Cllr Ahmed; A Heartfelt Tribute

So. Farewell then. Councillor Hassan Ahmed.

On his announcement that I will only have about half as much material to write about from now on he is to stand down at the next election I thought it appropriate to remember some of the great works he has done for the city and the wider world of business. Not to mention some of his closest friends...

Firstly, Cllr Ahmed very nearly forced the closure of the Council of Equality and Human Rights Nottingham and Notts by suddenly halting their funding on dodgy equalities grounds. Doubly dodgy was the fact that he was involved with Nottingham Equal at the time which, not only had he not declared that on his register of interests, also happened to be a potential competitor organisation.

A number of coincidences followed. Firstly CEHRNN's Chief Exec lost his position as the BME representative on One Nottingham's board after an election that was run by erm, Nottingham Equal. Secondly, Nottingham Equal got a grant from NCC which was suspiciously similar to the amount removed from CEHRNN. This grant was decided by One Nottingham which Ahmed had managed to wheedle his way into as the Chair of its new 'Fairness Commission'. ON has refused to divulge any details of how it reached the decision to pick NE for receipt of grant aid, claiming that it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Interestingly, one of the criticisms levelled at CEHRNN was that they had failed to adequately address the equalities strands other than race. Nottingham Equal be covering the following strands; race, that's it.

In the meantime, Ahmed was found guilty of breaching the Members Code of Conduct due to multiple instances of failing to register his outside interests with NCC. He celebrated this by claiming in the local press that he had been 'exonerated'. It turned out that a significant part of the reasoning behind the decision by Standards for England not to impose any sanction was down to the fact that he wasn't a member of the Executive at the relevant time. However he WAS Graham Chapman's Executive Assistant so was in a position to influence decisions.

Like a moth to a flame, Ahmed even managed to inveigle himself in NCC's other big corruption scare by being the one who made the decision to award a contract  to Harold Tinworth for political advice on how to win the local election for Labour providing support to members of NCC's executive members. This is now causing all kinds of unhappiness for JoCo and his cohorts.

And now he has apparently been implicated in this new Future Jobs Fund issue and he's decided rather suddenly that he needs to spend more time with his pets. He won't be missed.