Mason Edward Goodchild, Clockwork Liveryman Jani Levanen, Plastic Man Gerard O’Sullivan & Barrister David Williams Stand In Farringdon Within City Council By-Election

On the same day as the national election in the UK on 4 July 2024, there is a local council by-election in the City of London’s Farringdon Within ward. Below we provide a rundown of the four candidates – Edward Goodchild, Jani Levanen, Gerard O’Sullivan and David Williams. All are standing as ‘independents’. There is […]

Incompetence Of City Council Leader Chris Hayward Exposed Yet Again By Bevis Marks Row & His Failure To Properly Answer Members’ Questions

Ultimately, Chris Hayward is responsible for statements he makes about his own interests. If he was mistakenly advised, it’s a reflection on his judgment that he relies on an incompetent advisor. It would in any case be more dignified if he just said that the information he had given was wrong, instead of making someone else the fall guy.

City Of London Leader Chris Hayward Caught On Camera Using His Council Office To Promote Freemasonry

Freemasonry is not of any great significance in the wider world. If grown men want to get together in private and indulge in cosplay that is not something that should concern us. What does perturb people is when someone like Chris Hayward uses the office he’s been supplied with as leader of the City of London council to film promotional videos for the craft. This can create the impression that masonry is actively endorsed by the council as a local authority and that by joining the craft individuals can exert influence on this public body’s policies.

City Of London Solstice Round Up: Michael Snyder, Chris Hayward, Luis Tilleria & A Cast Of Cronies

Council leader Chris Hayward’s defence of the outrageously poor value for money the Golden Key event represents was absurd but it fits into a long standing pattern of council vanity spending and rhetoric. What really puzzled some of those following City of London council politics recently were Hayward’s antics at the policy & resources committee meeting of 15 December 2022. This meeting saw the awarding of Asset of Community Value (ACV) status to Simpsons Tavern but not St Brides Tavern, offering the former some protection from developers but not the latter.

Alastair King and Andrew Marsden Winners In Rigged City Of London Sheriffs ‘Election’

On 24 June 2022 at the Guildhall the only candidate for the post of aldermanic sheriff, Alastair King, was ‘elected’. Likewise, Andrew Marsden was ‘elected’ non-aldermanic sheriff since there were no other candidates for that office either. In short, like every year, what took place was a fake election with the result a forgone conclusion. Given the absurd over-representation of freemasons in top posts at the City of London council, it didn’t surprise us that a quick search suggested Andrew Marsden was a big fish in the small pond of livery lodges. A page on the Shepherds Bush Lodge website not only listed Marsden as a founding master of the Wellington Livery Masters Lodge, it also featured a photo in which there is a man who looks like the newly elected non-aldermanic sheriff, with current leader of the City of London council Christopher Hayward also identifiable in the picture.

Alison Gowman Out & Michael Mainelli In As Yet Another Guildhall Lodge Mason Picked To Be Lord Mayor Of London In 2023

If the election to become the Lord Mayor of London wasn’t rigged it wouldn’t be the case that more than two-thirds of those elected to this plum post since the founding of the Guildhall Lodge 3116 in 1905 have belonged this tiny masonic coterie. Michael Mainelli’s register of interests shows that like so many of his predecessors he is not just a mason but a member of the Guildhall Lodge. Given that masons constitute significantly less than one percent of the population of England, their massive over-representation within top posts at the City of London council – and not just that of lord mayor – is astoundingly disproportionate. And like current lord mayor Vincent Keaveny and current head of the common council Chris Hayward (also a member of the Guildhall Lodge and a much higher ranking mason than the 2023 lord mayor in waiting), Mainelli has acted as a star turn at the annual City celebration of the slaver John Cass. In fact both Hayward and Mainelli acted as star turns at a celebration of John Cass just two years ago in 2020!

Alison Gowman, Chris Hayward & The City of London Corporation’s Branding & Identity Crisis

As a partner at DLA Piper Alison Gowman appears to us to be remarkably similar to current lord mayor Vincent Keaveny, who is also a partner at DLA Piper. Likewise what is fictional in the tale of Dick Whittington invoked in the FT piece about City changes is the spin of him being a poor boy – he was a historical Lord Mayor of London who came from a privileged family background. That said, for centuries most of those with seats on the City of London council – not just the ‘leadership’ – have come from trade rather than aristocratic family backgrounds. Beyond gender, Gowman appears a rather typical City grandee both in terms of her background and her opportunist politics.

Schools Drop Robert Aske Slaver Name, Masonic Lodges Memorialising The City Grandee Are Silent

We suspect that like the Haberdashers’ Company, the Aske lodges will do the minimum they can get away with in terms of properly addressing the real history of those to they have long held up as important predecessors and role models. Since the Aske masonic lodges are largely closed off from public scrutiny they will probably do nothing. Helping organisations like the Haberdashers’ Company along with their reputation washing are right-wing journalists peddling fake news. These hacks include Tom Newtown Dunn who falsely claimed in an opinion piece for The Standard entitled How to defuse a culture war: a group of London schools can teach us a lesson (8 September 2021): “…in March this year, a disturbing discovery was made. As well as his silk business, Aske also invested £500 in the Royal African Company…” As we make clear above, Aske’s slave trade investment has been known about for well over fifty years and possibly a lot longer. Only a journalist who either doesn’t check facts or doesn’t care about them could claim Aske’s stake in the Royal African Company is a recent discovery. Dunn is one of many hacks furthering the hard right’s culture war agenda by replacing facts with fake narratives created by organisations like the Haberdashers’ Company who wish to escape criticism for holding Aske up as a role model for children at their schools until just a few months ago. The Haberdashers’ did this by erasing Aske’s real history – and it stretches credulity to suggest they weren’t aware of it – and replacing it with a mythologised fake one.

Roger Gifford’s Death Spotlights Delayed City Elections & Greenwashing

Aside from helping to promote his fellow freemasons to positions of influence, one of Gifford’s other legacies is supposedly in the realm of green finance. However, if Gifford made any legitimate contributions to fighting climate change these should be offset against the role he played as an alderman, and in particular as a lord mayor, where he was working as a neo-liberal lobbyist for the kind of light regulation in the business world that enables companies to pollute. For all our council’s talk of going green, news stories in various media outlets both this week and for some time suggest that what both the City and Gifford were and are engaged in is greenwashing.

Graeme Harrower On The Rogers Report And Postponed Local Elections

Lord Lisvane uses his unbelievably uncritical report on governance at the City of London council to tout for further business by offering to redraft the Court’s standing orders (para 147) and providing future assistance (para 551). But the message sent through the response of many councillors – who mostly don’t like his suggestions of very mild reforms – is “don’t call us, we’ll call you”. Imagine the stink if Lisvane had suggested abolishing the undemocratic business vote! A freedom of Information request has revealed that his report cost the Corporation £15,000. No wonder he’d welcome some more work!

RECLAIM EC1

No To Business Votes, Yes To Democracy!

Mystical Cretinism