Are cars more important than people?
By Tim Archer
What's more important homes or cars? Despite a housing waiting list of 23,000 people, Tower Hamlets Council is buying a prime piece of land on the Commercial Road near Limehouse DLR station, not for building new homes but for creating a new car pound - somewhere to take cars that get towed away for being parked illegally.
The site, which is currently the Renault showroom, would be perfect for new housing, be it private homes or affordable homes, we badly need them in this borough.
So it's maddening that the council is going to spend millions of taxpayers' money to buy the site just to store cars on it.
- Update on the sacked chief executive of Tower Hamlets. I "called in" the Labour run council cabinet's decision to dispose of the former chief executive to the council's Overview & Scrutiny committee.
This is the body charged with overseeing the decisions of the council and responsible for holding the cabinet to account.
The committee agreed with my "call-in" and sent the decision to sack the CEO back to cabinet, asking them to think again and recommended a different course of action.
Sadly, after just four minutes of discussion cabinet decided to stick with their original decision. So the chief executive remains sacked, and the taxpayer remains picking up the tab.
- Tim Archer is Conservative councillor for Blackwall and Cubitt Town Ward and a prospective MP
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