financial and professional services

The Financial Times Calls The City Of London Council Undemocratic: This Local Authority Will Remain That Way Until Westminster Passes Legislation To Abolish Its Business Vote

The City operates an idiosyncratic system of “corporate democracy”. At best it is flawed, at worst a recipe for abuse. A connected problem is the scant choice of candidates. For every councillor position, there are just 1.3 candidates on average, radically fewer than in London’s 32 local boroughs. The aldermanic voting system is particularly open to manipulation. An old acquaintance and former Lord Mayor once told me that one explanation for the City’s sometimes reactionary instincts is a “shadow hanging over the whole structure” of the corporation’s supposedly democratic governance, Freemasonry. Close to a third of councillors are declared masons, including the chairs of nearly all the major committees. Three-quarters of Lord Mayors over the past century have been masons.

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3 Spies, 3 Lord Mayors & Gilford Law From The Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office London

Gilford Law became Director-General of the London Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in 2021. Subsequently Law has posed for photographs with each of the three men who have been Lord Mayor of London since he took up his post and he’s participated in their local authority events. Meanwhile, as recent spy stories splashed across the international press illustrate, this Economic and Trade Office has run amok harassing Hong Kong pro-democracy activists who had settled in the UK. Worse still, one of those apparently paid by the Economic and Trade Office to carry out this intimidation was also a City of London Police special constable – a member of a force overseen by the local council headed by the Lord Mayor of London.

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The National Press On How The Chinese Property Crisis Could Rock The City Of London’s Foundations

We know that a fair number of the readers of this blog both come from and/or support our local authority’s Guildhall establishment, whereas others hold progressive views on the democratic reform of the City of London council – which may begin with the abolition of the business vote, but by no means ends there. Having, then, to take account of readers who are both attentive and diversely influential, we would guess that a good half of them have already read the story about the impact of the Chinese property crisis on the City of London carried by The Times earlier this month. Since this piece is of relevance to the arguments around the redevelopment/repurposing of London Wall West, we thought we’d reproduce it here for the benefit of our supporters who don’t read the right-wing press – and therefore may have missed it.

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