"Newham Co-op continued"

An excellent account of the meeting last week by James Beckles. There is another more pointed post here by another Newham Co-op member. You can click to a link to my post on the rerun AGM 2016.

"On Wednesday 8th March Newham Cooperative Party welcomed Claire McCarthy our General Secretary.

It’s not everyday members of the Cooperative Party or any party for that matter with the sight of a General Secretary checking membership details at the door. But that’s the beauty of the Co-op movement and the state of play of Newham.

After members had been signed in everyone took their seats. There was some tension in the air as you would expect from the last heated meeting. But chaired by a London region representative the meeting kicked off. There were some noticeable absences including the Chair of Newham branch, Lester Hudson, who we were told was attending an awards ceremony. Nonetheless the meeting began.

The positions not filled at the last meeting were up for contention. These included Secretary, Treasurer, Membership Officer, Assistant Secretary and the New position of Events/Social Secretary. All candidates had to submit prior to the meeting a 100 word statement for the position they were standing for and it was good to read supporting statements and what candidates would do if elected.

There was a point of order or clarification raised whether candidates who were nominated would be on the ballot. The representative from London region was clear that all Newham Co-op members were afforded the opportunity to stand for a position as long as they submitted a statement.

Onto the vote for Secretary, Gill Hay vs. Neil Wilson. A tense ballot and count and Gill was victorious. The Treasurer was next, as there was only one candidate, Averil Donohue who is current Treasurer, they were duly elected.

Membership Officer again had only one candidate, Alan Griffiths, he was duly elected. Assistant Secretary, currently John Gray, was elected as the sole candidate.

Then came the exciting part. The positions no-one submitted statements for. These included the new post of Events/Social Secretary and the Auditors (x2).

The candidates for Events/Social Secretary were Sugathan and Neil Wilson. Both spoke on the spot and gave good reasons why they should be elected. The ballots were distributed and counted. The winner we Neil Wilson.

Finally the heralded positions of Auditors. This I where I dear reader come in. I was nominated by four fellow cooperators and I was duly elected. Thank you!

The second Auditor elected was Conor McCauley and much desired.

Finally the highlight of the evening was the speech by Claire McCarthy. In consistent Newham fashion those who were there solely to vote left and those I assume who were generally interested in hearing from our General Secretary stayed.

Claire gave a clear and impassioned speech about co-op values, ethical politics, supporting Labour councillors who wanted to stand as Labour/Co-op councillors (which I think would be advantageous and I may consider it) and continuing to build a cooperative and mutual based society in Newham and beyond.

Overall the evening was well ordered and considering the positions up for grabs it was good natured. Perhaps having Co-op HQ present officiating made certain potential offenders behave on the night. But we do need more meetings like these where it’s about speakers, debates about policy and positions, development of co-op values at a local level that is inclusive and supportive of Newham’s communities.

Again I sign off by saying I look forward to the next Newham Co-operative Party meeting and hope I will be able to attend."

(hat tip to James for one of the pictures in collage and to Tower Hamlets Co-op for stealing their logo and amending it)

50 councils face residents’ objections to LOBO loans

Check out MJ article (Municipal Journal - you need to have a paid account unfortunately) on the up to 50 objections by residents in different Councils (including Newham) at the use of  "controversial Lender Option Borrower Option (LOBO) loans,

a campaigner has predicted. Joel Benjamin, of Debt Resistance UK, said the next step after that would be to ‘escalate the issue up the chain to the Local Government Association [LGA] Mr Benjamin revealed the strategy after Newham LBC’s cabinet member for finance, Cllr Lester Hudson, said his council had discussed the issue with the LGA and would consider participating in joint legal action’.

£238 million reasons to stop Barclays Bank LOBO cheats ripping off Newham Residents

This was the written question I put to the Newham Deputy Mayor and Cabinet member for Finance, Lester Hudson, at the Full Council meeting last week

To the Executive Advisor on Finance, Cllr Lester Hudson

"Last week 3 more employees of Barclays Bank were found guilty in Court of criminally conspiring to rig the Libor interest rate downwards between 2005 and 2008.

This was precisely the same time that Barclays sold £238m of so called “range lobos” loans to Newham Council. The interest repayment cost of these loans goes up if base interest rates and LIBOR go down.

So we had on the one hand, an arm of Barclays making huge amounts of money for themselves and the Bank from driving interest rates down and profiting from these moves, when another part of the bank was earning huge amounts of money from selling us loans that would cost more in interest if rates go down. This cannot be right.

In the light of these and other recent court convictions for conspiracy and fines for interest rate rigging will the Executive member please reconsider his decision not to take legal action against Barclays for fraud and damages and for us to recover the millions of pounds that Barclays and other banks have cheated from Newham residents and stop them cheating them further in the future.

 John Gray. West Ham Ward Councillor.

Cllr Hudson responded by saying that the impact of the Libor fraud was relatively minor and that it was too expensive for Newham to take on Barclays Banks by itself but he would be interested in taking part in some collective class action led by the Local Government Association.

I had the right to ask a verbal supplementary question, so I asked why hasn't he taken up the offer given by Cllr Fiaz, who shares my concerns about Banks cheating and robbing residents over LOBO to actually meet some of the experts who think Newham has a legal case against them? Especially since now it seems that there could be a "no win, no fee" deal on offer to get our money back?

He replied that he was suspicious of "no win, no fee" lawyers since there was no such thing as a free lunch.

I argued back "just meet them" for "one hour" and find out!

The Newham Recorder covered the issue here, where I expressed my disappointment at the lack of progress but the pressure group, Debt Resistance, who were also at the meeting think that the Executive have moved their position in favour of "considering" at least some sort of collective class action.

We have to move this issue on. It just makes me sick in the stomach that the Council have had savage cuts in our budget at the same time we have been ripped off by the Banks for millions and millions of pounds. Many of these loans are 70 years long!!!