Although Tower Hamlets has the wealth distribution profile of a least developed country, the borough has made big improvements in education, housing and other social services, both under Labour control and now under an ex-Labour executive Mayor.
Even so, in the media it has become a by-word for corruption and incompetence, but that reputation owes less to reality than to perceptions fanned by a disturbing alliance of New(ish) Labour and old-style stitch ups, with conservative little Englanders epitomised by the Telegraph and Mail.
Violent protests have spread across the Middle East and North Africa in response to an anti-Islamic film, The Innocence of Muslims, that was posted on YouTube.
In this country at least, the punk music I loved as a teenager lost its ability to shock long before Johnny Rotten started appearing in butter commercials. So safe has it become that brief snatches of Sex Pistols songs even made it into the Olympic opening ceremony.
Ken Livingstone, who has developed a healthy respect for Ed Miliband, told the BBC Today programme earlier this week that his only criticism of the Labour leader was that he paid too much credence to “discredited Blairites”. There are a number of reasons as to why Labour did well in London, yet Ken Livingstone lost, and one of the reasons is that a good number of unreconstructed Blairites either refused to work for Livingstone, or worse still refused to vote for him or indeed voted for anyone but Livingstone. 
Labour leader, Ed Miliband, recently took himself back to Bradford to ‘listen’, as he had promised to do, to local people. He said he wanted to learn the lessons for Labour’s monumental drubbing at the hands of George Galloway and his ‘Respect Party’. The lessons have of course been writ large for years. Bradford was just waiting to happen. Next stop, at this rate, Birmingham Hodge Hill.