Results tagged “Tim Archer”

By Tim Archer

A budget has to balance sooner or later; black holes cannot be financed forever and they cannot be ignored. It's therefore interesting that the Labour-run council chose to overlook the fact that its books contain a £54million gap. Putting that into context, council tax in Tower Hamlets would have to rise by almost 30 per cent a year for the next three years just to plug that gap.

There is a school of thought which demands that public authorities divest themselves of all interests that could be considered peripheral, frivolous or beyond the ken of bureaucrats.

Anything from Christmas lights to Town Hall portraits should go in some kind of Cromwellian austerity drive, paring down council tax to fund just the routine basics.

Tower Hamlets owns a sculpture worth millions, designed by a world-famous artist.
Sadly, you have to trundle more than 200 miles north to see it.

Avant-garde Yorkshire-born sculptor Henry Moore created Draped Seated Woman for the borough in 1957 while working on a commission for the Unesco headquarters in Paris.

By Tim Archer

It must be an election year as the Labour-run Tower Hamlets Council has proposed to freeze Council Tax.

Coincidentally, the last time Council Tax was frozen in Tower Hamlets was in 2006, also an election year.

Jim Thornton wants you to think independently.

The property manager and former Conservative broke away from the Blues in 2007, and wants Poplar and Limehouse voters to consider alternatives to the party machines this summer.

By Tim Archer

To fix the problems of pollution and congestion, Tower Hamlets Council introduced the concept of all new homes being built as "car-free".

The theory goes that if you ban people from applying for parking permits and prevent developers building parking spaces, residents abandon their cars and use public transport.

By Tim Archer

Christmas is an important time for celebrating with family, friends and colleagues.

But it is also a time when we remember those less fortunate than ourselves and those who are no longer with us. It's been poignant, therefore, that this week I have attended the unveiling of two new plaques.

Eastend Homes residents plan to take on their housing association with a "grass-roots movement" designed to fight surging service charges.

In a heated meeting in the Isle of Dogs last week, tenants and leaseholders vowed to back a borough-wide residents' group in its battle against housing bosses.

I've been selling poppies again this year at Canary Wharf DLR station to the early morning commuters and I'm proud to say that we've been doing a roaring trade. Every year, credit crunch or not, I've been truly impressed by how generous Wharfers are. But I wonder how many know just how much bureaucracy there is involved in being allowed to stand there?

MP Jim Fitzpatrick held a press conference in Canary Wharf this week to refute allegations of Islamophobia. The Wharf reports from the East Wintergarden

The press conference was for Bangladeshi media only, but a small group of politicians were outside anyway.

Some were taking pictures against the window, hands outstretched in a show of mock confusion. One pushed away the blocking arm of a man at the door, and strode into the doorway.

By Tim Archer

Only days apart from each other we learnt that the Audit Commission has criticised the Labour-run Tower Hamlets council for the way it sacked its chief executive and the size of the bill that resulted and that there will be no increase in council tax next year. No increase in council tax is to be welcomed. But it's only a start.

A teenager who was stabbed just yards from the Isle of Dogs police station has joined the chorus of voices calling for it to open later in the day.

Hanif Ali, 14, was "jumped" by a gang of ten youths as he got off the D7 bus on Manchester Road last month. The mob stabbed him in the stomach, severed two tendons in his wrist, and left him with further injuries to the head and arm.

By Tim Archer

Anyone who knows Tower Hamlets knows all about the major housing problems the borough faces.

There are some 23,000 people on the housing waiting list, with 14,000 on the list are living in chronic overcrowding. Housing is where the Government and the Labour-run council have let local people down the most.

By Tim Archer

I want to return to the subject of unemployment and how Tower Hamlets is failing our young people. We have the worst unemployment rate in the country, with 11.7 per cent of the population out of work.

As bad as that statistic is, it hides an even bigger issue - the problem of youth unemployment.

Crawling in traffic may be a fact of life around Blackwall - but is actually stopping becoming a lot trickier?

Parking spaces are a hot commodity in places such as Blackwall Way and Yabsley Street. Located just off the busy Preston's Road, these roads are overlooked by multi-storey residential flats such as Nova Court, perfect for those working in Canary Wharf.

Families affected by an arson attack at their Tiller Road block are still waiting to return home more than a week later.

Landlord East Thames put the occupants of five flats into hotel accommodation at Excel's Premier Inn a day after fire broke out at Hammond House on August 2.

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.

Despite the success of Canary Wharf, the Docklands constituency of Poplar and Canning Town has one of the worst rates of unemployment in the country.

So you'd think that the Labour-run Tower Hamlets Council would be doing all it could to ensure that unemployment is going down not up.

By Tim Archer

Events in Iran remind us how precious democracy is. Recognition of the result of an election and the orderly transition from one administration to another must surely be the acid test of any democracy. Recent events in domestic politics have caused many to question what our elected representatives have been doing for us.

Isle of Dogs councillors are among the Tower Hamlets politicians calling for urgent talks over the "suspension" of chief executive Martin Smith.

Peter Golds, Tim Archer and Phil Briscoe want an extraordinary meeting of full council to discuss claims the CEO was sent home from duty on Wednesday.