Tim Parker: Another Sort Of Deputy

Mayor Johnson has just announced that businessman Tim Parker is to become his First Deputy Mayor and Chief Executive of the GLA Group. Fascinating. Presumably his title means that he's more important than deputies Lewis, Malthouse and Clement as well as being a different sort of deputy from deputy Barnes. He's also to be nominated by Boris as the next chair of Transport for London. I'm still not clear how all this fits together. I do, however, know that Parker will be paid a nominal salary of £1 a year. How can he afford to? Well, it probably helps that he's accumulated successive mountains of money from his previous jobs at the AA, Kwik-Fit and Clarks shoes. Unions call him - a former Trot, apparently - the Prince of Darkness. I wonder what Bob Crow's thinking. Now read on.