Controversy
Sir Robin Wales was involved in a bitter battle with the Friends of Queens Market, which represents the market traders at Queen's Market. The traders and residents were objecting to plans to demolish the market and replace it with a new market hall with 164 stalls and 6,374m2 of shop units, 350 homes, a new civic building and a library. In May 2009, Mayor of London Boris Johnson overruled Sir Robin Wales' decision to build the 31 storey tower.
Wales has attracted further controversy by being awarded a 4% pay rise taking his salary to £80,029, at a time when government has called for public sector wage restraints and job losses and pay freezes at Newham Council. Wales publicly stated that he would be giving the whole of his pay rise to charity (Mayor's consultation meetings October 2010).|However, Wales' pay has increased 40 per cent from £58,500 since 2002. Newham Council defended this pay increase stating that it reflected the responsibilities of his position.
It has also been reported that Wales will refuse to work alongside the first democratically-elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman.
As Mayor, Wales' Newham Council have come under heavy criticism for their £111m project to relocate council offices in a single Newham Dockside block, including £18.7m of design and refurbishment costs. An investigation by the BBC found this to include at least 5 items of designer lighting each costing over £1,800. Revelations have angered local residents in what continues to be one of the poorest boroughs on the UK.
Wales latest controversial decision has been to lead council decisions - made in camera, so with no public scrutiny or accountability - to "invest" a "prudent" forty million pounds of residents' money in the future of the already publicly owned Olympic stadium. This, according to Wales, will bring the impoverished people of Newham the immense benefits of priority tickets for events and access to the stadium for sports days.
Newham Council's most recent similar investment was 3.3 million in the London Pleasure Gardens - which went bankrupt within weeks as the projected crowds over the period of the Olympics failed to materialise.
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Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
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