I have made an astonishing range of friends across the political boundaries: of course my partner is a Labour councillor and our home has been visited by people from all parties.

Other political party activists canvassing in our area know they are always welcome to use the loo! On one memorable occasion – Liberal Democrats, Labour, and Conservatives met in our house on the same evening – but that’s a story for another generation.

My best wishes go to all new and continuing Councillors taking office on May 23.

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Fraud probe at Tower Hamlets: questions for the council to answer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 17, 2014| 47 Comments »

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The tragicomedy that is Tower Hamlets council keeps on giving.

Yesterday morning the Met Police issued the following statement:

On Friday 4 April 2014 the Metropolitan Police Service received three files of material from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) relating to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. These comprised of material referred to the DCLG by a member of the public and by the BBC Panorama programme.

The files have been reviewed by a team of officers over the past 6 days. In addition, officers have liaised with Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP (PwC) who are conducting a full and wide-ranging audit of financial matters at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

There is no credible evidence of criminality within the files to provide reasonable grounds to suspect that fraud or any other offence has been committed at this stage. Therefore the MPS will not be investigating at this point in time and believe that it is appropriate for the material to be reviewed further by PwC and DCLG. We will continue to liaise with them should their audit uncover any evidence of criminality.

Which made Lutfur Rahman and his head of communications Takki Sulaiman crow with delight (expect ‘Mayor cleared’ headlines in East End Life and large sections of the Bengali press this week).

Takki was so bursting with joy that he turned into an eve of combat Colonel Tim Collins for the afternoon. Here’s an email he sent to fellow communications chiefs in other local London authorities:

Apologies for the mass email but as you know the battle for hearts and minds starts within the local government community itself!

A small step in restoring trust in LBTH is the announcement by the Met today that there is no credible evidence of criminality or fraud to be found in the Panorama files.

Our statement and the Met’s can be found on our (revamped) website.

http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/news__events/setting_the_record_straight/panorama/new_statement_-_bbc_panorama.aspx

Our statements on the matter over the last two weeks can be found here-

http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/news__events/setting_the_record_straight/panorama.aspx

This is a long journey and the auditors will be here for three months. Given the context of the elections we’ve also had to tone down the nature of our comms thus contributing to the challenge.

Regards

Takki

(Bless, he must be really worried about what they think of him.)

And here’s the statement he authorised his communications department to release to the wider world.

Council response to Met Press Bureau statement following BBC Panorama Programme

A statement was issued by the Metropolitan Police Press Bureau on Wednesday 16 April in relation to recent allegations made in the BBC Panorama programme on London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

A council spokesperson said: “The news from the Metropolitan Police is to be welcomed and Tower Hamlets will continue to work with the Auditors and DCLG.”

Let’s pick all this apart.

No allegations of criminality were “made in” the Panorama programme and Takki knows that full well. Yet he allowed his statement to mislead; this served the interests of his political master.

In his defence, however, the Met Police statement on which he was relying was also highly misleading. But Takki knew that was the case as well.

Here’s why.

In his interview with Panorama, the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said he would be looking “very carefully” at Panorama’s evidence. So Panorama handed over two files to his civil servants who had already gathered evidence from elsewhere.

Apparently, those two Panorama files contained spreadsheet analysis and other evidence of how the Mayor overturned officer recommendations over grants in favour of Bengali and Somali third sector organisations, plus other matters.

I understand one of those other matters concerned about £11,000 of grants given to an organisation called the Brady Youth Forum.

Panorama started posing questions to Takki about this on March 7. When six days later Takki had still failed to reply (he’s a very busy man, you know), John Ware sent him a reminder with some additional questions.

At that point Interim Monitoring Officer Meic Sullivan-Gould (who was by this time convinced Lutfur was a ‘good guy’) began to take over.

Very helpfully on March 19, he told Panorama that there was an ongoing criminal investigation into the Brady issue. He told the programme makers the council had been notified about a fraud by a whistleblower in the middle of last year and that external auditors from Deloitte had reported back on the matter in January.

The Brady Youth Forum was one of several lines of inquiry which I gather Panorama felt needed more work on.

So they left it out of the programme, even though they knew a Fraud Squad investigation was under way.

So imagine our surprise when the Met said yesterday morning there was no credible evidence of fraud in the Panorama files!

I called the Scotland Yard press office for clarification. At about 5pm they called to say er, yes, there is an investigation relating to the Brady Youth Forum. Doesn’t that make your statement this morning a bit misleading, I asked? Er yes, you have a valid point, they said.

I called Andrew Gilligan to let him know. He blogged about it last night.

The police have now issued a “clarified statement”:

Here it is:

On Friday 4 April 2014 the Metropolitan Police Service received three files of material from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) relating to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

The files have been reviewed by a team of officers. In addition, officers have liaised with Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP (PwC) who are conducting a full and wide-ranging audit of financial matters at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

There is no new credible evidence of criminality within the files.

Prior to this, a report was made to Tower Hamlets Police on 20 March by Tower Hamlets Council. The report concerned an irregularity with regards to money being awarded to the Brady Youth Forum, in January and April 2013, that was identified by an internal review. This investigation is being carried out by Tower Hamlets CID.

Therefore there are no new MPS investigations being carried out by the MPS as a result of information contained in the three files of material.

Spot the difference?

They’ve inserted the word “new” before “credible evidence”.

Which itself is odd.

I suspect there were two different teams in the Met examining two sets of files.

The file sent by the council regarding Brady Youth Forum was sent to Tower Hamlets CID on March 20 and I’m not sure how much work detectives there had spent on it.

And I’m guessing the files sent by DCLG were handed directly to a team based at Scotland Yard itself.

What’s not clear is whether those possible two teams actually spoke to each other, or compared notes. Had Tower Hamlets CID flagged up their file on the Brady Youth Forum?

Had a Scotland Yard team handed over information from Panorama on Brady Youth Forum to the Tower Hamlets CID team?

When I called up the Met Police press bureau yesterday, I was told they couldn’t find any reference to Brady Youth Forum on their main pan-London database.

They had to go and check at a local level.

I strongly suspect the Met as a whole was in fact in possession of credible new evidence as a result of DCLG’s actions; I suspect there was a lack of communication internally among the super sleuths.

But what’s also odd is the behaviour of the council in all this.

First of all, the Takki Sulaiman has a “setting the record straight” section on the council’s website. This is where he places rebuttals to stories he dislikes or doesn’t understand. You’d think from the title he’d at least strive for some accuracy. Yesterday morning he was very quick to publish the Met Police’s statement there.

Since then, I and others have told him and the head of paid service, Steve Halsey, that that statement has since been clarified. Has the council updated its website? Of course not (as at 5pm on April 17).

But forget for now the misleading statements because that’s just par for the course for Takki Sulaiman, but look again at the Met Police’s clarified statement.

They say they were notified by the council of the alleged Brady fraud only on March 20.

As I said above, Meic helpfully said Deloitte had reported back on the issue in January.

So why had the council waited all that time to go to the police?

It’s worth noting that some details of Panorama’s investigations into this had been contained in the ‘dossier’ taken to Lutfur’s office at the end of January by the so-called “whistleblowing” Bengali researcher.

The council presumably had sufficient evidence to go to the police, but it seems strange that they appeared to sit on it until Panorama began to hint they would be including it in the programme.

I said a couple of weeks ago that the back story to the Panorama programme might prove bigger than the broadcast itself. Watch this space.

Oh, and don’t forget…the auditors from PwC have only just started their work. This is the serious business of it all.

But you’d never have guessed from Lutfur’s latest press release.

Here:

Scotland Yard find “no credible evidence” in Tower Hamlets probe

Mayor Lutfur Rahman today welcomed the announcement by the Metropolitan Police that there was “no credible evidence” to claims of fraud at Tower Hamlets Council.

Mayor Rahman said:

“I have always maintained that there has been no wrongdoing and the Met’s decision that there is no credible evidence and not to investigate these claims is a vindication, however, the public now need to know who brought these allegations, why they were given such credence by the Secretary of State and whether the upcoming elections had any impact on the timing.”

The investigation was apparently based on documents presented to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles by BBC Panorama’s John Ware. Before the broadcast, a member of the programme’s own production team leaked production notes from the film and made accusations of political and racial bias on the part of the programme-makers. This evidence has been legally barred from publication by the BBC.

The dropped investigation is the latest of several inquiries into local democracy in Tower Hamlets that have returned no evidence of wrongdoing. In 2013, the Electoral Commission published a report into claims of voter fraud, investigating around 160 separate allegations and finding no evidence to support any of them.

Mayor Rahman added:

“There is a clear pattern in Tower Hamlets of opposition parties and sections of the media claiming everything from fraud to electoral malpractice to extremist takeovers in an attempt to discredit my administration. Once again, such claims have been shown to be lacking the critical factor of evidence. I hope that with these latest smears dispelled we can turn back to the issues that matter to local people’s day-to-day lives.”

For a lawyer, he does have a habit of talking conflated disingenuous bollocks, doesn’t he? Now even he’s trying to deny there’s a fraud investigation. Maybe his memory is failing him.

By the way, if anyone has any information about council contracts, grants, public money spent on PR and disposal of properties, they can write to PwC at lbth.inspectors@uk.pwc.com.

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Lutfur, me and our adoring fan clubs in pictures (and the gullibility of some Bengali press)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 6, 2014| 204 Comments »

Where to start with updates on the events of last week?

Yesterday, Mayor Lutfur Rahman staged a mini-rally/call for canvassers outside Sir John Cass School in Stepney. I’d been helping out with some spring cleaning at St Dunstan’s Church across the road so I thought I’d pop by to see what was going on.

Here’s the male heavy crowd.

lutfur crowd

Thanks to Cllr Gulam Robbani‘s Facebook page we can see the moment I arrived.

This is a photo he took of me offering a handshake as he walked towards me.

Handshake

 

He wasn’t interested in the handshake; he just continued walking towards me, pointing his camera in my face. It was weird.

So I took a couple of him instead.

But he just carried on snapping. I’m not sure what he thought he was doing (and if you look carefully in the background, you can see Lutfur looking a little concerned about his friend’s erratic behaviour as well) so I gave him the thumb’s up.

thumb up

Someone suggested later I sign an autograph book for him.

Like little sheep following one of their more misguided leaders, a few more brave Lutfurites rushed forward to copy him. Cllr Alibor Choudhury also joined in and asked people to take pictures of us together.

Here are a couple more of my secret fan club.

Don’t you think they do look sheepish?

Standing in the background of the ‘thumbs up’ photo is Sebastian Payne, the online editor of the Spectator magazine. He thought it one of the strangest scenes he’d scene at a political rally. I mean, what kind of politician would try and intimidate a journalist? Bit sinister.

Seb, in a piece he wrote last night, also said there were a number of other more professional photographers taking photos with long lenses from the park across the way and from the end of the street.

Whether these photographers were paid by Lutfur I don’t know, but one or two were jumping to his orders.

For example, a couple of minutes after the Great Man himself arrived, one of his men (for they were pretty much all men), spotted a couple of white girls walking past. They pointed this out to Lutfur, so the mayor pounced. Smiling, he rushed over to them. They looked a bit bemused.

Lutfur and the girls

But he stood there chatting to them for a couple of minutes, just long enough for his cameraman to take enough shots to tick his “diversity” box.

lutfur girls and cameras

And then he walked back to the embraces of his 75 or so committed fans.

For the next half hour I was there, he never once more ventured beyond that crowd.

While I was watching all this, I did have a pleasant chat with his main man, Cllr Alibor Choudhury. We discussed all manner of things and I repeated an offer for Lutfur to write for this blog. He thought it a lovely idea. He also repeated a statement put out on the council’s website disputing the calculations made by BBC Panorama about the awarding of grants.

The BBC said Lutfur had diverted more than £2million of grants towards Bangladeshi or Somali groups to shore up his vote.

In contrast, the council had stated: 

In fact, in the latest grants round, £1.6million of a £9.7million programme was awarded to organisations with a Bengali or Somali chair, CEO or applicant – or 16.5 per cent to a community that makes up just under 36 per cent of the population.

I told Alibor surely the way to settle this is for the council to provide a breakdown of its figures by group. No problem, he said. So I said that’s odd because when I’d asked Takki Sulaiman, the council’s head of communications, for that spreadsheet on Thursday, he’d refused to send it. Takki said if I wanted that breakdown, I’d have to submit a FoI request. How transparent.

Alibor said Takki was “wrong”, that I should have been given it. So would Alibor send me it instead? Oh no, said the cabinet member for finance, we’ll have to let Eric Pickles’s inspectors now do their job.

He then asked me for my opinion on how last week’s events will affect the May election. I told him I didn’t really know. I said Labour seem buoyed by it and that many Bengalis had expressed deep embarrassment about the antics of Lutfur bhai and co.

Alibor said he was surprised at that and pointed to the favourable coverage the Mayor had received in the hard-hitting, ever-so-scrutinising Bengali media.

Here’s a selection of front pages from Thursday’s editions.

Bengali papers

Some of the headlines read ‘Brave Lutfur’, ‘BBC apologises over Panorama’, etc etc. It’s a free press, I suppose, but they do let themselves and their readers down sometimes with their gullibility.

A number of the papers, including the once prestigious Surma, also ran headlines declaring that Jack Straw was now backing Lutfur. “Lutfur is rolling out the sort of progressive programme that I’m in favour of Labour councils initiating,” the former Foreign Secretary was quoted as saying.

Really?

In fact, these quotes were taken from a rather feeble April Fool gag on Michael Meacher’s blog, Left Futures, published here the morning after Panorama on April 1. There were so many clues this was fake, I won’t bother going into them, but the biggest one of all was the line inserted at the top of the article on Tuesday evening.

Left futures

If I were Labour, I’d be getting Jack Straw to demand an apology and the right of reply in all those papers for the next edition. Labour needs to do better getting its message out to the media.

The Bengali community deserves better journalism than this.

But Lutfur, partly due to the council cash that’s been lobbed their way, has the Bengali press sewn up.

Late on Friday afternoon, his two council-paid media advisers, Numan Hussain and Mohammed Jubair (the £50k a year adviser who also works for Channel S) sent out invites for an “emergency press conference” in the town hall. These two, remember, have been behind allegations the BBC was racist.

I wasn’t invited, and nor was the East London Advertiser. I’m not aware of any other non-Bengali hacks who were asked to come. In fact, the ELA’s Adam Barnett received a tip-off from another source and made his way to Mulberry Place. Only after he was in the building did the Mayor’s Office ring him and ask if he’d like to come!

Here’s Lutfur’s photo of the meeting.

press conference

That’s Stuart Madewell to Lutfur’s left. Many of the others in camera shot are councillors or Tower Hamlets First activists. I’m told the “press conference” wasn’t the most biting of affairs, that it was more like a campaign strategy meeting.

I’m told the first question was something like: “We’ve heard there were SAS here and you’ve been arrested. Is this all propaganda?”

Who dares wins, eh.

There have been a couple of other developments, which I’ll report on later, but in the meantime, here are a couple more photos (courtesy of Labour’s @dave___smith):

Today’s edition of East End Life:

East End Life

 

Can anyone spot what’s missing??

And a someone removing Lutfur’s name from Poplar Baths.

Screen shot 2014-04-06 at 16.33.11

Not quite the Baghdad Saddam statue, but…

 

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Panorama latest: Pickles sends in auditors to Tower Hamlets town hall…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 4, 2014| 176 Comments »

8.15am…This has just come to me. At 8am this morning a number of specially appointed auditors from PriceWaterhouseCooopers arrived at Tower Hamlets town hall in Mulberry Place on the express orders of the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Eric Pickles has heard enough and he has now put his words into action.

Officials at DCLG have been watching Tower Hamlets extremely carefully for many months, amassing their own evidence.

The BBC Panorama documentary on Monday was the final straw. Evidence amassed from that programme, and not just that relating to the broadcast itself, is also being examined.

I understand PwC’s people are taking away boxes of files relating to the grants process and the disposal of assets, probably including the sale of Poplar Town Hall.

Mayor Lutfur Rahman is due to hold an anti-Panorama rally in Stepney on Saturday. I suspect the tension will be ratcheted up.

More on all this later, but spare a thought for interim officer Meic Sullivan-Gould, who’s missing all this fun having flown to Japan…where they know what to do in these sorts of circumstances…

I’ve written a more detailed account for Express.co.uk here.

And here are the letters sent from DCLG to the council and PwC.

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Tower Hamlets’ and Lambeth’s top lawyers take to Facebook to discuss Panorama…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 3, 2014| 24 Comments »

Jan0700146_biggerMeic Sullivan-Gould, a Past President of the Association of Council Secretaries & Solicitors, has ruffled a few feathers since becoming interim monitoring officer at Tower Hamlets council in January.

I’m told he’s a great fan of Private Eye and that he believes he’s a real bloodhound when it comes to sniffing out town hall wrongdoing.

He’s something of a travelling wilbury in local government circles. Councils queue up for his consultancy services, it seems. He must be the best thing since sliced bread. He’s an expert. In everything.

Except keeping counsel as a good lawyer perhaps should.

Within a few short weeks of of working in Tower Hamlets the white knight of local government was letting it be known there was nothing to investigate. He, Meic, had given the council and Mayor Lutfur Rahman a clean bill of health.

Nothing to be seen here, you pesky journalists and opposition councillors; run along now.

How he had managed to go through the books and processes of the council is such a short space of time, I have no idea. He must be superhuman.

And so confident was he of his thorough investigation, he took to Facebook as the Panorama programme was airing on Monday night.

Screen shot 2014-04-03 at 13.07.15

The man he is chatting to is Mark Hynes, the director of law at Lambeth Council, who, significantly, is the President of the Lawyers in Local Government. So a heavy hitter. I’m not sure he’ll be most impressed about Meic’s privacy settings.

So what we learn is that Mark Hynes is shocked by Panorama’s findings. “Where were all the officers?” he asks. “..it would seem that the Bengalis through the mayor and cabinet are doing what they want.”

I’m not sure “the Bengalis” is a term he’d like to use again. And I think the headhunters will knock no more about him moving to LBTH.

But Meic doesn’t pick him up on his use of language. Instead he berates Mark for taking a view. In fact, Meic goes further: He offers his expert political analysis. “The mayor’s support will be galvanised by their unfair coverage….chances of a free fair and credible election diminished by an unnecessarily contentious rehash of longstanding unproven allegations!”

Remember, Meic had just watched a programme proving a dubious relationship between the Mayor and Channel S. Meic thought there were Chinese walls in place surrounding Mohammed Jubair’s work for the broadcaster and as a mayoral media adviser.

So in Meic’s view, Lutfur is not the Bad Mayor, but a good guy. Clean bill of health.

Part of his job, of course, is to be impartial on many matters, and to retain the trust of members and officers. He may just have lost that. They almost yearn for the return of his predecessor Isabella Freeman. I’m not sure he can hang around too much longer.

That’ll give him time to scour the pages of Private Eye (for articles about himself.)

Or return to his thoughtful musings on Twitter..

Screen shot 2014-04-03 at 16.30.43

 

 

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