Helga Gladbaum has asked me to publish this Guest Blog
Tribute to the late Cllr. Tayo Oladapo
I am dismayed that the late Councillor Tayo
Oladapo, representing the Labour Party in Kilburn ward for six years and who
died at an early age at the end of January of this year has still not been
given a decent burial nor a mention in any local publication.
I therefore would like to give my own tribute
to Tayo. He was elected to be a Labour councillor in 2010 and he was one of
much younger councillors at the time.
Tayo was a member of the Education Scrutiny
committee which I chaired for a number of years. He always attended the
meetings of that committee and would walk over to me at the end of the meetings
to talk about education and other matters. He was very respectful and I had
great hopes that he would eventually make an important contribution to the work
of the Council.
I remember a number of Brent councillors
passing away over the years, notably Cllr. Paul Daisley, leader of Brent
Council and MP for Brent Central, Cllr. Reg Freeson, MP for Brent Central for
many years and Cllr. Tom Taylor, chair of education for a number of years and
leader of the Conservative group. They and others were always honoured for
their contribution to the political life of Brent.
I fail to understand why these long-standing
traditions have been broken in the case of the late Cllr. Tayo Oladapo. I will
remember you, Tayo.
Helga Gladbaum
Councillor for Harlesden
ward 2010 to 2014
Although I didn't know Tayo Oladapo, and don't know Helga Gladbaum, personally, I had seen them both at Council meetings.
ReplyDeleteThe guest blog above shows the sort of respect that our councillors should show to each other, and to the people of Brent they were elected to represent.
As I have highlighted in a number of guest blogs myself, over the past couple of years, standards of conduct at Brent Council have been allowed to slip. Hopefully things are changing for the better - we will know after next Saturday's Labour Group AGM how much those hopes may be justified.
A big "thank you" to Martin and his "Wembley Matters" blog site for providing a platform where views like those of Helga above can be shared with the wider community.
Philip.