From the Telegraph:
It since emerged that the Bishop of Barking wrote to the mayor less than two weeks after he appointed Mr Lewis warning him that he was no longer authorised to serve as a minister, and inviting him to get in contact to discuss the matter. The letter was never passed on to the mayor.
Well, that’s interesting. Are his highly paid transition team in the habit of not telling Boris about potentially damaging information received from respected members of the community?
Elsewhere, as anticipated yesterday, the wiggle room in the JP story is that he applied but never practiced:
“If you are fully paid-up members of the ‘hair splitters’ convention it will have made a difference to you whether or not I was appointed or recommended for appointment.
“I’ve passed all the interviews for it. I’ve had a letter confirming that I have been recommended for appointment to the board.”
I think ‘Fully Paid Up Members Of The Hair Splitters Convention’ would be a good Boris Watch tag line. It doesn’t matter to me if he thinks you can pretend you’re a JP if you haven’t sat - what’s interesting is that Boris evidently took whatever he said to mean ’sat in judgement on ne’er-do-wells’ and it was realising that he hadn’t, in fact, done this that finally broke Boris’ confidence (or, in fact, dented it slightly - it only made it ‘harder’ to give him the backing required).
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What’s happened here then? Someone lost their job?
Well, Boris can’t seem to find his.
A very good signature, by the way.
Haha, “fully paid-up members of the hair-splitters convention” is brilliant. Can we get Naadir to change the tagline to that (at least temporarily) in honour of Ray Lewis’s departure?
‘Lewis who is also a magistrate (JP), motto is: “We see no shortage of young black males in the courtrooms, so my vision is to seek to prepare as many as possible for the boardrooms.”‘
http://www.obv.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1038&Itemid=134
Helen’s right. There is no wiggle room here. He lied about being a magistrate as early as May and for god knows how long before. He also appears to have lied about not knowing to have been struck off as a CofE minister. Good riddance.
The bad news is that Boris is now apparently taking ‘personal charge’ of the youth agenda. Is that wise?
This also explains the bizarre circumlocution “served as a Clerk in Holy Orders for the Church Commissioners” rather than “was ordained into the the Church of England, but can’t actually serve as a vicar due to serious transgressions”.
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