Another day, another City Hall scandal. Mr S can today reveal that Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan has splurged a whopping £2.1 million on a statues commission. So much for sensible public spending, eh?
In a Freedom of Information response returned to Mr S, the Greater London Authority admitted that, so far, £2,138,888 had been funnelled towards the Mayor of London’s ‘Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm’. The initiative aims to ‘lead a London-wide conversation on how to achieve greater diversity of representation across the public realm and heritage sites’ and focus on ‘increasing the presence and visibility of underrepresented groups’. Er, money well spent then?
The work the Commission has undertaken also involves delivering the Mayor’s ‘Untold Stories’ grant fund, on which £1,156,417 has been spent to date. This will, the GLA insists, ‘support community led-projects that increase the visual representation of diversity in London’s public realm’ and ‘develop projects that help tell the stories of London’s diverse communities’.
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