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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

Hide the following 6 comments

Good article

02.02.2002 13:50

Looks like they are trying to oust all residents to have a complete financial city without interferance. I can envisage it becoming a no through zone, after all why would you need to be there.

sceptic


links

04.02.2002 16:45

Anyone got links/sources for more on this?

laura


Corporation in 'pincer'?

15.04.2003 22:57

Face it, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and the City are going to merge.

Oh how the New Labour master 'plan' headed by the watch-word 'regeneration' (and this one's down to Two Jabs methinks) falls into place. Once the Channel Tunnel rail link comes into Stratford, you might as well call Tower Hamlets part of 'The City'. Not good for the average Joe like me, property prices go up to an unacceptable level (the case now, but I think a big drop's coming), therefore bringing inflation into the local economy, yet again driving up costs to the less well-off. For example, Tower Hamlets boasts the most expensive Tesco in the country, yet some of the highest rates of poverty (which in the world of lies, damned lies, and statistics, see that is bloody unfair to the poor). The Canary Wharf Group isn't helping the situation, also providing more McJobs for residents whilst gobbling up land.

I see it only going one way, the genuine settlers and working classes will be bribed to up sticks and go (expect a stunt like this after a market crash) so that the land can be redeveloped and City (and of course Corporation) extended. If you reside in Hackney or Tower Hamlets the choice is yours - be uprooted from being a 'proper' East Ender to join the homogenised society somewhere in suburbia. Not all of us want that. I like the hubbub of the inner city, but can't help feeling the centre of gravity hurtling in this direction. That dissolves power and rights as a person, something of course something Blair has been working actively on since 1994, whilst hoodwinking the sad, sad people that voted for him.

crossfired


Apologies

15.04.2003 23:00

Sorry about multiple posts - getting used to the system.

crossfired


Help

18.04.2003 14:22

I was the research assistant for the group who opposed this bill in the Commons and the Lords. I can assure you, it was a complete, total, and utter whitewash. The bill itself made no sense from the point of view of the Corporation's 1000 year old constitution, no sense from the point of view of businesses (as it created complications about the status of businesses - such as who is a 'corporate body'? The shareholders, the board of directors, the managers, or, as we argued, those who create the wealth?), no sense from the point of view of UK democracy, and no sense in terms of the numerous international and regional agreements that are supposed to protect democracy and human rights. The reasons we put forward were solid and correct. The response from Parliamentarians was simeply 'the Corporation is special', with little else in the way of explanation. The response from the medi was almost non-existent, besides a couple of items in the FT and the Guardian (the journalist from the Guardian was threatened that if he went ahead with the story, he''d be in trouble).

This was a completely shameful experience. Shame on Blair and all of the other Labour MPs who voted for it. The bill was a private bill (which are generally read out, and if someone, for instance, doesn't like the colour of the paper it is written on, it is thrown out). It ended up taking three years to go through Parliament, having faced the longest filibuster in history, at a time when the government is saying that it doesn't have time to pass the anti-hunting bill (which was in the manifesto)!!!!!!!!

If that is not enough, this disgrace is due to expand. The business vote in the City is going to be the basis for 'enterprise development zones' all over the country. We must stop it.

Lee
mail e-mail: l.salter(at)unl.ac.uk


By the way

18.04.2003 14:27

By the way, if anyone wants to contact me on this subject, I have lots of my research in digital form - just email me on the above address, changing the (at) for @

Lee
mail e-mail: l.salter(at)unl.ac.uk