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Sadiq Khan is adamant. He has no intention of introducing pay-per-mile road charging. This is the allegation made by Tory mayoral hopeful, Susan Hall. One can see her point, in a book published in his name in 2023, (Breathe. Tackling the Climate Emergency), he made reference to “plans to introduce a new, more comprehensive, road-user charging system”.
Overall effectiveness : Inadequate
Leadership and management : Inadequate
Having been slammed in the local government review of her leadership and finding out that her budget has been wrecked with a £25 million pound overspend in temporary housing. It has been a bad two weeks for the Mayor of Newham.
In December 2003, the cabinet agreed to demolish 10 Victoria St, (Brimstone House) and rebuild on the same site.
Those who were around in Labour circles five years ago will recall that one R. Wales expressed concerns to the Labour Party about the Tower-Hamletisation of Newham Labour. For this he was predictably attacked for Islamophobia. And of course, the Labour Party under one J. Corbyn, chose to do nothing.
His concerns, however, were also shared by members of the Muslim community, including those in Newham Labour. They have ben instrumental in providing material for this piece. With this publication we reveal how key members of Tablighi Jamaat worked with the Fiaz campaign to oust Wales and how they have since been rewarded with positions of influence.
We note in addition that those in the Tablighi/Fiaz faction effectively created a party within a party.
The two Newham CLPs have subsequently been suspended; the council has suffered a defection to Lutfer Rahman’s Aspire party and has been riven by accusations of anitsemitism; and some eight members of the Labour Group are said to be under investigation by the Labour Party.
The root of the mess that Newham Labour is now experiencing lies in no small part with the Islamo-Leftist coalition that brought Mayor Fiaz to power. Roxi and the Tablighis tells that story.
A topical satirical/political website focussed on the London Borough of Newham. Stay informed, keep Newham council in check!
Local Elections
A by-election is not a general election. Turnout is typically low. Only 31,107 voters bothered to cast a vote in the Rochdale by-election, (compared to 46,476 in the 2019 general election). It is a chance to give the government a bit of a kicking without disturbing anything too much.
In an embarrassing volte face, the Labour Party have been forced to remove their endorsement of Azhar Ali. Labour was defending a majority of over 9,000 and Ali was facing a serious challenge from George Galloway. Both men were seeking to capitalize on the Muslim vote in a by-election that was dominated by events in Gaza. Does that sound familiar?
We see that Momentum stalwart, Tahir Mirza has announced that he will be standing for the Independents against (Sir) Stephen Timms MP in the forthcoming general election.
They work for you?
Overall effectiveness : Inadequate
Leadership and management : Inadequate
Having been slammed in the local government review of her leadership and finding out that her budget has been wrecked with a £25 million pound overspend in temporary housing. It has been a bad two weeks for the Mayor of Newham.
In December 2003, the cabinet agreed to demolish 10 Victoria St, (Brimstone House) and rebuild on the same site.
The Labour Group has recently been lucky to have met twice. Amidst all of the items up for discussion, the looming financial crisis caused by a massive overspend on temporary accommodation was not mentioned.
Finding an extra £25m was evidently not of sufficient importance.
CUTS, CUTS, CUTS!
“Senior officers and councillors displayed a “collective corporate blindness” to the urgency of the council’s financial position and repeatedly failed to act to tackle spiralling overspends”
Not about Newham, but from the Auditor’s Public Interest Report on the financial crisis in Croydon. Newham, you have been warned.
Newham Council have agreed, after much internal dissent, a budget. Central to the budget is the plan to sell £16m worth of capital assets.
On the same day as the council meeting that agreed the budget the BBC disclosed that 19 English councils had been given permission to sell their capital assets in order to subsidise their revenue costs (see list below).
Seven voluntary sector groups have written to the mayor and the chief exec to protest the cuts in youth service funding, (see text below). The mayor has planned to take some £300,000 from the youth service budget over the next two years.
There has got to be just the smallest sense of irony in the fact that Fiaz and Labour are slashing the grant to The Theatre Royal at the same time as they are spending more than that in seeking to become the Borough of Culture.
What a Fiaz-co
One of the issues that this website has repeatedly returned, is the mayor’s obsession with pursuing her pet projects, regardless of the costs or the benefit to the residents of Newham. This is an issue that both her internal and external opposition have alluded to.
Amongst the changes at the cabinet meeting in February, the threatened cuts to the commissioned youth work were reversed. My London reported the U-Turn which will restore the money to commissioned youth work budget.
In 1997, Tony Blair took office to the strains of “things, can only get better”.
We see from the Newham cabinet papers that (some of) the results of the annual residents’ survey have been released. For reasons best known to themselves, the authors of the cabinet papers have chosen to show the movement between only two years.
Promises, Promises
The purpose of this series is not to support or challenge the policies that the mayor has reneged on, it is simply to remind readers that there were significant promises made to the electorate that have been ditched once she got into office.
We will touch on this only briefly because we have covered it at length elsewhere. However, we should note that within the space of 12 months, Mayor Fiaz had suddenly dropped the manifesto commitment to 50% social housing in all new developments.
Promises made three years ago are fast disappearing into the ether. And car drivers in Newham are understandably a little peeved about the number of parking tickets issued.
Labour in Newham
Sadiq Khan is adamant. He has no intention of introducing pay-per-mile road charging. This is the allegation made by Tory mayoral hopeful, Susan Hall. One can see her point, in a book published in his name in 2023, (Breathe. Tackling the Climate Emergency), he made reference to “plans to introduce a new, more comprehensive, road-user charging system”.
A special meeting of the cabinet was called on on 2nd April 2024.For some reason, when you click on the video link, it goes to a special meeting of the cabinet in February. Because of this we have had to rely upon the accounts that emanate from those present.
At the weekend, members of the Labour faithful turned out to campaign for Sadiq Khan and the Assembly candidates, Unmesh Desai and James Beckles.
They were supported by some of Newham Labour’s party big-wigs.
Community News
We reported on the hissing directed at a Jewish councillor when he got up to speak at council. The hissing came from the public gallery. It is not unknown for members of the public to express their disapproval of their elected councillors by means of gestures, heckling and rude noises.
We reported some years ago, that a small number of younger Tablighi Jamaat activists, had won favour with Mayor Fiaz for the way in which they had orchestrated the social media campaign in the race to get her selected as the mayoral candidate.
By our count, roughly 80-100 people turned up for the Galloway event. In the end, it seemed a bit of an anti-climax. It was not at the (Afro-Caribbean) Community Centre. Apparently, the booking was suddenly cancelled on the day of the event. He knows who was behind the decision, “the mayor was behind it”.
What Happens Next?
Only a few weeks to go and the mayoral statements from the various candidates have been released. We take a brief look at them in the order in which they appear.
From mayoral candidate Simeon Ademolake
“Thanks so much for your article about my Mayoral bid. Unfortunately, some of your information is inaccurate.
Labour has now decided upon its candidates for the 2022 local elections in May. It seems like a victory for Mayor Fiaz who has cleared out almost all of those connected to the ancien regime and imported a number who will be unfamiliar to readers, and to most of the local Labour Party!