Comments on: State of London Debate slashed

By: BenSix

BenSix — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:09:16 +0000

Thanks for that, James. It’s good to keep threads updated.
Boris is becoming quite adept at protracted hand-waving.

By: James Buller

James Buller — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:36:40 +0000

Boris now says

“The 2008 State of London Debate was held as an evening event because of the timing of the mayoral elections and in order to fulfil my statutory duties in regards to the timing of the debate and the publication of the annual report. The State of London Debate was also held as an evening event after the 2004 mayoral elections.

S.47 of the GLA Act 1999 requires the Mayor to hold a State of London Debate annually, with the debate open to all members of the public.

The GLA Act does not set out the form and procedure of the debate, other than the requirement that it must be set up in a way so as to provide members of the public to speak. In
accordance with the Act, the form and procedure of the 2009 State of London Debate shall be as I determine after consultation with the London Assembly.

The 2008 State of London Debate took place just three weeks ago so proposals for the format of next year’s event are still under development. However, I hope to start consultation with the Assembly on the 2009 debate before the end of the year and look forward to another successful dialogue with Londoners.”

By: State of London Debate

State of London Debate — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:24:09 +0000

[...] Mr Stop Boris noted last month, the event has been considerably cut, but will nonetheless feature Munira Mirza (Arts and [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:42:29 +0000

Sounds like an interesting event. One argument might be that a shorter evening event, more akin to a traditional public meeting, could be more accessible to the general public than asking people to commit to a whole day which sounds like the preserve of hardcore policy wonks. As a trade off for a shorter debate, maybe it should be more frequent than once a year?

But if there was enough people to pack the hall on the previous event, it does sound a shame to change the format.

By: Mr. Stop Boris

Mr. Stop Boris — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:38:00 +0000

I don’t have any official attendance figures but it was an enormous hall it was in and it was packed full.

I’m an absolutely hopeless judge of numbers of people so I’ll just say that it must very easily have been a four-digit number of attendees, but probably didn’t reach five figures.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:24:27 +0000

Just out of interest, how many Londoners turned up to feed their thoughts and feelings into the decision-making processes?