London: Mayor & More

Nicky Gavron AM

Interviewed in The Guardian.

That Brian Coleman!

Alas, I cannot find a link to it but he's been in the Barnet Press insisting that elected politicians - not unlike himself, oddly enough - should be paid loads of money, especially in expenses! And he's been doing his bit for the arts too!

"A huge percentage of Conservative councillors, staff and officers are gay. Oh, and before you ask, yes I am, and I am open to offers!"

That's all very well. But who could afford him?

Painful To Behold

The Troll on the "berk-in-beige".

Brian Coleman, Cost-Cutter

In keeping with the value-for-money spirit of the new mayoral regime, it's good to see that the annual taxi expenses of the ah, colourful Tory assembly member have been reduced by twenty percent: down from £10,000 to a mere £8,000. No doubt the Forensic Audit Panel will be very pleased with him and maybe next year Brian will be able to "cut waste" still further so that his annual bill for cabs will amount to significantly less than those of the other 24 AMs put together. Despite this impressive progress, though, Labour AM Navin Shah has asked for the expenses rules to be made tighter. Must take a look at those rules myself...

Questions For The Mayor

Some personal favourites from the list submitted for next Wednesday's Mayor's Question Time.

Joanne McCartney: The current, very successful, London Domestic Violence Strategy ends in September. Do you intend to commission and produce another updated strategy, and if so, what resources will you be allocating to this important area of work?

Caroline Pidgeon: At your recent meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport (Ruth Kelly), which of the major transport projects currently under consideration by TfL did she indicate she would not fund?

Andrew Boff: What are the LDA, Metropolitan Police Authority and Transport for London doing to engage with the Kurdish and Turkish communities of London?

Len Duvall: In a statement on 30 May you said you had asked TfL to consider alternative ways of funding the half-price bus travel scheme for Londoners on income support. What progress have you made so far?

John Biggs: When do you plan to start holding regular and unrestricted weekly press conferences?

Jenny Jones: What specific steps are you taking to protect the Olympic budget against the pressures being placed on it by the failure of private development partners to raise capital to invest in the Olympics village and, according to recent reports, the media centre?

Darren Johnson: Why have none of the documents relating to planning applications referred to, or decided by, your office you since you became Mayor been placed on the GLA website, as was standard practice under your predecessor?

Darren Johnson: Have you had any meetings of your ‘Cabinet for London’, which you committed to in your manifesto. If so, have the full agenda papers been put on your website, as you also committed to doing in the interests of “a more open and transparent decision making process, which will help restore Londoners’ trust in City Hall”?

Mike Tuffrey: Will you consult the Assembly on the criteria to be used by the Mayor’s Fund to decide which organisations will get grants? Do you anticipate it making say three year grants or just single payments?

John Biggs: What steps are you taking to recover money owed by ‘chiselling little crooks’?

John Biggs: Have you now overcome your existential crisis and acquainted yourself with the Olympic memorandum?

John Biggs: What is your definition of cronyism?

Can't wait.

An Interview With James Cleverly AM

He's a lifelong south-east Londoner, brought up in Lewisham and schooled in Greenwich, though his higher education was on the westside. He's served in the army, done a bit of banking and then went into publishing, which partly explains his interest in blogging. He's determined that he'll be giving the job his all and be seen to be doing so - he's on four committees and the MPA. He says he's a Tory because the "Conservative Party principles are the most in tune with the natural way of the world." Interestingly, he was drawn to politics because he found the early prime minister Blair infuriating and unprincipled. He joined the local Tories soon after. James talks warmly about his constituency of Bexley and Bromley, with its blend of suburbs and near-countryside. Judging by the election, Bexley and Bromley is pretty keen on him too. Plus there's Cleverly on Boris, Cleverly on Ken, and Cleverly on London's identity. For the full 27 minutes CLICK HERE

At Guardian Politics: Yesterday's Mayor's Question Time

This piece went live on the site earlier today.

"Diverting moments during Boris Johnson’s second Mayors Question Time yesterday included Green AM Jenny Jones’s helpless exasperation over Johnson’s shameless evasion of her question about when – if, even – he’d be appointing an environment advisor, Richard Barnbrook being admonished by an official for eating a banana – further feeding the Brownsuit’s appetite for victimhood – and the continuation of the first MQT’s sparring between Johnson and Labour’s John Biggs."

The latter show encouraging signs of being a regular occurrence and have dramatised an early conflict between the new mayor and his Assembly opponents. This centres on the structure and propriety of Johnson’s administration and the nature of his own role within it. The latest example of the carefree manner in which the mayor has delegated, appointed and – his description - sprayed titles around is his earmarking of up to £50,000 for Price Waterhouse Coopers for services to the Forensic Audit Panel that he’d announced wouldn’t cost a penny.

Cream & Clean

From the Sindie:

"I like things clean, neat, orderly,' he says, asking me to take my shoes off to protect the cream carpets – and revealing socks to match the linen suit. His mobile phone rings, with the sound of a chorister singing 'Jerusalem.'"

Now read on.

SuitWatch

Boris misses some things. The Tory Troll misses nothing.

At The Guardian: More On The New Assembly

Fresh and live at the politics blog:

The new London Assembly line-up met this morning for the first time. There was much bum-shuffling and some uncertainty as the 25 Assembly Members adjusted to new roles and cross-party alignments. Twenty-four of them were united in adjusting to the presence of the twenty-fifth, Richard Barnbrook of the BNP. As a result he has his own special kind of adjusting to do: to institutional unpopularity. One thing hadn't changed in City Hall, though: the presence of Ken Livingstone. While his Tory nemesis entertained his New York counterpart elsewhere, the now ex-London mayor had taken a seat in the front row of the public gallery and watched the proceedings closely. As his article in today's Guardian shows, he's looking on the bright side of Labour's defeat in London and betrays no sign of retiring quietly. He's still got that nasty cough, by the way.