Tag: Romford Market

Havering Council Meeting, 17th January, 2024 (part two)

Question Time (QT)1 gives backbench councillors an opportunity to quiz the cabinet. So, does it work?2

Because of a technicality, Independent councillor John Tyler cannot attend as a full member of council committees.3 What does he do? He only has to attend eight council meetings a year. Yet he doesn’t participate in those meetings. He doesn’t ask any questions at QT, ever. And, amazingly, he doesn’t contribute to debates. Silence is golden but this is taking it too far.

David Taylor, asked three QT questions, followed by Jason Frost, Dilip Patel and Keith Prince with two each. David (37 minutes) was probing. He elicited the fact that Romford Market is in line to be privatised. Lurching into hard-core Tory David (1:00) showed he believes in the Class War. He demanded that the back gate of Royal Jubilee Court be kept locked. Why? Homeless people now live there and the back gate opens onto a *private* road. David implied homeless people are a ‘risk’ to those living on that *private* road. Keith Darvill didn’t challenge him saying the gate would be locked.

Dilip Patel (1:07) asked a dog whistle question about housing refugees. Paul McGeary said it was a time-limited solution from which Havering benefitted. The houses revert to Havering after three years and enhance the depleted housing stock.

Notes

1 Annotator Player (sonicfoundry.com) All times relate to this webcast

2 Absentee councillors Mandy Anderson, Stephanie Nunn, Tim Ryan, Damian White and Reg Whitney

3 See Havering Council Emasculates Independent Councillors – Politics in Havering There must be matters where he could make a contribution on behalf of his constituents. This assumes that he talks to them.

Havering Council Meeting, 22nd November, 2023 (part two)

The principal debate wasn’t about Havering’s impending bankruptcy. Conservatives chose, instead, to discuss Romford Market. This illustrates why Havering is in a mess after 20 years of Conservative rule.

In the 1990s Arthur Latham listened to the traders and spent £1,000s on cobble stones and £1,000s removing them because shoppers hated them. Traders spoke, Latham listened: it was an expensive mistake.

David Taylor (@1:06)1 discussed the survival of the market. Adopting a conspiracy theory, he accused HRA of attacking Romford itself. Graham Williamson (@1:11) pointed out the market was very costly.

Romford Market is in a death spiral. The,

“….number of traders was in long-term decline with 339 traders in 1985, 266 traders in 1995 and 170 traders in 2005. By 2015 the number of regular traders had declined to 90.”2 Reducing once more to 60 in 2023 according to Williamson.

Veteran councillor Michael White (@1:29) said blaming Conservatives for doing nothing after 20 years in power was unfair. Timothy Ryan (@1:32) recounted stories about his childhood. Ray Morgon (@1:35) was surprisingly enthusiastic.

Conservatives demanding subsidies for lame ducks is strange. The Administration refused to say that subsidising Romford Market was throwing good money after bad. This is despite the fact that Romford Market has been on life-support for 30 years.

What would Margaret Thatcher do?

Addendum: Margaret Thatcher on lame duck industries

“…her policies had consigned out-dated, lame-duck industries to the nostalgia books…”3  Ironically she’s revered by Romford’s Conservatives, especially their MP.

Notes

1 Annotator Player (sonicfoundry.com) Times in brackets indicate when speeches begin and relate to this webcast

2 Romford Market – Wikipedia

3 An economic dawn in the wastelands | The Northern Echo