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Secret CITY Authority to give Business Vote and invade East End

Millennium Leia | 02.02.2002 12:58

Rich and unaccounable authority, the Corporation of London, a symbol of capitalism is seeking to invade the East End by extending its property portfolio and give business a vote at the expense of local people.


Government insiders reveal how the Corporation of London is vying to remove the last illusion of democracy. This will be done at the expense of 5000 residents who live in the area and the poor people in the adjoining bankrupt boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. The Corporation is known to be acquiring land between Spitalfields Market and Bishopsgate Goods Yard for this purpose and the local community are going to be in the crossfire.

In oppostion, Labour and prime minister Blair had threatened to reform the Corporation to force it to become accountable and share its vast wealth chest. But since being in power, the Labour government has extolled its business interests. Instead, Blair and his cronies have made the Corporation of London more powerful than ever and is now pushing this private bill as his final seal for the plans for the business vote and the East End begin to take shape. Mayor Ken Livingstone is also suddenly a supporter of unfettered capitalism and now uses head Judith Mayhew as his personal advisor (A cosy alliance until his rebel group can re-emerge from the dregs of corporate deals struck in their absence).

On the 15th November, MPs revived a fast-track bill to increase the voting power of big business in the City of London at the expense of People. A handful of honourable left-wing Labour MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell opposed this bill first put forward in November 1998 and was described as an insult to democracy when Labour were in opposition.

The Corporation has now successfully gained the support of new Labour which is pushing the fast-track a bill that will give 28,000 business votes at the expense of 7000 residential votes.

This will now pave the way for the City of London and its corporate sponsors to extend its clutches into the East End. These deals are being struck in the form of regeneration schemes that only seem to benefit wealthy and business interests and not the impoverished communities of Tower Hamlets and Hackney, who arte two of the most deprived boroughs in London. These schemes were incepted by former Conservative Party and pushed by the Labour party and include the City Fringe Partnership and the Cross River Partnership.

Little is known about the Corporation of London which has a large property portolio most of which is held in private trusts. The Corporation or the City of London is both a local authority and a property development company. Two privately held trust funds, City’s Cash and Bridge House Estates. The former involving a vast property portfolio that owns more than a quarter of the land in the City of London.

Interestingly, Labour's expenditure on housing has fallen dramatically between 1999 and 2000, giving great comfort to commercial developers who destroy communities by building office blocks and mall-type complexes in inner cities by bribing councils with planning gain. Most of which involves giving out a handful of manual work on prestigious office blocks or producing small housing developments that are set at market levels but conveniently described as social housing.

The plans of the Corporation of London are what one writer once described as the "most complex planning exercises in the universe" is beginning to unravel a deeply disturbing picture.

Please help with more information on the Corporation of London

Millennium Leia

Comments

Display the following 6 comments

  1. Good article — sceptic
  2. links — laura
  3. Corporation in 'pincer'? — crossfired
  4. Apologies — crossfired
  5. Help — Lee
  6. By the way — Lee