Conservative Local Government Minister Eric Pickles has given Tower Hamlets fourteen days to shut down East End Life – after being disgusted at the waste of £3 MILLION of taxpayers money per year on this personal propaganda newspaper for Lutfur Rahman.
Conservative councillors have been campaigning to close this money-wasting newspaper for years, arguing that it was a waste of money and was being used as for political ends. One recent copy of East End Life had nine different pictures of Lutfur Rahman in it.
The Government today warned five London councils, including Tower Hamlets and Labour-run Greenwich, Hackney, Newham and Waltham Forest, that the law stops them from publishing “propaganda on the rates” and trying to drive the free press out of business.
Tower Hamlets Council voted in spring 2013 by 34-17 to close the newspaper. But Lutfur Rahman used virements – a little known device usually used by councils in case of financial emergency – to keep the newspaper going and to spend an extra £300,000 on advisors in his private office.
Leader of the Conservatives at the Town Hall Cllr Peter Golds said “We have been saying it for years – it is wrong to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on Lutfur Rahman’s propaganda freesheet.
“At a time when Mayor Rahman is proposing unnecessary cuts to front line services, and cannot fund the free school meals he is trumpeting about, it is unacceptable to be pouring million of pounds down the drain on council funded propaganda.
“We welcome Eric Pickles’ decision to give Lutfur Rahman and other Labour councils notice that East End Life must go.”
You can read the Government's letter to Tower Hamlets Council on the DCLG website.