0530 [0510] [0500][0440] Hrs GMT
London
Tuesday
09 November 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque. Two items in the ‘news’ in the past 12 hours highlight once again just how economical the KHOODEELAAR! Campaign has been in the defence of the community against the agenda of Big Business and the hold Big business has over the public purse. The ‘rights’ of Baby P scandal Haringey Council social services [ex] manager Sharon Shoesmith will continue to be open to debate no matter how many times she goes to court to assert those. Compared to her still undecided rights and her equally controversial claims to those in context, the rights of the people in the East End of London as against the very serious Big Business agenda evident in the Crossrail scam of economic, environmental and social dislocation and damage are very clear and are not in need of determination by a court via a multi Million Pound series of actions. Why? Because there is the constitutional option available to the community to act in a way that does not cost the public anything yet produces results that would exceed a thousand times the costs of any legal action. That option is in the domain of democratic campaigning. And we have been doing this for the past seven years. The other of course is the news item that Tower Hamlets Council is to seek judicial review of the 2012 Games hosting bureaucracy LOCOG that has dropped Tower Hamlets from the ‘marathon route’ during the Games. We can point out here as well that Tower Hamlets Council should show that they have used the available constitutional option of democracy and or the democratic option to get LOCOG to change their routing decision before seeking a judicial review. There are two things wrong with seeking a judicial review. Firstly that in the UK a Judicial review is not an automatic route to getting ‘just result’. In fact the overwhelming majority of judicial review applications are denied by the court system, which is seriously defensive of the status quo. The second is the question of costs. Has the Council considered the democratic and the considerably less costly option? If it has, what democratic action has it taken over the LOCOG decision before deciding to go to court? How much is the application for judicial review going to cost? Is this affecting the Council’s delivery of vital services? If not how not? [Earlier texts] Counting the cost of court challenges mounted so far by Sharon Shoesmith! The costs, as released in a Parliamentary statement by a CONDEM minister, confirm once again the importance of alternative action to get ‘results’. Actions that the KHOODEELAAR! Campaign has taken during the past seven years in defending the East End of London against the Big Biz agenda Crossrail attacks would have cost several £Million if we had mounted our campaign via courts. Or rather if we had opted to use the ‘services ‘ of commercial lawyers. We did the same work and got across to the UK Govt. the same arguments that any commercial lawyers in theory might have done but we did so by using our own democratic, constitutional resources. Our work did not cost a single penny of the public in any court fees or fees paid to any lawyers. [To be continued]