Tag Archives: boris johnson

During the London Mayor elections, Boris Johnson and his campaign had to get the bulbs changed in five lamps in their office.

No surprise there really.

But you might be a little surprised at how much they paid.

Changing five lamps required someone to be paid for two hours of work, at £28.98 per hour. (That’s 24 minutes per lamp.)

Plus 10% administration fee.

Plus VAT.

Add in the cost of material and the total bill came to £88.81.

Nothing like a bit of value for money is there? (Copy of invoice here.)

P.S. I’m now off to become an electrician.

Well, well. Here we go again. Not content with overlooking the existence of a key Olympics memo, forgetting that he spent £465,000 on consultants, both ruling out and also not ruling out North Kent as an airport location, both wanting a statue of Sir Keith Park on the fourth plinth and yet also not wanting one, and of course also failing to ensure that full checks were carried out before he appointed senior staff, Boris has now tried to dodge another election promise.

By claiming he never made it.

Which is a bit of a problem given that …

Credit where credit is due, the official Conservative Party reaction to the Ray Lewis affair appears to be rather more measured and sensible than that of some of the party’s online cheerleaders:

Former minister Francis Maude will chair talks with senior party officials and one of Boris Johnson’s right hand men to learn lessons from the resignation of the deputy mayor …

Team Boris’s takeover of City Hall was seen as a test bed for Mr Cameron’s first 100 days in Government, with vital lessons to be learned. Mr Boles was seconded to manage the launch and report back.

The Ray Lewis

…

Two new allegations around London Deputy Mayor Ray Lewis have emerged today. First, that – contrary to his claims – his Academy is no longer being funded by Newham Council and, second, that despite repeated references to Ray Lewis being a Magistrate, in fact according to the Ministry for Justice Ray Lewis “is not and never has been a Magistrate“.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is increasingly in the firing line over the whole issue because the Evening Standard has documented a series of checks that could have been undertaken before Ray Lewis’s appointment but which weren’t. Given the seniority …

London Mayor Boris Johnson held a press conference this afternoon, announcing that he is to hold an inquiry into his newly appointed Deputy Mayor, Ray Lewis, over allegations of sexual misconduct.

The BBC takes up the story:

BBC London learned Mr Lewis, who has responsibility for youth, was barred from working in the Church of England after the allegations were made when he was vicar at a church in east London a decade ago.

Mr Lewis was placed on the Church of England’s Lambeth and Bishopsthorpe Register – the so-called Lambeth List – in 1999.

People on the list are prevented from public

…

I’ve blogged previously (here and here) about some of the errors which came to light in the London election results. None of these were serious in their own right, but they do cast doubt on how good the checking processes really were. Now a comprehensive review has suggested that up to 41,000 votes went unaccounted for:

Although the glitches are unlikely to have changed the overall result of the mayoral race – Boris Johnson won by almost 140,000 votes after second choices were taken into consideration – today’s report lists a string of potentially serious problems with the

…

When Boris Johnson set up his Forensic Audit Panel to investigate financial goings on at the London Development Agency, he boasted about how all the people on the panel were working for free and made no mention of any other costs being involved. (Mayor’s Question Time, 21st May, full transcript here.)

Amongst its members is Andrew Gordon of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he is Head of Investigations in their Forensic Services group. Given the allegations over the LDA, such expertise sounds very welcome.

But, but, but … it has now turned out that although the panel are working for free, £50,000 is to …

As mentioned previously, Mayor of London Boris Johnson is running up very big bills for consultations to help him and his team settle into the job. Unfortunately, he now also seems to have forgotten just how much the bills are because he told the BBC today that:

I don’t think we’ve spent half a million so far: I think that may be the total of their annual salaries, something like that.

In short: wrong. Indeed, given how short the period of time is that many of the consultations have been employed for, giving their equivalent full annual salaries would give a …

Exhibit A
Conservative Leader of Dartford Council, Jeremey Kite: “When I spoke to him during his campaign he assured me north Kent was not an option .”

Exhibit B
Boris Johnson’s staff: “It is too early to identify particular sites and to confirm or deny north Kent is an option.”

(Source: News Shopper)

So that’d be saying one thing before polling day and then doing something else afterwards by the looks of it. A bit of a habit really.

Hat tip: Boris Watch

Not only does Boris Johnson not seem that keen on doing the job of London Mayor, what with appointing a plethora of deputy Mayors, but he also seems to be getting into rather a habit of breaking his pre-election promises. I’ve previously blogged about fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – before the election he said one thing, after the election he’s doing the opposite – and now I’ve noticed that the recent announcement about the MPA (Metropolitan Policing Authority) means there’s another promise he’s broken.

It’s been announced that Boris Johnson will take over as …

Earlier this year Boris Johnson signed an EDM (a sort of Parliamentary petition open to MPs to sign) calling for

A permanent statue of Sir Keith on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

You couldn’t get much clearer than that really could you? So of course now Boris Johnson is Mayor he’s going ahead and keeping his promise isn’t he? Er, no. Now the votes are safely counted, he’s ditched his promise. Whatever you think of the merits of permanent Park statue versus rotating modern art on the Fourth Plinth, it’s pretty striking to make a promise ahead of polling …

London Mayor Boris Johnson has now appointed five deputy mayors in various guises – messrs Barnes, Clement, Lewis, Malthouse and now Tim Parker too. Do you get the feeling that, just perhaps, he’s not that keen on actually doing the job of Mayor himself? After all, it’s not as if he’s given up his journalism commitments and he’s still hanging on as an MP (though for how long, who knows? But the extra money must be nice while you can get it).