We didn’t see any press releases saying that almost the entire independent membership of the standards board had resigned, but looking at Newham London Twitter/X account, that seems to be the only explanation.

The largest council tax rise in London is in Newham at £155. This is nearly £30 above the next borough, Kingston upon Thames.

A couple of councillors objected and made their views known, and here we must acknowledge the stand taken by two councillors in particular, Cllrs Gray and McAlmont. They pointed to the illogicality of supposedly independent councillors agreeing to cast their votes without seeing what they were voting for.

It seems that ICT staff in Newham are currently taking part in a strike ballot. This is caused by “the council’s plan to outsource the service”, as quoted on UKAuthority website.

The coroner reported, “Omar Abdi Ahmed died on 20th November 2023 in hospital due to hypothermia. Mr Ahmed, an amputee who received domiciliary care three times a day, was found by carers, unresponsive at home on l5th November 2023.

Earlier this week, ( 06/08/24), the Overview and Scrutiny Committee met, together with Mayor Fiaz and Finance Czar, Zulfiqar Ali. These senior backbenchers continued to be concerned that the council’s finances might be a problem. In short, their concerns, which had been echoed on this website and in the press, were that Newham is heading for financial disaster.

It seems that Newham has adopted an alternative, sort of DIY, strategy towards homelessness. Small tent-villages are springing up.

The members of London Councils met recently for their AGM and to elect their executive for the new year.

This is an organization well known to Mayor Fiaz, as she was already on the executive.

Not, alas, the final farewell.

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.

At the beginning we said that we thought that this was a local east London matter, but it appears not. Making anonymous allegations are enough to send honest men to the verge of suicide.

Quite how the abuse of a process which is rightly there to protect (mainly) women and secondly the reputation of political parties is stopped is a good question.

Various news sources have reported that the on-off mayor of Tower Hamlets is in trouble again. Not content with a ban for five years for “corrupt practices”, (what The Guardian summarises as “vote-rigging, buying votes and religious intimidation”), Lutfer Rahman has found himself in trouble again. In February 2024, government inspectors were despatched to Tower Hamlets because of problems.

We continue to dig into the story about Cllr Lewis Godfrey’s suspension from the Labour Party. We are confident in this assertion, although, he still appears on the council website (Nov 8^th 2024) as a Labour Party and Co-operative Party member.

We noted the change in the name of the Mayor’s favoured faith body, Newham Muslim Forum, noting that it was now to be known as Faith Space London.

This seemed a little unusual to us, given the particular support of some individuals connected to the Newham People’s Alliance Facebook page with the NMF, we submitted an FOI to understand the connection that this new organisation had with the council.

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.