This is the Winter of Her Discontent
Mayor Fiaz is under assault from all sides it seems, including many in her own party.
Newham Borough has been Branded “One of the Filthiest in the UK”
Not a great achievement. Three years in office and Newham is branded one of the filthiest boroughs in the country.
Save Newham City Farm
Nearly 40,000 people have signed the petition to save the City Farm and they are on course to reach 50,000 signatures.
Ann Easter
There was an interesting article in the Recorder recently. Cllr Easter suggested that the current obsession with deleting history (or names) that we no longer like, might not be a wholly commendable idea.
Labour Vote Holds Up. By Election Success for Labour; But Not in Newham
The national trends suggest that Labour should be running close to the Tories. opinions in Labour are divided as to why Starmer has as yet failed to overtake Boris.
Protests at The Old Town Hall
As Newham Council conducted their meeting on 21st September 2021 a protest organised by Newham People Power was held outside.
Redundancies at the Town Hall?
We hear that the knives are being sharpened at the Town Hall. It may be the mayor’s financial incompetence which has brought them to this point, but it will be the staff at Newham Council who pay the price.
Mayor seeks to Distance Herself from the Far Left. Again.
Having served their purpose and now that the winds of change are clearly blowing in a different direction, Mayor Fiaz has had to extract herself from yet another faux pas where she is linked to the far-left.
Housing Investment: Talking the Talk, but not Walking the Walk
Every year, Sadiq Khan distributes the largesse from Westminster to deliver on his promises to massively increase the housing stock in London. There was a time when Newham topped the bidding war for government money to support the building of new homes.
REIN Gone; NREA Arrives
It seems that the longstanding third-sector group supporting people from minority communities in Newham is about to go.
Mosque Visiting, in a “Private Capacity”
It appears that the mayor is on a recruitment drive.
Earlier in the summer she took herself along to the Masjid Imambargah, a mosque in Plaistow, near to the Abbey Arms. With the closure of the Imamia Mission on Romford Road this is the only Shia mosque currently operating in the borough.
She was at pains to point out that she was there in a personal capacity, not as the First Citizen of the Borough. Yeah.
Stand Up to Racism - But Not in Newham
During the Corbyn ascendancy, little could stop Mayor Fiaz appearing on a stage or attending a protest with Stand Up to Racism.
B.A.M.E. R.I.P.
In an Outbreak of what might be considered common-sense, Newham Council has decided to drop the acronym, BAME.
It seems that lumping everyone together irrespective of background and history is now infra dig at Newham. We are bound to ask, will the CLPs now follow suit?
In a move to promote the mayor
In a move to promote the mayor’s latest vanity project and salvage money from any corner, the arts complex in Stratford, which serves the whole borough is about to be dealt a blow from which it is unlikely to recover.
Three Years In. The Dunning-Kruger* Effect?
We thought that we’d take a look at the progress Mayor Fiaz is making after three years in office. In her campaign she asserted that she was “Building Newham’s Future”. Let’s see how she is doing.
There’s a Hole in your Budget, Dear Terry, Dear Terry*.
While some of you were doing interesting things, like watching paint dry, some of us were reflecting upon the activities of the Overview and Scrutiny Commission.
People at the Heart of Everything We Do, or Rude and Unprofessional?
We’ve been having a bit of fun at the expense of the incompetents in the Town Hall and at their personal ambitions. What this disguises is, that real people in Newham have begun to suffer and notice the drop in quality of services across the council.
The Mayoral Steeplechase. Who’s in the Running?
Having revealed that the Labour Party does not trust its members to choose their candidates for mayor and councillors, we thought that we’d have a look at some of the potential mayoral candidates.
Police and Council (lack of) Relations
We hear that the borough commander has recently decamped from Newham to set up his office in neighbouring Waltham Forest (his command is across the two boroughs). The reasons we have been given are that he found it impossible to work with the current Mayor.
We Told You So! Labour Party Democracy Circa 2021.
We learn that Labour Party members in Newham have all received an email about the suspension of the parties in East and West Ham. They learned that the parties are still suspended!