Chark Blog - Lord Ken of London

Sunday, December 24, 2006

The death of Saparmurat Niyazov has triggered much about his absurd megalomaniac presidential decrees. It is a reminder of the personality disorders which can afflict those with power. It's pretty easy to laugh off the foibles of a central Asian dictator but power corrupts and the closer the power is to being absolute so is the degree of corruption.

Fortunately in business, reality is forced on even the most megalomaniacal by the market place. We can't force people to buy Wayne Rooney's memoirs, nor prevent them from buying Why don't penguins feet freeze?. Things become a little more difficult though in the public sector.

The democratic process in London elected a guy called Ken Livingstone as Mayor. There can be no arguing with the process but I'm beginning to have concerns about the degree to which he is being corrupted by power. He has appointed a Cartoonist Laureate. He appointed a 'Cabinet' although I can't find any reference to their meeting since 2002 (perhaps they disagreed with him). He built a new palace for him and his team on the Thames.

Apparently it's already too small to house his staff and his ambitions and they are looking for a new opportunity to build a larger palace at Londoners' expense.

But what really triggered this outburst was the receipt through my letterbox of The Londoner which describes itself as a newsletter for Londoners. It is actually a propaganda document for the glorification of the Mayor and all his deeds reminiscent of Pravda in the good old days of Soviet imperialism.

After three months of email badgering (see below and read from the bottom up) I have now established that we taxpayers are contributing at least £3 million pounds a year to support the political ambitions of our Mayor. Harrumph. I'm waiting for him to change officially the names of South Ken, High Street Ken, Ken Salrise, The Ken Nington Oval, and Ken Tishtown.

Incidentally is a service level of 20 days to respond to an email adequate in the 21st century?

-----Original Message-----

From: Mayor [mailto:mayor@london.gov.uk]

Sent: 21 December 2006 15:40

To: Charkin, Richard

Subject: MGLA121206-3836: RE : RE: MGLA211106-1915: RE : RE: MGLA231006-8952: RE : The Londoner

Dear Mr Charkin,

Thank you for your further email. The cost quoted to you in previous correspondence is the total programme budget for The Londoner.

We use some freelance editorial contributors and designers to produce The Londoner and those costs are included in the £288,000 budget.

Yours sincerely

Nicola Golledge

Production and Commercial Coordinator

Dear Ms Golledge

Thank you very much. Perhaps I wasn't clear about the cost breakdown. Magazine publishers usually split costs between fixed and variable and show them separately. The cost you quoted is for all production and distribution (the variable bits). Are the fixed costs of editorial and design included in that figure too or accounted elsewhere?

Richard Charkin

-----Original Message-----

From: Mayor [mailto:mayor@london.gov.uk]

Sent: 12 December 2006 12:26

To: Charkin, Richard

Subject: MGLA211106-1915: RE : RE: MGLA231006-8952: RE : The Londoner

Dear Mr Charkin

Thank you for your further email.

We produce 10 editions of The Londoner each year. The print run varies very slightly from edition to edition, but on average is around 2,885,000 copies. The £288,000 cost quoted includes all production and distribution costs.

We do occasionally sell external advertising and will continue to do so in the next financial year.

Yours sincerely

Nicola Golledge

Production and Commercial Coordinator

Dear Ms Golledge

Thank you very much for this information. Can you also please let me know the print run, the frequency of publication and also whether the £288,000 per issue includes all costs - editorial, design etc overheads, print, paper and distribution. Also whether there are any income streams and whether there are intended to be in the future?

Thank you so much for your help.

Regards

Richard Charkin

-----Original Message-----

From: Mayor [mailto:mayor@london.gov.uk]

Sent: 20 November 2006 14:43

To: Charkin, Richard

Subject: MGLA231006-8952: RE : The Londoner

Dear Mr Charkin

Thank you for your email to The Londoner. Each edition of The Londoner costs approximately £288,000 to produce in total. This equates to a spend of approximately 10p per household. This compares favourably with other local borough publications, based on available information the average cost of local authority publications across London per copy per household is 18p. The Londoner costs 10p per copy per household- 7p cheaper than the average.

As The Londoner is a publication giving information about all the services in the GLA Group it is jointly funded by the Greater London Authority, Transport for London, The Metropolitan Police Service and the London Development Agency. Information about the budget for each of these bodies is available on the GLA's website. Please visit the link: http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/budget/current_budget.jsp for the Annual Budget 2006/07 and the information on the council tax precept.

We will not be publishing the budget in the newsletter, it is however in the public domain.

Yours sincerely

Nicola Golledge

Production and Commercial Coordinator

Dear Mr Charkin

Thank you for your further email requesting a response to your original enquiry (reference MGLA231006-8952).

Your email is currently with The Londoner team and is receiving attention. We aim to answer emails within twenty working days from the day following receipt. I have attached a link to our service standards http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/plu_service_stds.jsp

Yours sincerely

Catrina Holmes

Correspondence Desk Supervisor

Dear Mayor

It is now more than a week since I sent this. When might I expect a response?

Richard Charkin

-----Original Message-----

From: Charkin, Richard

Sent: 22 October 2006 09:44

To: 'mayor@london.gov.uk'

Subject: The Londoner

Dear Mayor

Will you please publish the total costs of producing, printing and distributing The Londoner? It could be a good vehicle for recruitment to the various London civic bodies but it would be interesting to see how the budget would work out.

Richard Charkin

12/28/2006 10:00:07 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Richard,

I asked the same question of the Mayor but asked where the cash came from. The answer was:

£1.5 million TfL

£500K LDA

£250K Met

Rest from GLA.

Apparently he asked the Fire Brigade to pay this tax but they were sufficiently independent to tell him to get stuffed.

If you think the £3M for the Londoner is a bit extreme then follow this link to read about the £78 million that TfL spends EVERY YEAR on comms.

http://philtaylor.org.uk/?p=214

In all the Mayor is probably spending £100 million EVERY YEAR to promote himself, see:

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/londonmayor/2006/08/phil_jackson_ma.html

Yours,

Councillor Phil Taylor

Deputy Portfolio Holder

Finance & Performance

London Borough of Ealing

Phil Taylor

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