Xrail hole Bill MPs will need to be vigilant of slippery Xrail-backer
© The Editor / Khoodeelaar /CBRUK/Lawmedia 2006 | 10.03.2006 20:15 | Analysis | Indymedia | Social Struggles | World
The UK House of Commons hybrid draft piece of legislation, the Crossrail Bill, is being ‘scrutinised’ by a small group of MPs, collected from mainly the three ‘major’ Political Parties. The process has been overstated in its relevant capacity to alter the substantive contents of any Bill. Given that the Crossrail Bill contains monumental powers that will enable the destruction of entire communities in the East End of London, the ability – or the chances - of the MPs committee on the Crossrail Bill to make any difference must be examined against the performance of another committee which in October 2002 ‘heard evidence’ from one Michael Keith, a councillor on the East End Borough of Tower Hamlets Council. The same Michael Keith is now leader of the same council and is widely associated with the promotion of the Crossrail Bill and plan as a whole. Keith is set to be among Tower Hamlets Councillors who would enjoy the chance to appear before the Crossrail committee to make the case for the Council’s defiance of the local community. The MPs need to be much more alert and vigilant this time round then their counterparts were on Tuesday 15 October 2002.
This is Michael Keith fabricating away before an MPs Select Committee on Tuesday 15 October 2002.
Very carefully, read the questions and his answers quoted by Khoodeelaaronline below from the records published by the UK Houses of Parliament
Note that materials like this [quoted below] are never ever reported to the people in the community. Not by the propaganda titles EAST END Life [which Khoodeelaar! has dubbed East End Lies] and not on the Tower Hamlets Council’s web site.
Nor indeed by the so-called ‘local’ press, typified by the East London Idiotiser.
Nor indeed by any of the –so-called ‘Left’ organs allegedly watching the antics of the corrupt Tower Hamlets Council.
And it never is examined by any elected membership on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council itself that it really relates to.
Come to think of that, the MPs themselves [Tuesday 15 October 2002] puzzlingly [!] failed or refused to pursue their examination of Michael Keith while he was still before their select committee.
They let him go.
Even after finding a hole as hollow as the Crossrail hole [that was being at the same time being] planned by Michael Keith’s co-promoters to be dug in and forced through the Brick Lane London E1 area, the MPs’ chair delivered the customary thanks to Michael Keith for his alleged evidence.
To call what Keith had stated 'evidence' would be to almost call the 'researches' of someone of David Irving’s description independent, truthful, objective and respectable.
They asked him questions about the undeniable negligence and failures of the Tower Hamlets Council to make proper and competent use of the resources that they did have avaioaable.
They asked him about any regrets.
About any lessons being learnt by Tower Hamlets Council.
Instead of saying yes, they had learnt lessons.
Yes they had found how so many repairs claims were mis-logged and how despite making annual claims about how fantastic the Council’s repairs service was, they had in fact been a n unmitigated and negligent and culpable disaster for which the entire Tower Hamlets Council administration should have been forced to resign en masse, Michael Keith, like a Big Business robot programmed to retort in a fixed mode, said a string of things that increasingly took the ‘answer’ away from the subject and into almost prehistoric times and out into the outer spaces!
There did not follow any rigorous examination of the contents of what Keith told the MPs.
No scrutiny of the claims about the hundreds of millions that would be required if Tower Hamkest Council were to do the necessary repair and maintenance work.
Nobody asked him about the stupidity of giving answers on factual states of buildings in estimates. Related estimates and extrapolated estimates.
Nobody stopped to tell him that he was making an insane statement that had neither head nor tail, neither a start nor an end. That he was offering a nihilistic scenario which could only have a ‘closure’ by destroying the Council’s then existing housing stock.
The result was logically inevitable.
Three years after that extraordinary display of corrupt thinking, Michael Keith was able to participate in the aggressive transfer of Tower Hamlets Council housing stock that he was thinking of doing as he made that set of dishonest and corrupt statements quoted here.
.As it has been seen on the ground in Tower Hamlets during 2004 –2006 in the quite brazenly illegal and undemocratic transfer of the Council housing stock away from the public control of the Council into the de facto ownership of cabals masquerading as Registered social landlords who are blatantly linked with key figures in the controlling clique on Tower Hamlets Council.
Two segments are quited here, an MPs question and Michael Keith’s answers;
Khoodeelaaronline Quote on Friday 10 March 2006 from the Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions 32.
House of Commons TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2002
[The word ‘incumbent” is spelt as “encumbent” in the Parliamentary records accessed via the internet]
“
Examination of Witnesses(Questions 40-42)
COUNCILLOR MICHAEL KEITH AND MS MAUREEN MCELENEY
TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2002
Chairman
40. Could you let us have a note on that?
(Councillor Keith) Yes.
Mr Streeter
41. We all know that when we embarked on a massive social house-building programme in the 1960s and 1970s, lots of mistakes were made, such as high-rise blocks and so on. My concern about finding the numbers you are talking about and the kind of resources you require or that you are asking for from government to provide a lot more social housing is are we not going to repeat the same mistakes in the future?
Can you assure the Committee that lessons have been learnt and that the kind of units you would be erecting would be high-quality housing and people would actually want to live there not just for five years but for 25 years?
(Councillor Keith) I think that is a question which almost needs to bounce back to national legislation. I think it is an absolutely fair question, but I think it is also something that many of the registered social landlords, who will be the major players in this, need to answer and it is a question which also potentially triggers off debates about the quality of new build within an urban renaissance and thinking back to issues of Parker Morris standards and so on which opens up another debate which I think is a very important debate, but maybe not one to capture in two sentences. I do not think it is one that you could expect again a single authority or a single social landlord to respond to, but I do think it is or it should be encumbent if those resources are made available that the quality is radically different from what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s.
Chairman
42. Can I press you on the question of not the building standards, but the money there to provide communal services. With most of the lofts that have been converted within Tower Hamlets, you will find that service charges are running at anything up to £80 a month or even higher. Now, if you are on a middle-class income, that may be affordable, but for most of the people we are talking about with affordable housing, is there really going to be enough money for the caretaking and the looking after of high-density living in Tower Hamlets?
(Councillor Keith) I think there are examples of high-density new build, stuff Piers Goff has done recently in Scotland, where you can get high density and affordability. I think it raises major questions of design as much as major questions as to the specifics.
Chairman: I think we can leave it at that. Thank you very much for your evidence
”
Khoodeelaaronline Unquote on Friday 10 March 2006 from the Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence House of Commons TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2002
[To be continued]
Very carefully, read the questions and his answers quoted by Khoodeelaaronline below from the records published by the UK Houses of Parliament
Note that materials like this [quoted below] are never ever reported to the people in the community. Not by the propaganda titles EAST END Life [which Khoodeelaar! has dubbed East End Lies] and not on the Tower Hamlets Council’s web site.
Nor indeed by the so-called ‘local’ press, typified by the East London Idiotiser.
Nor indeed by any of the –so-called ‘Left’ organs allegedly watching the antics of the corrupt Tower Hamlets Council.
And it never is examined by any elected membership on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council itself that it really relates to.
Come to think of that, the MPs themselves [Tuesday 15 October 2002] puzzlingly [!] failed or refused to pursue their examination of Michael Keith while he was still before their select committee.
They let him go.
Even after finding a hole as hollow as the Crossrail hole [that was being at the same time being] planned by Michael Keith’s co-promoters to be dug in and forced through the Brick Lane London E1 area, the MPs’ chair delivered the customary thanks to Michael Keith for his alleged evidence.
To call what Keith had stated 'evidence' would be to almost call the 'researches' of someone of David Irving’s description independent, truthful, objective and respectable.
They asked him questions about the undeniable negligence and failures of the Tower Hamlets Council to make proper and competent use of the resources that they did have avaioaable.
They asked him about any regrets.
About any lessons being learnt by Tower Hamlets Council.
Instead of saying yes, they had learnt lessons.
Yes they had found how so many repairs claims were mis-logged and how despite making annual claims about how fantastic the Council’s repairs service was, they had in fact been a n unmitigated and negligent and culpable disaster for which the entire Tower Hamlets Council administration should have been forced to resign en masse, Michael Keith, like a Big Business robot programmed to retort in a fixed mode, said a string of things that increasingly took the ‘answer’ away from the subject and into almost prehistoric times and out into the outer spaces!
There did not follow any rigorous examination of the contents of what Keith told the MPs.
No scrutiny of the claims about the hundreds of millions that would be required if Tower Hamkest Council were to do the necessary repair and maintenance work.
Nobody asked him about the stupidity of giving answers on factual states of buildings in estimates. Related estimates and extrapolated estimates.
Nobody stopped to tell him that he was making an insane statement that had neither head nor tail, neither a start nor an end. That he was offering a nihilistic scenario which could only have a ‘closure’ by destroying the Council’s then existing housing stock.
The result was logically inevitable.
Three years after that extraordinary display of corrupt thinking, Michael Keith was able to participate in the aggressive transfer of Tower Hamlets Council housing stock that he was thinking of doing as he made that set of dishonest and corrupt statements quoted here.
.As it has been seen on the ground in Tower Hamlets during 2004 –2006 in the quite brazenly illegal and undemocratic transfer of the Council housing stock away from the public control of the Council into the de facto ownership of cabals masquerading as Registered social landlords who are blatantly linked with key figures in the controlling clique on Tower Hamlets Council.
Two segments are quited here, an MPs question and Michael Keith’s answers;
Khoodeelaaronline Quote on Friday 10 March 2006 from the Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions 32.
House of Commons TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2002
[The word ‘incumbent” is spelt as “encumbent” in the Parliamentary records accessed via the internet]
“
Examination of Witnesses(Questions 40-42)
COUNCILLOR MICHAEL KEITH AND MS MAUREEN MCELENEY
TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2002
Chairman
40. Could you let us have a note on that?
(Councillor Keith) Yes.
Mr Streeter
41. We all know that when we embarked on a massive social house-building programme in the 1960s and 1970s, lots of mistakes were made, such as high-rise blocks and so on. My concern about finding the numbers you are talking about and the kind of resources you require or that you are asking for from government to provide a lot more social housing is are we not going to repeat the same mistakes in the future?
Can you assure the Committee that lessons have been learnt and that the kind of units you would be erecting would be high-quality housing and people would actually want to live there not just for five years but for 25 years?
(Councillor Keith) I think that is a question which almost needs to bounce back to national legislation. I think it is an absolutely fair question, but I think it is also something that many of the registered social landlords, who will be the major players in this, need to answer and it is a question which also potentially triggers off debates about the quality of new build within an urban renaissance and thinking back to issues of Parker Morris standards and so on which opens up another debate which I think is a very important debate, but maybe not one to capture in two sentences. I do not think it is one that you could expect again a single authority or a single social landlord to respond to, but I do think it is or it should be encumbent if those resources are made available that the quality is radically different from what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s.
Chairman
42. Can I press you on the question of not the building standards, but the money there to provide communal services. With most of the lofts that have been converted within Tower Hamlets, you will find that service charges are running at anything up to £80 a month or even higher. Now, if you are on a middle-class income, that may be affordable, but for most of the people we are talking about with affordable housing, is there really going to be enough money for the caretaking and the looking after of high-density living in Tower Hamlets?
(Councillor Keith) I think there are examples of high-density new build, stuff Piers Goff has done recently in Scotland, where you can get high density and affordability. I think it raises major questions of design as much as major questions as to the specifics.
Chairman: I think we can leave it at that. Thank you very much for your evidence
”
Khoodeelaaronline Unquote on Friday 10 March 2006 from the Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence House of Commons TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2002
[To be continued]
© The Editor / Khoodeelaar /CBRUK/Lawmedia 2006
Comments
Hide the following comment
Labour scrap debate on Crossrail - We say No to Crossrail in the East End
11.03.2006 11:40
I was walking to the shop when I saw a newspaper hoarding placard CROSSRAIL DEBATE BOILS OVER
I the read in the paper two reports on the debate that could have been held in the council but wasn’t. I then learnt the reason was the Labour party.
They are now stopping council debate on things that matter to us.
I am not going to vote for that lot.
Vote only for the real East Enders. They are the ones now fighting Crossrail. Keep our East End free from Crossrail.
Whitechapel voter