Mayorwatch reports:
City Hall has this morning announced that Tim Parker, the businessman brought in by Boris Johnson to reform the Greater London Authority and chair Transport for London, will be stepping down from his position as ‘First Deputy Mayor’.
Oh dear. To lose one Deputy Mayor could be considered a misfortune. To lose two looks like you didn’t read the rules, did you guys?
He’s not just gone as Deputy Mayor at the GLA, he’s now not going to run TfL either. Boris will.
Announcing that he would continue to chair the board of Transport for London instead of handing over to Parker, Mayor Johnson said he “was delighted when Tim Parker agreed to take charge of the Board on my behalf. Over the last few weeks, however, it has become increasingly apparent to both of us that the nature of the decisions that need to be take are highly political and there is no substitute for me, as the directly elected Mayor, being in charge. There are limits, therefore, to what can be delegated.”
We therefore now need to revise our Boris Jobometer:
- MP for Henley
- Mayor of London
- Chairman of Transport For London [reinstated]
- Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority [from October]
- Chairman of the London Waste and Recycling Board
- Daily Telegraph Columnist
Perhaps we were too hard on him when he complained about the workload. Helpful suggestion: ditch the Telegraph columns. You don’t need the money.
On the TfL point, it’s only five days since this press release, which proudly states:
The Chairman of the Board will be Tim Parker and Christopher Garnett will be deputy Chair. Christopher Garnett’s appointment is subject to the confirmation hearing process of the London Assembly
That’s not even as long as Ray Lewis lasted, and begs the question ‘if they’ve been worried about it for weeks, why was it announced that Parker would chair it?’. Odd. There are unanswered questions here. Will Garnett continue being deputy Chair? Remember Livingstone really left a lot of the TfL work to his trusted friend Dave Wetzel. Will Boris have a similar arrangement with Garnett, or will Norris (everyone’s pick for the chair at one point), Ranger or Moylan move up the ladder? Only Moylan is an elected politician, although the other two are of course basically politicians. Or, horror of horrors, will Johnson’s rediscovery of political accountability mean he actually tries to do everything?
Tags: 7 Comments
7 responses so far ↓
OMIGOD
what more can be said. One day’s he’s complaining to the FT that is too bureacratic and hard now he’s actually got to start running the place.
they really thought that the job of Mayor of London was just something created to give Ken something to do. Not the huge job it really is.
meant to say
do we get that £1 back
£1? You can buy a whole cemetery for that.
More chaos and ineptitude, from Building magazine:
London mayor Boris will not appoint housing adviser
London mayor Boris Johnson has backtracked on plans to appoint a housing adviser to push through his plans for 50,000 affordable homes in the capital in the next three years.
Johnson had originally planned to appoint a housing adviser and had interviewed a number of candidates for the position, including former Building news editor Mira Bar-Hillel, currently property correspondent at the London Evening Standard.
However, a spokesperson for the mayor this week confirmed that Sir Simon Milton, appointed deputy mayor for housing and planning in July, would not be appointing an adviser. He said: “Sir Simon will work closely with the GLA’s housing team which has extensive experience of developing housing strategy for the capital.”
Link for that
http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=29&storycode=3120417
[...] Anyway, after making such a big deal out of a story of next-to-no relevance to Londoners, I approached the Evening Standard stall at my railway station with interest this evening to see what they had to say today following Tim Parker’s surprise resignation. [...]
[...] wishing to distract you from the hawt news of today, and Tom’s careers advice notwithstanding, Boris’s latest Telegraph column is rather [...]