Our vast army of correspondents has revealed an interesting titbit. Former Newham mayor, Sir Robin Wales has been selected to stand as Labour’s Police and Crime Commissioner candidate for Suffolk in this May’s election.

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.

Once upon a time there was a mayor, he whose name could not be mentioned. Back in those days £2.5 million was spent every year on an ‘every child programme’. (This mayor had a balanced budget and could invest in things that were important, err, like children.) 

We previously reported that a report was presented to the members of the Standards Advisory Committee at their scheduled January meeting. They, sensibly, decided that they needed more than a couple of minutes to go through the 100 plus pages.

Taking her lead from the Tories!

In 1997, One of the Blair government flagship policies was to roll out Sure Start Centres across the country to give children the ‘best possible start in life’.

For several years, a large building in Stratford has been the subject of considerable attention.

Residents, first in the form of the “Focus E15 Mums” and now simply the Focus E15 Campaign have petitioned the council about the state of the buildings.

The response to the failure to manage the budget properly is as follows:

£22 million Cuts in Services.

£16 million from the sale of Sale of Assets.

It was only a couple of years ago that Newham was branded in My London as London’s dirtiest borough. However, it has recently trumpeted its spectacular improvement in reducing fly-tips.

My London reported that Lambeth (Lab) headed the league for traffic and parking penalties. They were followed by Westminster (Lab). Newham made a creditable showing, coming in third.

The £29 million that should come in will bolster the somewhat shaky budget.

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.

There is a well-known phenomenon at Newham Council. Councillors have been kept in the dark until the date of a meeting and then had papers, numbering in the hundreds of pages, tabled for their consideration.

Reports have come to us that Newham Council’s Labour Group is struggling financially.

It may simply be that things are quiet on the home-news front, but we are beginning to see again, reports that Jeremy Corbyn MP is planning to start his own political party. The reports are said to emanate from ‘friends’ close to Corbyn.

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”.

It seems that the bid to become the Borough of Culture has been strengthened with a new appointment to the bid team. The new appointee comes with a wealth of journalistic experience which seems to focus, almost exclusively on LBGTQAA+ issues.

There was a time when Newham Labour was a bastion which sent out canvassers to neighbouring boroughs to bolster their election attempts. We can recall dozens of activists from Newham supporting Labour candidates in Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham and further afield into deepest Essex.

Labour Party members will have been lucky enough to receive a New Year’s message from the Mayor.

We have been challenged!

We were asked point blank, “did we want to see the Galloway event cancelled?” We’d be delighted to see him bugger off to one of the more repressive regimes that he seems to favour. But pending that, we would NOT like to see his talk cancelled.

We see that Newham Independents have chosen a second candidate for Plashet Ward. This brings the running total of male/female declared candidates to 6:1. They have, as yet, chosen not to select any trans or non-binary candidates.

On this occasion they have chosen a former Tory activist and candidate.

A short while ago, we raised the point that Newham has failed to start any new council or social homes for the past three years. We understand that this revelation caused several members of the executive to be upset. So they should be.