Biggsmania loses out to the footie

THEY MAY HAVE come out in their  thousands to vote for him in two months ago – 44,865 of them, up from just 32,754 in 2015 – but Tower Hamlets voters were not coming out to Executive Mayor John Biggs’s Ask The Mayor event held at Swanlea School this evening.

The meeting began with fewer members of the public present than there are Labour Councillors, but Executive Mayor John Biggs quickly got down to the nitty gritty task of holding himself accountable.

Mothers from the Save Our Nurseries campaign were out in force, trying to find out more about John Biggs’s plans to close the Local Authority Day Nurseries – but the Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor didn’t want to spend too much time on the issue, and pressed on to the pressing matter of whether shop shutters should be transparent or opaque.

As well as dismissing questions about the nurseries by pointing out that he hadn’t taken a final decision yet, Executive Mayor John Biggs told the audience that he wanted housing to meet the needs of the whole community. He said he is tackling ASB as a priority and is paying for more police to deal with drug dealing. He added that the Council will move to Whitechapel in 2022 and he is interested in issues concerning the market.

The Council’s first tweet – missing the time.

Was it wise to hold an Ask The Mayor event on the same night as England and Colombia met in the first of the knock out matches in the football World Cup? Probably not – but there may have been another factor keeping the masses away.

Council publicity seemed to be restricted to its Twitter account, with the event not clearly visible on the website. Although the Twitter announcement indicated the date and venue for the meeting, no time was given – an omission rectified in a second Tweet on the morning of the event itself.

•Read more about it:
Biggs refuses to bow to public pressure on nurseries
The Biggs disgrace – pay rise for top councillors