1715 [1632] [1615] GMT London Wednesday 17 June 2013. KHOODEELAAR! Campaign Defending Democracy for the Community in Tower Hamlets. UPDATER Commentary by © Muhammad Haque on the poor state of democracy on offer to the East End by our "elected" Council. This Commentary contains crucial evidence of just how many weaknesses CURRENTLY undermine the Community’s receiving a genuinely manifestly democratic, accountable, transparent service from Tower Hamlets Council. The Commentary has been posted online as the first response to the ARCHANT-owned ‘local newspaper title’ the Newham Recorder carrying a piece about the public recording and filming the Council Meetings in the adjoining “East End” boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets. The evidence referred to by Muhammad Haque also relates to the fact that Tower Hamlets Council has been being used as a tool by Big Business which has been taking over vast parts of the Borough by destroying it and by displacing the communities that have lived in their home estates, neighbourhoods and streets for generations and generations. The focus is placed again at Muhammad Haque’s Public Question to Tower Hamlets Council on 26 June 2013 bout he unaccountability by the Housing associations in the borough which had been handed massive amounts of the Council’s Housing stock a decade earlier...

1632 [1615] GMT London Wednesday 17 June 2013.

One paragraph has been rewritten since the posting on the Newham Recorder web site:

KHOODEELAAR! Campaign Defending Democracy for the Community in Tower Hamlets. UPDATER Commentary by © Muhammad Haque on the poor state of democracy on offer to the East End by our "elected" Council. This Commentary contains crucial evidence of just how many weaknesses CURRENTLY undermine the Community’s receiving a genuinely manifestly democratic, accountable, transparent service from Tower Hamlets Council. The Commentary has been posted online as the first response to the ARCHANT-owned ‘local newspaper title’ the Newham Recorder carrying a piece about the public recording and filming the Council Meetings in the adjoining “East End” boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets. The evidence referred to by Muhammad Haque also relates to the fact that Tower Hamlets Council has been being used as a tool by Big Business which has been taking over vast parts of the Borough by destroying it and by displacing the communities that have lived in their home estates, neighbourhoods and streets for generations and generations. The focus is placed again at Muhammad Haque’s Public Question to Tower Hamlets Council on 26 June 2013 bout he unaccountability by the Housing associations in the borough which had been handed massive amounts of the Council’s Housing stock a decade earlier...

As Lutfur Rahman appears to be concerned to protect the implied privacy of those members of the public who may not wish to be filmed, perhaps your readers who are unfamiliar with the architecture of the Tower Hamlets "Council chamber" may like to know that the members of the public are not likely to be in the focus of the camera. 

The Tower Hamlets Council Chamber “public gallery" is really not a gallery in the conventionally understood sense. 

The Council Chamber is obstructive with a big pillar blocking a lot of the scenes!

As the building, “Mulberry Place” could not have been designed by an architect with democratic thoughts, the “Council Chamber” reflects a disregard to democracy that must have dominated the minds of those behind the obstructive visual space within.

The other related thing about filming or recording “Council Meetings” is the concept of democracy in action.

What do those who work at the publicity scripts think democracy to be?

Do they think democracy is a parade?

Democracy is not a parade.

Democracy is the crux of the behaviour of the entrusted towards their electors, their real line managers.

The outrage that the public feel whenever elected post-holders misbehave or behave unsatisfactorily is to be found in the fact that the vote is a precious commodity. 

That it is a symbol of trust which is then to be monitored throughout the duration of the mandated period.

Filming is a part of that democratic monitoring by the voters.

Be that filming done by a single one, John Wright, or by more than one.

Back to the Tower Hamlets Council Chamber and its architecture.

It is rows of seats that face the "Council in session” from one side. 

So anyone who may film or photograph the “Council” can do so by carefully focussing only on Councillors or on Lutfur himself if he speaks. 

He rarely speaks in the Council Meetings. 

When he does, his is a prepared item that is over very soon.The issue is not whether Lutfur can get involved in an extra curricular reference that includes the insertion of a byte of praise for something Ed Miliband has done - which cannot be a contextual reference about the filming of the proceedings of Tower Hamlets Council - but whether the public who do care for a democratic local Tower Hamlets Council feel that they are getting democracy delivered by the Council when it sits. 

I have already extensively published on my own evidential part [as John Wright later confirmed to me] in John Wright’s decision to start the filming on 26 June 2013. 

It is vital that elected Councillors and the “elected executive mayor” are seen to be delivering a democratically accountable service to the people of Tower Hamlets as verifiable by and acceptable to the people ourselves.

I don’t believe that Tower Hamlets Council has been behaving anywhere near the standard of democratic delivery that it should do. Whether filming or recording will make such a substantial change in the contents of what councillors do deliver on the “floor of the Council” is not automatically guaranteed. 

It cannot be said with absolute certainty that the present batches of councillors from all the five “groupings” will be transformed overnight directly liked with the Meetings being allowed to be filmed. 

The option to be able to film is in fact linked with the outlook towards the Council. When such an option is in place, most people will not even bother to record the proceedings. Some will. But most are unlikely to do so. People want to feel that Tower Hamlets Council is not a dodgy assembly and that it is with the people of the Borough.As John Wright asked on 26 June 2013: “are you all corrupt”?If Tower Hamlets Council has nothing to hide it should not be prolonging the litany of excuses that deny the people in the borough the option that is now beyond any legitimate questioning.

As I do not write these comments from any party political or careerist standpoint, I may suggest that Lutfur Rahman is being unduly bothered about what Jim Fitzpatrick may or may not have to say. 

Let Jim Fitzpatrick have his piece. 

He only made what to me appears to be, in substance, a monosyllabic intervention in the House of commons on 8 July 2013. 

As for Eric Pickles, Tower Hamlets as “the Council” should take care not to come across as looking for further excuses. 

Eric Pickles, politically, career-wise, has had a not-so-high image. 

The less scope given to him to come across as being on a higher level of accountability than Tower Hamlets is preferable from the standpoint of democratic legitimacy that the local Tower Hamlets council should enjoy. It is not a good tactic for anyone who objectively cares for the reputation of Tower Hamlets Council and the Community in this borough to give any opportunity to either Eric Pickles or to any other party outside to come across as being on a higher moral or democratic plane than our elected Borough Council.

In any case, a local Borough Council has Constitutionally speaking many reasons to think about its remits when comparing itself with the UK central Governments or with the UK Prime Minister!

One obvious reason why No 10 Downing Street should not be open to filming is that it is in actual fact the place where they do discuss some very sensitive matters that will be compromised if done openly or on openly accessible records.

Tower Hamlets Council can make that comparison between itself and No 10 Downing Street if it is included as part of the UK national Operations of Governance by No 10 Downing Street.

So fas as I know, the briefings that the local Borough Council may be party to will have implications for local Policing, crime, disorder and similar issues.Nobody in the community is asking those to be open to filmingPeople have more sense than to ask for that kind of openness.

There has to be balance and there has to be fair comparisons.

Alibor Choudhury, who is reported frequently by the East London Advertiser as the “Cabinet member for resources”, has now made, during Tower Hamlets Council Meetings more than one reference to Eric Pickles’ “biscuit” expenses. 

In what way is it so important to people in Tower Hamlets to try to show Eric Pickles as being irresponsible? How is that the same as Tower Hamlets Council delivering on democratic items that are owed to the people in Tower Hamlets by the Council elected by voters in Tower Hamlets for a decent, accountable Tower Hamlets Council?

Eric Pickles’ biscuit expenses reference has been made as an apparent stick with which to [in a manner of speaking] hurt Tower Hamlets Conservative councillors leader Peter Golds

Every time it has been tried, Golds has survived the “intended injury”.

The much more appropriate approach, theoretically speaking, would be to aim the weapon at some real failing by the Tower Hamlets Tories over their duties to represent their voters.

They may be in the Tory party but they do not have any duty for Eric Pickles’ abuses of Pickles’ own position or power in the CONDEM Collusion.

The SUBJECT that I was asking Tower Hamlets Council the Public Question about when John Wright felt prompted to start the filming on 26 June 2013 was the absence of audit and accountability by the housing associations to which Tower Hamlets council had transferred so much of the Public Council housing stock. 

What has Tower Hamlets Borough Council to say about this stark absence of accountability? What does it say to John Wright’s question, which I have published on video, that housing associations are beyond the scope of the Freedom of Information Act requests? 

What does LBTH Council say to John Wright who has asserted that many of the Council housing estates that were transferred to the housing associations by Tower Hamlets Council have not been protected? 

On 30 April 2013, I helped tenants, residents and families on a housing estate [that is controlled by one of the housing associations that has benefited from the housing stock transfer] deliver a petition to the “executive mayor” and to the Tower Hamlets Council. 

That petition had been organised to obtain rights of say by the tenants and residents and families on what that housing association does on the estate. 

To date, neither “the executive mayor’s” office nor the Council’s “Democratic Services” has responded to the tenants over that petition. 

How is that delivering democracy to the people in Tower Hamlets?

So filming and recording will not cover most of the Council’s and the “executive mayor’s” conduct. 

What it will do is to provide a glimpse of what they do in the formal settings. 

As for the recording of the “Executive Mayor’s Cabinet Meetings”, there is no need for making any excuses against recording.

Why do I say this?

Because as I witnessed on 3 July 2013, the “Cabinet” could and did exclude the “press and the public” from a significant part of its “proceedings”.

Not only that, my own Question, which I presented to that Cabinet that day, has, since, been the subject of substantial correspondence between me and the “Democratic Services”.

So deficient in democratic consistency, transparency and logic has the relevant part of the LBTH Council’s “Democratic Services” been on this occasion that I have had to send a complaint against their stance to, yes, Eric Pickles!

Now, if that is the way that “Tower Hamlets Council is showing Eric Pickles in a poor light” then of course it is they who will be found wanting and neither the public nor Eric Pickles, in context!

And the fault will lie with Tower Hamlets Council and whoever keeps making these really unacceptable, undemocratic, unaccountable decisions in the name of the Council!

 

1234 GMT Wednesday 17 June 2013

 

http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/big_debate_should_the_public_be_able_to_film_council_meetings_1_2282844