© The Author / Khoodeelaar! / CBRUK / LAWMEDIA 2006

Khoodeelaar! The brick lane London e1 area campaign against the crossrail hole ‘plan, scheme, project’ bill

Something is very wrong with the formerly hallowed UK public –n and democratic! - institutions which have during Tony Blair’s stay at number 10 Downing Street, gotten sleazier and sleazier. Discredited and delegitimsied. Democracy has become neutralised and the ethical almost perfect collective voice of outrage that used to be associated with electoral rebuffs and rejections, has become a very temporary assertion of peoples’ moral higher ground. Public institutions and public employees have seized control of people’s lives and this is having a serious effect. Nowhere more so than in the inner city, ‘one of the most deprived’ EAST LONDON BOROUGH OF TOWER HAMLETS. The controlling clique on TOWER HAMLETS Council is religiously fanatically Blairite. So fundamentalist is it in its rejection of ethics, so arrogant is it in its presumption that the people have been neutralised by offers and sometimes actual dispersal of bribes [with cash that belongs to the whole community- resources that should have been used fairly and honestly to meet actual needs across the borough] that it has played a key part in pushing the community’s life upside down in Tower Hamlets. On almost every single level and criteria, life in Tower Hamlets resembles that which is reported to be ‘normal’ in any banana republic. And whose fault is that? Who else but a very small clique of Blairite, Blairing fanatics led by the controlling faction on Tower Hamlets Council. This state of affairs is being most acutely felt around the devastating attack on the community that is the Crossrail Bill. So high is the pressure around Crossrail in the East End of London that the controlling clique has practically abolished the norms of democratic pretence that it was displaying its adherence to as recently as six weeks ago. What has happened in the past six weeks? A movement has come into view. Literally... The KHOODEELAAR! Movement against the Crossrail hole plan has galvanised the community in a historic way. And the Council clique is showing at every stage that it [the clique on Tower Hamlets Council] is as devoid of common sense, that it is as bereft of any sense of shame as it was six weeks ago. The clique on Tower Hamlets Council is now openly promising to groups and individuals that if they back it at the scheduled council election on 4 May 2006 then the clique [on return to power on the Council] will make even bigger dosh available than it has apparently delivered in the past. [To be continued]