Hackney’s Green-run council has ‘apologised’ after the mayor Zoë Garbett set an October 7th deadline to end the borough’s twinning arrangement with the Israeli city of Haifa. She claimed the council voted to end the twinning arrangement on Tuesday, but that legal advice would stretch the pointless divorce “over the next few months”. She expected everyone to believe this deadline was a pure coincidence.
The partnership with Haifa dates back to 1968, and mostly involves exchanging medical staff between hospitals. It is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas of Israel. This is what the Greens have decided is the priority for Hackney, roughly 3000 miles away. They have since apologised for their “error”:
“We apologise for the insensitivity of the original closing date for our consultation. We originally set the consultation to run for ten weeks on the consultation platform. As soon as we noticed this error, we changed the closing date.”
Hackney’s council tax is going up by 4.9% this year…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”