Tower Hamletistan

If you want to know what it would be like to be governed by a religion soaked slime pit of Islamic cronyism, intimidation and corruption you need look no further than the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The recent Mayoral election there has just been declared null and void because the Mayor, and his supporters, have been found guilty of widespread corruption, vote rigging, slander and intimidation.

Many years ago I did a project at the old town hall in Tower Hamlets for the then Labour council. I managed an IT development project to build a housing allocation system. It was a mixed team some of their people and some of our people (i.e. the company I worked for at the time) It was an eye-opening experience for lot's of reasons and when we finished (after 2 years) I decided that whenever practically possible I'd avoid working for the public sector.

I found the place to be a vipers nest of cliquey, back stabbing jobs-worth's who would smile to your face and rip you to shreds behind your back (of course, there were some nice, normal people there too; but they tended not to stay long). It was a nightmarish landscape of political correctness gone mad; devoid of anyone who had any actual decision making ability or desire, every conversation had to be weighed and measured, every word carefully chosen, normal human interaction, particularly humour was strictly off the table.

I remember that at one point the project manager on the Council team left to have a baby and her managers were so incapable of simply hiring a replacement that they ended up giving the job to three separate (junior) people who rotated the post on a two week basis. Obviously all that happened was each fortnight when the PM changed the new one spent their whole two week tenure undoing all the decisions of the previous incumbent, and around it went, this lasted for months. Of course any suggestion or hint of lateness was immediately blamed (although not to your face) on the out-group (i.e. my team and I), it was hell. I've been fortunate enough to work in many countries all over the world from America to South Africa through Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Holland as well as the Middle-East and I can categorically say that the place with the most weird, backward, divisive, unhelpful working practices and people was the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. In the end, we delivered the project on-time and under-budget which at the time was the first IT project ever in the history of that council to have that status, I think our little team instinctively created some kind of Dunkirk-spirit force-field that kept us going through the madness, well, that and after-work alcohol abuse.

It would seem from recent reports that things haven't gotten any better at LBTH, in fact it looks like they're worse, now we have the spectre of Islamism entering the fray too. Apparently supporters of the criminal Mayor went around telling voters that they weren't "proper Muslims" unless they voted for him, you can clearly see how "old-school" religious intimidation plies it's trade and how if religion is allowed to enter the public square it quickly establishes itself as a reason to divide people and create unhealthy levers that corrupt and discriminate. Hopefully the long suffering residents of LBTH can find a suitable candidate to be their Mayor; unfortunately though, I fear that when you live in a vipers nest all there is to choose from are snakes.