I received a nice letter from the Mayor today. I was inspired to write to him on 2nd October to follow up an article in the Evening Standard (see previous posting). I wrote to find out what he was doing swelling it up at the Variety Club do on 12th September. The Mayor mentioned the function in his October report but he failed to mention that he had spent £10K!
According to his reply the £10K of our cash he spent came from “my charity account”. As a personal guest of Lord Coe it appears that Livingstone did not have to pay for his own dinner but decided to use £10K of our council taxes to bid for a trip for two to the next Winter Olympics. I am all for plutocrats taking part in charity auctions but it smells somewhat when a public servant thinks that it is appropriate for him to take part in the fun with our money.
I have searched in vain on the GLA/Mayor’s website for any mention of this budget. I don’t think that any questions have been asked about it. How much is it? What is it spent on? I have asked the GLA Conservatives to ask some questions and hopefully put a stop to this. I guess this is hidden somewhere in the bowels of the overall budget of £11.8 million for the Mayor’s Office. Did Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel spend that much?
I sent my letter on 2nd October. They probably got it on 3rd. Judging by the stamped date they have held on to it for 28 days before replying. The reply was sent 2nd class. They are clearly doing everything they can to reply as slowly as possible. Cynical or what?
Phil Taylor 
4 replies on “Mayor using his personal charity account to act the swell”
Do we know who is going to enjoy the Winter Olympics trip? there is an argument for sending an official to ‘see how it’s done’, but if that was the case, why not arrange it and pay for it through the Mayor’s office or the LDA. This looks very odd…
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Reading the letter, I see that he plans to offer the trip as a prize in The Londoner. In fact this is mentioned in his schedule of Mayoral Decisions for October, which is itself a most interesting document – if you want to know how to waste public money in style. Should give us a reason to read his propaganda sheet, for once.
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[…] I have written to the Mayor today to ask him to explain a discrepancy between what he has told me and his reply to a question by Andrew Pelling, AM. The Mayor wrote to me at the end of October to say that the £10K he had bid for a trip to the Winter Olympics for two at a Variety Club do on 12th September had been made “on behalf of my charity account in the GLA budget”, see previous posting. This does not accord with a reply to a question asked by Andrew Pelling in time for the last Mayor’s Question Time on 15th November. The reply states that only £5,000 was given to the Variety Club. […]
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[…] I get a response on 2nd November (see previous posting) explaining that the £10K will come form the Mayor’s charity account […]
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