I won't be voting for a Mayor
By Jim Fitzpatrick
It's nearly time for the General Election and we have council elections, too, and a referendum on a directly elected Mayor in Tower Hamlets.
In the Mayoral referendum, I'll be voting "No". The local council has been performing well, with huge challenges. It's been regarded as a Beacon Council for over five years now.
Stable politics, good managerial leadership and good staff have improved services year on year. Why change?
Why destabilise the structure? Why create a new layer of bureaucracy? Why pay for a new, additional, expensive post that's not needed?
The present system works. It can be improved, and will be - but it doesn't need a complete change in power structure.
The democracy argument from supporters of an elected Mayor is yet to be explained, given their curiously unrepresentative video on their website, and the issue of who claims to represent whom is what I've been highlighting in the debate regarding the Islamic Forum of Europe.
A self-appointed group of people who claim to represent the whole of their community and the whole of their religion does a grave disservice to the majority of that community - and to criticise that group is not to criticise the religion.
Any attempt to do so is simply disingenuous mudslinging. Thankfully, people are realising this and speaking for themselves.
- Jim Fitzpatrick is MP for Poplar and Canning Town
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The council is not performing well it has a £54 million black hole.
Our council tax will go up dramatically next year to pay for this mess!
There is no way I am voting for Fitzpatrick.
I had an issue with my landlord and I left several messages with his office and I never heard back from him.
What planet does Fitzpatrick live on?
The council is wasting money on its partly illegal propaganda sheet, East End Lies, has a huge financial black hole, has some of the worst indicators for health, education. poverty and pollution in the UK.
I guess the council's good performance is like the WMD affair, what they want to believe, rather than what is 'true' (if any of them are familiar with that word).
It might be worth people concentrating on the issues that Mr Fitzpatrick is trying to raise.
The campaign to elect a Mayor is driven purely by power hungry minority parties who believe that they can manipulate and bully sections of the community.
He is also right to bring up the negative side of IFE's work in the constituency.
This guy's career is over. You should see the ridiculas leaflets he's putting out
Putting so much power into one person is dangerous; this is an attempt by the IFE to control Tower Hamlets and it's considerable budget.
The petition submitted to Tower Hamlets to call this referendum had 17,000 names of which more than 6000 were ficticious or written in the same hand writing - Yet this document has been accepted.
And here is the reason why it is so important to the IFE (taken directly from Tower Hamlets Webiste)
The Mayor elected at the October 2010 mayoral election will decide, rather than the Council as at present, how many cabinet members there shall be (subject to the statutory minimum of two and maximum of nine plus the Mayor him/herself) and shall appoint those cabinet members from among the serving councillors and may allocate to each cabinet member a portfolio of responsibilities.
2.7 The Mayor will have power to replace or remove cabinet members and to vary or delete their portfolio responsibilities at any time.
2.8 The Mayor shall appoint a Deputy Mayor from among the cabinet members. The Mayor may replace the Deputy Mayor at any time but otherwise the Deputy Mayor shall remain in post for the duration of the Mayor’s term of office. The Deputy Mayor shall have authority to exercise the Mayor’s powers only in the event that the Mayor is unable to act at any time.
2.9 All executive functions of the Council shall be vested in the Mayor. The Mayor may exercise those functions him/herself, or may delegate specified executive functions to be exercised by the Cabinet meeting, a cabinet committee, an individual cabinet member or an officer. The Mayor may revoke any such delegations at any time.
A vote for this referendum makes the opportunity for a balanced representation between Labour, Conservative and Liberal impossible as all power will be vested in one - who will be voted in by the IFE vote