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.

Along with the rest of the country, we are assuming that there will be a general election in either the summer or the autumn of this year. Members in the West Ham and Beckton constituency have begun to murmur about choosing the candidate. It seems that some of them would like to participate in the democratic process.

We understand that, in the twinning of strong constituency Labour Parties with their less robust colleagues in distant shires, the CLPs in Newham have been twinned with the party in Ipswich.

It seems that there has been some movement on the matter of the standards committee report. Readers will recall that Newham Council spent several tens of thousands of pounds of council -taxpayers’ money on an investigation into allegations made by Cllr Terry Paul, against the mayor for allegations of bullying towards staff and councillors.

Our crystal ball is a little cloudy. We are thus, unable to say whether Labour’s problems are a temporary blip or whether we are seeing a permanent realignment.

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.

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”.