In an outburst at the last cabinet meeting (23 September), councillor Assad asked the fellow councillor Marilyn Ashton, “Do you have a problem with me? Because I’m a woman of colour and because I am Muslim”.
The disruption took place when the leader of the council Cllr Graham Henson, chairing the meeting, mentioned the council using social media to inform its work, and was listening to Cllr Ashton’s supplementary question regarding what could impinge the reputation of the council.
“You mentioned social media. You do have a member of cabinet who’s in charge of community cohesion, who has tweeted that she will take up arms against the Afghan government and its allies (at the time in recent past), and labelled Israel is an apartheid state and spread doubts about the AstraZeneca as presented a vaccine. And so really my supplemental question is, do you condemn or condemn these statements and is this suitable to have someone who has these things and thinks it’s acceptable to tweet these things and think it’s acceptable to have that person in charge of community cohesion?” Cllr Ashton asked.
Cllr Graham said “I will look at the points you have made, and then I’m probably you know then may consider them, but it’s quite difficult to respond to a question if you don’t tell me what it is and others need to look it up and find out how we got what the context of why it’s been said because sometimes people’s interpretation is different”.
“Cllr Assad interruption was most inappropriate, not respecting the meeting protocol. Equally, concerning was that the leader of the council let the disruption go on and failed to uphold the discipline in the meeting” said Cllr Marilyn Ashton, deputy leader of the Conservation group, after the meeting.
“However, the council leader’s attitude towards me was calm this time, considering to that on previous such occasions” Cllr Ashton added.
It is well known that the twitter is a public platform, and that councillors, particularly cabinet members, have to be very careful about what they say. They can’t skip scrutiny – if they can’t handle this, they should not be in a public office.

The way the Labour Party is trying to give a feel of being centrist, bashing left and socialists, raises a serious question about their ability to unite the country if in power.
Credit to the social media (particularly Twitter, Facebook) that public is no more dependent on the socio-politically biased conventional media for educating public opinion.
For example, below are some interesting comments from  a present Harrow councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick, and past Harrow councillor Bill Phillips, both Labour but social justice activists!

Harrow council is good at generating data and would provide all kinds of figures to show residents satisfaction with its work, but the reality is very different!
It looks that general lack of challenging leadership by the Members has not only enabled veiling ineffectiveness and incompetence under the ‘pandemic cover’, but has given rise to under-hand practices discouraging residents to contact the council which include withdrawal of an email address (like for the council tax department) and withdrawing a number of phone lines. Long delays in replying to the resident’s queries.
Corporate Directorate (People) is less receptive!
Added to all this is rather immature attitude of some Members, enjoying generous taxpayers money but playing victimhood when concerns raised about their performance or lack of their interest in the ward matters while they are busy in raising their socio-political profile.
Feedback following the articles Harder for residents to contact Harrow council and Harrow council could do more in responding to Covid-19 provide examples of extreme difficulties in getting caring services, like in arranging council tax for a new house, setting garden waste subscription or in dealing with multiple garden waste subscriptions taken from a bank account, and in buying new food caddies. Delays in resolving disability matters.
In some cases, letter to the council have been shunted around, with the departmental responses being the same as received previously.
It is never too late for the constituency political parties to train their councillors and potential councillors about their role/responsibilities, focusing on serving the ward first and providing good value for the taxpayers money.

In the overview and scrutiny committee in July, Harrow council chief executive Sean Harriss said “the pandemic has exacerbated this  issue (access to the council) as  there  used  to  be  staff  who  could  help  residents  face  to  face  in the Civic Centre help access services that were only online.
“The turbulence of demand  caused  by  lockdowns  had  also  overwhelmed  the  system. What  had been planned was for the number of access points to be expanded within the Borough’s  libraries,  to  help  meet  demand  and  provide  better  access  to services”. 
Along with such short-comings in accessing the council, another reason which can’t be pinned on the pandemic, is that Harrow council seems to be systematically distancing its relevant officers from the community, more so in the people services directorate. This has not been addressed.
The restricted access to the council for the help and support compounds by certain  features on the council’s less than helpful website which are not fully equipped to handle particular issues that residents have.
Mr Harriss had somewhat different focus on the website issues: “though certain aspects of this service could be improved  there  were  challenges during  the  pandemic  that  required  Council Staffs’ capabilities that ultimately hindered other services, such as  delivering business grants during the pandemic” he said.
Harrow council claims to have distributed £62m in government grants to over 900 local businesses, but has failed to provide a list of the businesses who received the grant, despite a freedom of information request by a resident. This has raised questions about the Harrow council transparency in money matters!
The concerns in accessing the council become more tense considering Mr Harriss alert about how  far  into  the  future  the  Council  could be  affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in its day-to-day work.
“It  would  affect  the  Council’s work  over  the  next  9  to  12 months. Work  would  be  impacted  in a  number  of different  ways,  and  it  was  believed  that  there  would  be  extreme  pressure during the winter months. There could also be a significant spike in unemployment, housing could be seen as challenge for the future as well as pressures in social care” alerted Mr Harriss.

Describing the controversial actions by the Labour party leader, general secretary and some national executives, Pamela Fitzpatrick, a socialist and trade unionist who was a parliamentary candidate for Harrow East last election, said “The banning of people through proscription, the punishment of those associating with banned people, dictating who members can be friends with and what we can read are the actions of dictators in fascist states”.
Ms Fitzpatrick has been threatened with “auto-exclusion” from membership of the Labour party by the party’s Compliance Unit on the grounds that she is allegedly a supporter of Socialist Appeal, an organisation that the Labour party under Starmer’s leadership is not easy about.
Ms Fitzpatrick was interviewed by Socialist Appeal in May 2020 regarding why she was applying for the position of general secretary Labour party.
“Obviously one could not be a member of another political party such as the Greens and expect to continue to be a member of the Labour Party.  But what Starmer, Evans and some of the NEC are doing goes way beyond this.  Their actions in proscribing whole organisations and seeking to expel anyone that has had contact with those organisations past or present is seeking to prohibit who members can associate with  – the magnitude of this action cannot be ignored” Ms Fitzpatrick states.
“So many of our MPs are silent on this or even support such actions should be a wake-up call to us all. Fascism does not arrive one day with soldiers in trucks with guns, it arrives like this” Ms Fitzpatrick pointed out.
The Labour party has lost successive by-elections under Starmer unpopular leadership, narrowly surviving the last one. Many feel they can’t trust the party that treats its own in such an oppressive manner, to unite the nation if in power.

A petition gathering hundreds of signatures asks the Labour party to immediately cease its purported action against the Harrow councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick and confirm in writing that she will not be auto-excluded from Labour membership.
Ms Fitzpatrick, a proud socialist and trade unionist who was a parliamentary candidate for Harrow East last election, has been threatened with “auto-exclusion” from membership of the Labour party by the party’s Compliance Unit on the grounds that she is allegedly a supporter of Socialist Appeal, an organisation that the Labour party under Starmer’s leadership is not easy about.
Ms Fitzpatrick was interviewed by Socialist Appeal in May 2020 regarding why she was applying for the position of general secretary Labour party.
“The interview took place more than a year before the NEC made the decision to proscribe Socialist Appeal. Anything a member is alleged to have done at a time when an organisation is not proscribed cannot possibly be a basis for auto-exclusion on grounds of support for that organisation” argues the petition by members of Ms Fitzpatrick’s Harrow West Constituency Labour Party, started by Aghileh Djafari Marbini who herself experienced nastiness by the Blairites when she went through the selection process for the Brent and Harrow assembly seat.
“The Compliance Unit has provided no evidence that Pamela has supported Socialist Appeal as defined by the NEC” asserts the petition.
The petition could be signed here.

While some attention-seeking controversial Labour councillors are promoting themselves through all kind of activism, honest and dedicated Harrow councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick, a proud socialist and trade unionist who was parliamentary candidate for Harrow East last election, has been harassed by the Labour party.
“I have just received a letter from the Labour Party threatening me with auto exclusion because I was interviewed by Socialist Appeal in May 2020 on why I was applying for the position of General Secretary. I explained to SA I wanted fair procedures followed in the party” informs Ms Fitzpatrick, a member of the Labour’s new National Women’s Committee. 
Labour party’s such a behaviour has been widely condemned, including the following:

Harrow council says: “As we rebuild from the Covid-19 pandemic Harrow Council is investing in our high streets. Edgware, North Harrow, South Harrow and Rayners Lane are set to receive funding for a range of improvements to high streets. We’ve been working with ward councillors and the local community to drive forward this change (some residents and councillor don’t think so).”
In May, the government announced £576m allocations of future high streets fund, including £7,448,583 specifically for Wealdstone, Harrow. Possibly more places in the borough received dedicated funding for high street improvement programme, but Harrow council has failed to inform how much total high streets funding has been received and allocated to the targeted areas each.
Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick outlined the best use of this public money and said the investment will “make a huge difference to towns and cities across England”, helping them “transform themselves [into] desired places to shop, visit, live and work.”
In Wealdstone, an obvious improvement is the brightening up of the ‘square’ (photo), otherwise while local traders appreciate wall paintings and street decorations, they don’t know how well the Wealdstone money has been used, and their main concerns remain the crime, fear of crime and parking which renders Wealdstone less desirable place to ‘shop, visit, live and work’.
In Edgware, Canons ward residents see the use of £483K for decorating part of Whitchurch Lane (Edgware end), “waste” of public money. They want real improvements like street cleaning, addressing fly-tipping and more crime prevention measures. They described the so-called consultation as being  constructed in a way to deliver pre-determined outcome (many others in the target areas feel the same).
“We are completely opposed to the Edgware scheme – the money would be better served in street cleaning, which is much needed, particularly around Howberry Road” said the ward councillors.
Is the use of the street money on cosmetic street dressings for attractive visual impact in the council election year, saying that this is what residents want, good value for public money?

Communication has not been a Harrow council strength (answering/dealing with residents queries, response time,  inadequate website etc) but Covid-19 crisis management has made it worst where residents fail to get prompt, efficient or satisfactory response.
An example is the recent correspondence with Paul Hewitt (photo), corporate director people services, copying in the chief executive, regarding the following matter:
His attention was drawn to a ‘somewhat annoying practice, seemingly an extension of the previous corporate director’s apparent tactic to discourage officers, including himself,  working directly with the community where community/resident queries were often subjected  to the freedom of information (FoI)/complaints procedures etc. (Mr Hewitt, Hillingdon council’s head of child safeguarding at the time, joined Harrow to work under the director some years back).
Following the article  Harrow council could do more in responding to Covid-19 and a specific question, ‘in responding to Covid-19, how the Harrow council has reshaped its services in line with  the good practices highlighted by CQC?’, the Director of Harrow Adult Social Services, responded positively and said “I would be very happy to give an update on how we have reshaped and are responding to C19”- this was not a complaint!!
But then a Complaints Manager jumped in with an irrelevant website link, with the outcome that the director was not able to deal with this matter herself and therefore no professional answer received.
Since then, some others have a similar experience where their active issue-based interaction with the officers in People directorate has been picked and responded by the complaints manager.
It is reassuring that the community directorate seems to have no such policy to distance officers from the community or using a complaints manager to shunt around the issues (but then a very capable corporate director Community has now left the council).
We trust the chief executive would be interested in reassuring the consistency of policies and practices across the directorates, so that this could help in acquiring more public confidence in the council.’
After about a month, apparently Mr Hewitt sent the following inadequate message:
“Our complaints service do specifically deal with FOI requests, Member enquiries and MP enquiries, as well as complaints from citizens, as part of their official remit.
Also, as part of their role, the complaints team do often respond to general enquiries on behalf of senior officers when asked to do so, but we will need to make sure that this is made clear in the response, especially when it is not specifically a complaint that is being addressed.”

Former Deputy Mayor and Leader of Council, Cllr Chris Mote, sadly passed away late last night (29 July) after a short illness.
Cllr Mote was first elected in 1982 and now represented Pinner South ward.
He was leader of the Conservative Group and later Leader of Harrow Council between 2006 and 2008.

He currently served as Shadow Portfolio Holder for Adults & Older People.
Cllr Mote received ceremonial vellum scrolls to recognise his 25 years as Harrow Councillor at the Council Meeting on 16th January 2020 where he was described as “gentleman who is always polite and respectful – an example of how one should behave, not just as a councillor but as a person”.
Cllr Mote, deputy mayor in 2009 under Tory administration of the council at the time, was set to become Harrow mayor in the following year. But Tories, under Cllr Hall CPZ-hit poor leadership lost the council.