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News and Comment May 2023

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26 May - Turkish Delight

TweetI don’t like this Tweet; it is box ticking virtue signalling by people who believe that faith and ethnicity are someone’s most important characteristics. They are not and it indicates a preoccupation with race by Bexley Conservatives that is unhealthy if not quite racist. Is Deputy Mayor Betts an English Christian? Do we need to know?

We don’t. We need to know what is going make a good Councillor and Mayor and the Tory Tweet sells the new Mayor seriously short.

I know nothing about Councillor Betts except that he once asked a meeting Chairman to have me reprimanded for taking a photograph a few seconds before a meeting began but Councillor Ahmet Dourmoush has always seemed like an all round good egg; as one might expect of a man in his line of business.

What do we know of him?

He was born in Greenwich but spent his early years in Cyprus where he knew no English; something he very soon put right on his return to Britain. As well as running a poultry processing factory in Erith he founded a Turkish school in Blackfen and was both a footballer and rugby player in his younger years. A magistrate and allegedly a good cook too. Both energetic and hard working evidently.

Following the Turkish earthquake earlier this year he organised nine lorry loads of relief supplies. His energies have not only been directed towards foreign disaster zones but also to his local ward and a little beyond. I first became very aware of Ahmet when he intervened to help someone whose predicament had been featured on these pages and subsequently when he was a meeting Chairman back in the days when I was a regular attendee. There was always a warm welcome from Councillor Dourmoush when that was something frowned upon by the Leadership.

With Andy elected to chair Full Council meetings the omens are good.

 

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